Irish Druids and Old Irish Religions

Ancient Irish Lite7^atnre, ^ii
relates of the old Irish, that " in all their secret business
they did not write with common letters used among other
people, but with cyphers and figures of beasts."
Toland wrote— " The use of letters has been very ancient
in Ireland, which at first were cut on the bark of trees,
prepared for that purpose ;
or on smooth tables of birch wood,
which were called Taibhe Fileadk, poets' tables ; as their
characters were in general named Feadha, twigs and branch
letters, from this shape. Their alphabet was called Betkluis-nion,
from the three first letters of the same, B, L, N,
BetJi, Luis, Nion,—Birch, Quicken, and Ash ; for the particular
name of every letter was, for memory sake, from
some tree or other vegetable."
"The Irish Beth-luis-nion is a living monument of
a barbarous age," says Ledwich. At first he informs
us they were stenographic, then steganographic, being
called Feadha, or woods. O'MoUoy gives seventeen letters,
O'Conor eighteen, Lhuyd eighteen, with thirteen diphthongs.
Ledwich was convinced that "the speech of the Irish
became a fluctuating jargon." The aspen, fir, elder, broom,
heath, willow, yew, ivy, vine, whitethorn, hazel, furze, and
oak, gave names to letters. There was another alphabet,
Uraiceact-7ia-Neigeas, called after men. Beechen tablets
were used before parchment there. G. Massey says, " The
Druidic sprigs belong to this ideographic stage. The Druids
were in possession of the symbolic branch for the types of
the youthful sun-god, who was annually reborn as the
offshoot from the tree." The profane writing of the Druids
was known as the Bobel-lotJi, from b, f, 1, beginning the
alphabet. The ordinary letters ran b, /, ;/, i",/, //, d, t, r, in,
g, p,
r, a, 0, 71, e, i.
Ogham writing demands some explanation. O'Curry
will not have it derived from Scandinavian Runes. Sometimes
the Latin beside it forms a bilingual. The ogham