Ogham script

“ Supposing that the latter word, the meaning of which is only a matter of inference, signified a letter or a written character, then Ogma would mean he who had to do with writing—the inventor, let us say, of writing; but that is inadmissible, as the Celts probably had no knowledge of writing when the god was first called Ogmios. So we have to look for the key to the meaning of the word Ogam in the direction of spoken rather than of written language. In Scotland, Ogmic writing does not appear to have become known till it was nearly going out of use in Ireland ”

“ The various conditions of the problem of fixing the meaning attached to the word Ogam, and the word standing in the same order of priority to Ogmios in Gaulish as Ogam does to Ogma in Irish, seem best satisfied by supposing the common noun to have meant a round or train of words, fluent speech or ready utterance. This harmonizes well with the sketch of Ogmios as the old man Heracles of the Gauls, whose talk and ready wit charmed his hearers. ”

“ The city editor had received a little note from Mrs. Ogilvie, begging him to let her work on without interruption, "for work," she ended, "will be my only refuge now." He had sent her several assignments with journalistic promptness, and with a letter full of almost human sympathy. He thought of her suddenly one evening as he looked at the head of her arch-enemy, Hunt, the copy-reader, bent over a story of hers which he had given him to rewrite. "We want good stuff out of this," he had said, without glancing it over; "whip it into shape, old man, and make the very best of it. ”

“ Ogga was indeed a wild man, a prehistoric, a creature of the plain, living next to nature, supplying his daily needs by a harsh ingenuity, wringing from obstacles a concession to his daily requests, a being utterly removed from all modern conceptions of social physics, a being on whose uplifted face no word of revelation or literature or exhortation had ever fallen, one whose instincts, the germinal moments of whose mind, with its inseparable faculties of observation and deduction, had only become active and projected under the influences of nature. ”

“ Ogma's counterpart in Gaul is Ogmíos, a Herakles and a god of eloquence, thus bearing the dual character of Ogma, while Ogma's epithet grianainech, "of the smiling countenance," recalls Lucian's account of the "smiling face" of Ogmíos.257 Ogma's high position is the result of the admiration of bardic eloquence among the Celts, whose loquacity was proverbial, and to him its origin was doubtless ascribed, as well as that of poetry. ”

“ While there is nothing in these letters that deviates from the psychological tradition in later eighteenth-century criticism, it is also evident that Ogilvie is not really an associationist, and that he is less interested in the creative functioning of the poet’s imagination than in the precepts of a psychological humanism which underscore his criteria and give validity to his remarks on the range and appeal of lyric poetry. In sum, his historicism exists as a justification for his defense of lyric poetry and is intended to provide a basis for the psychological bias of his argument. ”

“ Yes! in the prehistoric, in Ogga, the gaunt horror of the desire to kill had arisen. The pallid beast of hatred, ridden by the clutching hags of envy and jealousy and spite and terror, ran before Ogga in his path. He—Ogga—stared wildly at the image of a man, stifled and gasping, held at the throat by Ogga’s hand—his own—until the eyes started from their sockets, turning their lifeless whitenesses downward and upward in the wanton agony of death. ”

“ Ogga was skillful in fashioning, and his skill grew, and as he lived so, he came northward toward the steppe country and saw the mastodon. Then he felt a desire to possess its great white tusks, and one day he found a dead mastodon, and from its tusks he made many things, patiently working in the woods for many years. He met men who bought these things, exchanging baskets and green stone knives and even gold. And so he became a hunter and lived alone in a [Pg 119] bark tent watching the Mastodon and becoming fearless and strong and knowing. Such was Ogga’s story. ”

“ The ogam inscriptions are Goidelic, and those written in Roman letters are in bad Latin, while many of the names even in the latter are Goidelic in form. In some cases a name has the Lat. nom. ending ‐us, as Catamanus Rhys no. 6 (LWPh.2 364) , Aliortus no. 14, Veracius g, but most have the Lat. gen. ending ‐i, as Cunogusi hic jacit 5 ‘ [the body] of C. lies here’. The names and the following maqu̯qu̯i of the ogams show that ‐i is gen., and not a debased form of the Brit. nom. ‐os. (The ogam ‐i is the Kelt. gen. suffix *‐ī, being the Italo-Kelt. gen. of ‐o- stems.) As a rule the Lat. ”

“ But the old woman’s spirit so harassed and pinched her that she grew wretched and wasted away. Finally, rather than divide it according to the woman’s will, she cast the bag into the Ogmore stream, where in Welsh folklore treasure was wont to be thrown. ”

“ Custom, my Lord, that sovereign arbiter, from whose decision in literary as well as in civil causes, there frequently lies no appeal, will lead us to consider boldness of transition as a circumstance which is peculiarly characteristic of the Ode. Lyric Poets have in all ages appropriated to themselves the liberty of indulging imagination in her most irregular excursions; and when a digression is remotely similar to the subject, they are permitted to fall into it at any time by the invariable practice of their Predecessors. Pindar expressly lays claim to this privilege. ”

“ The relation between regularity and irregularity is one that he particularly stresses, and his resolutions tend to allow a certain wildness as natural to the imagination, even as evidence of the faculty. He is, however, more inclined to permit bold and spirited transitions in the shorter ode than in the longer ode. As usual Ogilvie’s critical principles are related to the nature of the work in question, and a greater irregularity is natural to the shorter ode since it presumes the imitation of the passions. ”

“ I love you. The spirit [Pg 212] men shall be good to you. You will have so much to eat, to wear, and you shall do nothing. I took you because I cannot live anyway, besides. I will bring you birds and little animals, and furs and flowers. You shall be beautiful. And my people will do as you say, all of them, or I will kill them. Let it be so. Forget Ogga. Love me.”
And yet as he spoke, Ogga, growing hotter, warier, keener, surer, deadlier, followed his trail, even as the meteoric spark that crosses the black night follows its inerrant path to earth.
But Lhatto did not answer. ”

“ In the chapter on The Place the marvellous variety of natural conditions under which both Ogga and Lhatto lived—for we have seen in their various and errant life, however specialized, they were meeting all of them—were those which appealed to their wonder, their fear, their admiration, awoke in them joy and amazement and desire, fed the springs of poetic impulse, stirred the sense of worship and dependence, and propagated the thrilling currents of question and imagination. ”

“ As poetry is more natural to the young mind than philosophy, so is the end of pastoral poetry more easily achieved than that of the lyric. The difference resides essentially in Ogilvie’s notion that the pastoral poet contemplates “external objects,” while the lyric poet regards that which is not immediately available to the senses and consequently requires a more exuberant invention. What follows upon these reflections is a rather ingenious form of historical progressivism in which the civilizing powers of the poet provide the principal justification for lyric poetry. ”

“ As Ogga saw Lhatto he loved her, and he loved her nobly. The whole process of approach, preparation, attack and capture was instantaneously traversed. How could it be otherwise! The physiological instant was critical and victorious. Ogga was young, the tides of blood in his veins bore with [Pg 114] them the impetuous claims of nature. ”

“ And if any cultivated and intellectual reader, in the thoughtful retirement of his library, feels himself superior to Jacob Ogden, the illiterate cotton-spinner, he may be reminded that he is not on all points Ogden's superior. We are all but tools in the hands of God ”

“ It is curious how an ingenious actor of the present day (Mr. Farren) should play Lord Ogleby so well as he does, having never seen any thing of the sort in reality. A nobleman in full costume, and in broad day, would be a phenomenon like the lord mayor’s coach. The attempt at getting up genteel comedy at present is a sort of Galvanic experiment, a revival of the dead. ”

“ Long before the light of the rising sun had built a bridge of golden mosaic across [Pg 107] the East upon the flaky clouds, Ogga had left his improvised camp. The ivory tusks were secreted beneath the rock. His reindeer mantle was again clasped about his shoulders, and the nephrite blade which had hung about his neck was in one hand, the stone hammer stuck in his belt, the precious basket yet holding a remnant of its first contents under his arm, and with his other disengaged hand he had seized the spear. ”

“ This latter point is one of great importance;—the fact of two such extreme forms of language as the monosyllabic and polysynthetic meeting has been shown by Schoolcraft in his remarks upon the structure of the Algonkin languages; the à priori likelihood of such a phænomenon being very great. The details of the transition itself, however, we see but imperfectly. That they are to be found, however, in the comparative philology of the Seriform tongues is undoubted. Here, even the difference, so important in the American tongues, between the animate and inanimate plural is foreshadowed ”

“ Why,” said the professor, with as much of a flourish as he could get into a whisper, “his very nostrils convict him.”
It must be said that at that particular moment Ogla-Moga’s nostrils were convicting him of a genius for music of a most discordant kind. He was snoring a profound snore whose chords could not be found in Beethoven or Rossini, nor even in Liszt or Wagner. Just as the professor finished his eulogy, there came a terrific rumble and rattle, and the Indian snored so loud that he fairly woke himself up. He raised himself up in the chair and looked about in speechless amazement. ”

“ It was before a creature of this sort, gigantic, grotesque, decadent and foreign, that Ogga stared with all his eyes, thinking to please Lhatto by bringing back to her some trophy from its body. The strange beast continued its prolonged feeding and Ogga watched. The night, darkening the valley with blue shadows, that sensibly thickened, overtaking each other and pressing like a repulsing force the fleeing lights, rising upward on the mountain, soon hid the animal, and with the night came rain and a low wind raising innumerable voices in the great woods. ”

“ The critics will leap to Ogi’s support, hailing him as the Lord’s own anointed, a creator of masterpieces, dignified, serene, secure in immortality. This is art, the critics will aver, this is real, genuine, authentic art; while out there in the wilderness somewhere howls a lone gray rebellious wolf, attacking and seeking to devour everything that is beautiful and sacred in life—and the howling of this wolf is not art, it is vile and cheap propaganda. ”

“ Ogden was a good hebraist, conversed in Greek with 'the pretended archbishop of Samos,' and wrote Latin verse in his old age. He delighted in mathematics, and maintained that 'very few good mathematicians were lewd and scandalous.' He was versed also in physics, and an excellent practical botanist, and was fond of music. ”

“ Ormond’s handwriting, and you know Sir Ulick O’Shane’s—”
“Mr. James,” said the principal clerk, turning to one of the others, “be so good to hand me the letters we have of Mr. Ormond. As we have never seen the gentleman sign his name, sir, it is necessary that we should be more particular in comparing.”
“Oh! sir, no doubt—compare as much as you please—no doubt people cannot be too exact and deliberate in doing business.” ”

“ Then all you will have to do is to go to Ogden, play a short scene as Chicago Ed., escort him to the car, and then go back to bed and have a good sleep. Once Ogden thinks you are a professional kidnapper, you won't have any difficulty at all. Get it into your head that he wants to be kidnapped. Surely you can tackle this light and attractive job? Why, it will be a treat for you to do a bit of character acting once more! ”

“ She could not ask a friend to take him in. He could not be sent anywhere without danger. Finally a brilliant thought struck her just as she was on the verge of distraction, with Ogla-Moga’s big eyes fastened on her all the while. There was the janitor of the apartment-house. He might easily be induced to take a boarder, and he would be discreet. Ogla-Moga could be kept in retirement in his rooms. She would act at once upon the idea. And yet what was she to say? How was she to account for the presence of this stranger in her little household? Ah! he needed clothes. ”

“ In the first part I have attempted to lay before your Lordship, the state of Lyric Poetry in the earliest ages, as it appears from what we can collect either of the character of the writings of Amphion, Linus, Orpheus, Museus, and Hesiod. In the course of this enquiry I have had occasion to assign the causes, whose concurrence rendered this branch of the poetic Art less perfect at its first introduction than any of the other species. —Upon advancing a little further, a richer and more diversified prospect opened to the imagination. ”