and deeds of the ancient heroes, would have ascribed to their times
parchment books and the Roman characters, not stone and wood, and
the Ogham.

In these compositions, whenever they were reduced to the form in
which we find them to-day, the ethnic character of the times and
the ethnic character of the heroes are clearly and universally
observed. The ancient, the remote, the archaic clings to this
literature. As Homer does not allude to writing, though all
scholars agree that he lived in a lettered age, so the old bards do
not allude to parchment and Roman characters, though the Irish
epics, as distinguished from their component parts, reached their
fixed state and their final development in times subsequent to the
introduction of Christianity.

When and how a knowledge of letters reached this island we know
not. From the analogy of Gaul, we may conclude that they were
known for some time prior to their use by the bards. Caesar tells
us that the Gaulish bards and druids did not employ letters for the
preservation of their lore, but trusted to memory, assisted,
doubtless, as in this country, by the mechanical and musical aid of
verse. Whether the Ogham was a native alphabet or a derivative
from another, it was at first employed only to a limited extent.
Its chief use was to preserve the name of buried kings and heroes
in the stone that was set above their tombs. It was, perhaps,
invented, and certainly became fashionable on this account,
straight strokes being more easily cut in stone than rounded or
uncial characters. For the same reason it was generally employed by
those who inscribed timber tablets, which formed the primitive
book, ere they discovered or learned how to use pen, ink, and