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71-431: The character of Nanny Ogg is based on someone Pratchett knew in real life, "an old lady who liked a drink and a laugh, but...I suspect you could find someone like her on any street." Discworld illustrator Paul Kidby expressed a similar view of the character, writing, "I like to think we all know someone like Nanny Ogg, a person who enjoys a drink and has led a happy and full life." Nanny Ogg has been married three times, and

142-465: A Cable Street Particular . Granny determines that the finances of the Opera House, which are a complete mess, have been made so intentionally in order to hide the fact that money is being stolen, with the murders being used either as a distraction or to cover up the evidence. It is finally revealed that two people had been masquerading as the ghost. The original (and harmless) ghost, Walter Plinge,

213-470: A martial art . Jason is something of a gentle giant (somewhat like Constable Bluejohn ), and very deferring and respectful to his mother and other witches. Youngest son of Nanny Ogg. First appears in Wyrd Sisters as a guard at Lancre Castle. He later becomes Lancre's entire army, as well as the civil service and most of the palace staff. According to Nanny Ogg's Cookbook , he has been granted

284-634: A 6th-century king of Dyfed (originally located in Clynderwen ), is the only ogham stone inscription that bears the name of an identifiable individual. The language of the inscriptions is predominantly Primitive Irish ; the few inscriptions in Scotland, such as the Lunnasting stone , record fragments of what is probably the Pictish language . The more ancient examples are standing stones , where

355-524: A cheesemonger. When Granny Weatherwax realizes Nanny Ogg has written an immensely popular "cookbook" but has not been paid by the publisher (and that the nom de plume of 'A Lancre Witch' may lead people to believe that she rather than Nanny wrote it), the witches leave for Ankh-Morpork to collect the money. They also hope to recruit Agnes into their coven, to replace Magrat Garlick who left the coven when she became Queen of Lancre (in Lords and Ladies ). This has

426-439: A lengthy monologue about his hatred of opera. Walter then goes on to become the new Director of Music, integrating his own music into the opera, turning them into musicals. Slugg, decidedly abandoning his Enrico Basilica persona after being assaulted and concussed by Salzella, reunites with Angeline Lawsy, his childhood sweetheart, and is introduced to his long-lost son Henry Lawsy. Agnes, after realising that she does not fit in with

497-400: A rich patron (using Nanny's royalties), Nanny insinuating herself into the opera house staff, and Nanny's cat Greebo being transmogrified into human form (as during Witches Abroad ) to pose as Granny's companion. Agnes unmasks Walter Plinge , the janitor, as the ghost, though as he is seemingly harmless, the others are unconvinced. Andre, another employee, is suspected, but he turns out to be

568-574: A tremendous laugh. She has also been credited with a grin "that should have been locked up for the sake of public decency" and her face has been described as looking like "a friendly pumpkin." The witches of the Lancre coven reflect the roles of Maiden, Mother, and Crone , with Nanny Ogg as the Mother. Nuttall observes that, while some of the Discworld witch characters progress through these roles, Nanny

639-462: A very cheerful, practical attitude regarding sexuality and frequently offers unsolicited advice and anecdotes. As a young woman, she was the muse and subject of Leonard of Quirm's masterpiece, the Mona Ogg . While she had numerous sexual partners as an unmarried woman and later as a widow, she claims that she was never unfaithful to any of her husbands while married. Nanny Ogg is very funny and has

710-461: A warning to Lug , meaning: "your wife will be carried away seven times to the otherworld unless the birch protects her". For this reason, the letter b is said to be named after the birch, and In Lebor Ogaim goes on to tell the tradition that all letters were named after trees, a claim also referred to by the Auraicept as an alternative to the naming after Fenius' disciples. Strictly speaking,

781-670: A well-looked-after townhouse in the capital of Lancre with her eldest and youngest sons living to either side. Her house is called Tir Nani Ogg ("Nanny Ogg's place", and a pun on the Tír na nÓg , the Gaelic name for the Land of the Ever-Young). She shares this home with Greebo, a tomcat of evil aura and aroma and astonishing viciousness, whom she still sees as a sweet kitten. Nanny enjoys food and drink, despite only having one remaining tooth. Within

