parchment. The use of Ogham was partially practised in the
Christian period for sepultural purposes, being venerable and
sacred from time. Hence the discovery of Ogham-inscribed stones in
Christian cemeteries. On the other hand, the fact that the majority
of these stones are discovered in raths and forts, i.e., the tombs
of our Pagan ancestors, corroborates the fact implied in all the
bardic literature, that the characters employed in the ethnic times
were Oghamic, and affords another proof of the close conservative
spirit of the bards in their transcription, compilation, or
reformation of the old epics.

The full force of the concurrent authority of the bardic literature
to the above effect can only be felt by one who has read that
literature with care. He will find in all the epics no trace of
original invention, but always a studied and conscientious
following of authority. This being so, he will conclude that the
universal ascription of Ogham, and Ogham only, to the ethnic times,
arises solely from the fact that such was the alphabet then
employed.

If letters were unknown in those times, the example of Homer shows
how unlikely the later poets would have been to outrage so
violently the whole spirit of the heroic literature. If rounded
letters were then used, why the universal ascription of the late
invented Ogham which, as we know from the cemeteries and other
sources, was unpopular in the Christian age.

Cryptic, too, it was not. The very passages quoted in Hermathena
to support this opinion, so far from doing so prove actually the
reverse. When Cuculain came down into Meath on his first [Note: