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(This file contains characters
in the Beth-Luis-Nion font for illustrative purposes. You will be able to read
it without installing the font, but you won't see the Ogham characters.)

>beth-luis-nion

Beth-Luis-Nion
Celtic Ogham Font

Ogham (pronounced OH-wahm or OH-gahm) is a form of writing used by the Celtic

peoples of the British Isles prior to the introduction of the Roman alphabet and
Christianity. Each letter of the Ogham alphabet has the name of a tree or other
plant, and each of these trees had a meaning in the Celtic religion (and
possibly in the Goddess-centered religions of the Old Europeans that preceded
the Celts). The tree-alphabet was also used by the Celts for divination, but
few details of that practice were recorded (although see Thorsson 1992 for a
reconstruction).

The trees and the alphabet are still used by modern Witches (Wiccans), Druids,
and other followers of pagan and Goddess-spirituality paths. It is for these
that I created this font (although Celtic scholars may also find it useful).

The alphabet consists of twenty letters. Each letter consists of from one to
five strokes extending from or crossing a horizontal line. Ancient Ogham
inscriptions are generally found cut into the edge of hewn stone, with the edge
representing the horizontal line. When the edge is actually horizontal, the
letters read from left to right. Vertical edges were usually written from top
to bottom, and in the case of a three-edge structure, such as a dolmen arch, the
writing began at the lower left, ran up the left side, across the top, and down
the right side.

The Beth-Luis-Nion font is named after the first three letters of the alphabet
(although there is some disagreement about the sequence, and an alternate
alphabet, called beth-luis-fearn, is provided in the file BLF.TTF). Here is the
alphabet, with the corresponding trees:

Ogham Letter Key1 Name Pronunciation2 Tree Botanical

name3
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------
b b b beth BEH birch Betula pendula
l l l luis LWEESH rowan Sorbus aucuparia
n n n nion NEE-uhn ash Fraxinus excelsior
f f f fearn FAIR-n alder Alnus glutinosa
s s s saille SAHL-yuh willow Salix spp.
h h h huath HOO-ah hawthorn Crataegus spp.
d d d duir DOO-r oak Quercus robur
t t t tinne CHIN-yuh holly4 Ilex aquifolia
c c c coll CULL hazel Corylus avellana
q q q quert KWAIRT apple Malus sylvestris
m m m muin MUHN (like "foot") vine Vitis vinifera
g g g gort GORT ivy Hedera helix
y ng y, p5 ngetal NYEH-tl reed Phragmites communis
z ss z straiff STRAHF blackthorn Prunus spinosa
r r r ruis RWEESH elder Sambucus nigra
a a a ailm AHL-m silver fir Abies alba
o o o onn UHN furze Ulex europaeus
u u u ura OO-rah heather Calluna vulgaris
e e e eadha EH-yuh poplar Populus tremula
i i i
idho, EE-yoh yew Taxus baccata
iodho EE-woh
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------
1. Keyboard mapping of font
2. Irish pronunciation rendered crudely into English
3. Based on my own research (Clark, 1995)
4. The original tree was probably the holm or holly oak, Quercus ilex, which
grows as a native in southern Europe.
5. This character was used as "p" in Brythonic languages; the "p" sound does not
occur in Goedelic languages except in loan-words, and the "ng" sound supposedly
occurs in neither, providing evidence that the tree-alphabet, if not the Ogham,
is pre-Celtic.

References:

Clark, Curtis. 1995. Natural history of the trees of the Celtic Ogham. Circle
Network
News 17(2):12-13 (Issue 56, Summer 1995).

Glass-Koentop, Pattalee. 1991. Year of Moons, Season of Trees. Llewellyn

Publications, St. Paul, Mn.

Graves, Robert. 1966. The White Goddess. 2nd, enlarged edition. Farrar,
Straus and
Giroux, New York.

Thorsson, Edred. 1992. The Book of Ogham: The Celtic Tree Oracle. Llewellyn
Publications, St. Paul, Mn.

The lower-case letters of the font are the alphabet running horizontally, and
the upper-case letters are the vertical top-to-bottom forms. If you want
bottom-to-top, it's probably easier to create a horizontal string and ask your
software to rotate it. Each letter occupies a square space, and there is no
intentional leading or inter-character space--this is so that they will run
together. The dash character (ANSI 45) is an unadorned horizontal line, and the
vertical bar (ANSI 124) is an unadorned vertical line. These can be used for
spaces. The actual space character (ANSI 32) is an empty space. Inscriptions
often started with a symbol now called a “feather” (>); for horizontal letters
it is > and for verical it is ^. Most of the rest of the non-alphabetics (and
the letters that don't occur in the Ogham) are mapped to a horizontal line. The
font was created in Corel Draw 5.0, and was easy. My next Celtic project is an
“italic” ogham font consisting of outlines of the actual leaves of the trees.

The Beth-Luis-Nion font, consisting of the True-Type files BLN.TTF and BLF.TTF
and this file, BLN.WRI, is copyright © 1992, 1994, 1995 by Curtis Clark. It
is free for personal use. Please see the file LICENSE.TXT for other
restrictions on use.

If you actually use this font, either for religious purposes or for Celtic
scholarship, I would like to hear from you. You can reach me on the Internet at
[email protected]. Merry meet!

Last revision of this file: June 12, 1995

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