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852-609: Is emancholl which means 'twin of hazel' Monumental ogham inscriptions are found in Ireland and Wales , with a few additional specimens found in southwest England ( Devon and Cornwall ), the Isle of Man , and Scotland , including Shetland and a single example from Silchester and another from Coventry in England. They were mainly employed as territorial markers and memorials (grave stones). The stone commemorating Vortiporius ,

923-696: Is a fantasy novel by British writer Terry Pratchett , the eighteenth book in the Discworld series. The witches Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg visit the Ankh-Morpork Opera House to find Agnes Nitt , a girl from Lancre , and get caught up in a story similar to The Phantom of the Opera . Agnes Nitt leaves Lancre to seek a career at the Opera House in Ankh-Morpork , which has recently been purchased by Seldom Bucket, formerly

994-583: Is a brothel rather than a boarding house. In the Wyrd Sisters animated adaptation, Nanny Ogg was voiced by June Whitfield . In the BBC Radio 4 adaptation of Wyrd Sisters, she was played by Lynda Baron . Nanny Ogg, along with Rincewind, was pictured on first-class Royal Mail stamps in March 2011. In The Art of Discworld , Pratchett mentions a fossil species of Mesozoic ginkgo known as Ginkgoites nannyoggiae . Maskerade Maskerade

1065-570: Is a letter for the labiovelar q (ᚊ ceirt ), a phoneme lost in Old Irish. The base alphabet is, therefore, as it were, designed for Proto-Q-Celtic. Of the five forfeda or supplementary letters, only the first, ébad , regularly appears in inscriptions, but mostly with the value K (McManus, § 5.3, 1991), in the word koi (ᚕᚑᚔ "here"). The others, except for emancholl , have at most only one certain 'orthodox' (see below) inscription each. Due to their limited practical use, later ogamists turned

1136-537: Is also evidence that ogham may have been used as a system of finger or hand signals. In later centuries when ogham ceased to be used as a practical alphabet, it retained its place in the learning of Gaelic scholars and poets as the basis of grammar and the rules of poetry. Indeed, until modern times the Latin alphabet in Gaelic continued to be taught using letter names borrowed from the Beith-Luis-Nin , along with

1207-468: Is asked to sing the parts from the background, unbeknownst to Christine or the audience. After swapping rooms with Christine, Agnes begins receiving late-night training from the Opera Ghost originally intended for Christine. Having discovered the problems at the Opera House and also having coerced the publisher to pay Nanny richly for her book, the witches investigate the mystery, with Granny posing as

1278-457: Is associated "purely with the role of the Mother." In addition to being the matriarch of a large family, Nanny also fulfills a Mother role in the community; "she is a talented midwife, and takes a maternal attitude to the majority of people she meets". In Thief of Time , Nanny Ogg is acknowledged as the best midwife in the world, and has experience with non-human species like trolls. She briefly takes on young Tiffany Aching as an apprentice after

1349-477: Is aware that not all names are known tree names: "Now all these are wood names such as are found in the Ogham Book of Woods, and are not derived from men", admitting that "some of these trees are not known today". The Auraicept gives a short phrase or kenning for each letter, known as a Bríatharogam , that traditionally accompanied each letter name, and a further gloss explaining their meanings and identifying

1420-454: Is mostly restricted to phonological developments. There are two main schools of thought among scholars as to the motivation for the creation of ogham. Scholars such as Carney and MacNeill have suggested that ogham was first created as a cryptic alphabet, designed by the Irish to hide their meaning from writers of the Latin alphabet. In this school of thought, it is asserted that "the alphabet

1491-554: Is no evidence for Macalister's theory, and it has been discounted by later scholars. There are in fact other explanations for the name Beith-luis-nin . One explanation is that the word nin , which means forked branch , was used to mean letters in general. Beith-luis-nin could therefore mean simply beith-luis letters. Another suggestion is that beith-luis-nin is a contraction of the first five letters, ie, beith-LVS-nin . The ogham alphabet originally consisted of twenty letters, divided into four groups ( Irish : aicme ) according

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1562-571: Is possibly mentioned in Tochmarc Étaíne , a tale in the Irish Mythological Cycle , wherein the druid Dalan takes four wands of yew, and writes ogham letters upon them. Then he uses the tools for what some interpret as a form of divination . However, as the tale doesn't explain how the sticks are handled or interpreted, this theory is open to interpretation. A divination method invented by neopagans involves casting sticks upon

1633-592: Is prepared to make tough decisions if necessary. Incurring Nanny's wrath is suggested to be dangerous because of her kind personality. In Pratchett's short story " The Sea and Little Fishes " Nanny Ogg also identifies herself, and the Ogg family as a whole, as having immense natural magical talent, but less willing to work hard as do the Weatherwaxes. Unlike Granny Weatherwax, and the stereotype of witches in general, Nanny Ogg does not live in an isolated cottage but in

1704-459: Is rather within the 1st century BC. Although the use of "classical" ogham in stone inscriptions seems to have flourished in the 5th and 6th centuries around the Irish Sea , from the phonological evidence it is clear that the alphabet predates the 5th century. Indeed, the alphabet has letters representing "archaic" phonemes which were clearly part of the system, but which were no longer spoken by

1775-456: Is that ogham was invented by the first Christian communities in early Ireland, out of a desire for a unique alphabet to write short messages and inscriptions in Irish. The sounds of Primitive Irish may have been difficult to transcribe into the Latin alphabet, motivating the invention of a separate alphabet. A possible such origin, as suggested by McManus (1991:41), is the early Irish Christian community known from around AD 400 at latest, attested by

1846-501: Is the mother of fifteen children and has many grandchildren and great-grandchildren. She has a talent for getting along with others. As described in Maskerade , after knowing her for fifteen minutes, people feel as if they have known her all of their lives. Nanny Ogg is a more down-to-earth character than Esme Weatherwax. Granny Weatherwax comes across as judgmental, whereas Nanny is broadminded. She appears to be kinder than Granny but

1917-537: The Beithe-luis-nuin (the ogham) as a perfected writing system for his languages. The names he gave to the letters were those of his 25 best scholars. Alternatively, the Ogam Tract credits Ogma with the script's invention. Ogma was skilled in speech and poetry, and created the system for the learned, to confound rustics and fools. The first message written in ogam was seven b' s on a birch, sent as

1988-610: The Old Irish language ( scholastic ogham , 6th to 9th centuries). There are roughly 400 surviving orthodox inscriptions on stone monuments throughout Ireland and western Britain, the bulk of which are in southern Munster . The largest number outside Ireland are in Pembrokeshire , Wales. The vast majority of the inscriptions consist of personal names. According to the High Medieval Bríatharogam ,

2059-484: The Old Irish period (say, 10th century), but it postdates the Primitive Irish period, or at least the time when the letters were originally named. Its origin is probably due to the letters themselves being called feda "trees", or nin "forking branches" due to their shape. Since a few of the letters were, in fact, named after trees, the interpretation arose that they were called feda because of that. Some of

2130-458: The 11th-best Discworld novel, noting that "it works well as a parody of the tropes of opera, and as a murder mystery". Ogham Ogham ( / ˈ ɒ ɡ əm / OG -əm , Modern Irish : [ˈoː(ə)mˠ] ; Middle Irish : ogum, ogom , later ogam [ˈɔɣəmˠ] ) is an Early Medieval alphabet used primarily to write the early Irish language (in the "orthodox" inscriptions , 4th to 6th centuries AD), and later

2201-528: The 11th-century Lebor Gabála Érenn , the 14th-century Auraicept na n-Éces , and other Medieval Irish folklore , ogham was first invented soon after the fall of the Tower of Babel , along with the Gaelic language , by the legendary Scythian king, Fenius Farsa . According to the Auraicept, Fenius journeyed from Scythia together with Goídel mac Ethéoir, Íar mac Nema and a retinue of 72 scholars. They came to

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2272-554: The 16th century. A modern ogham inscription is found on a gravestone dating to 1802 in Ahenny, County Tipperary . In Scotland, a number of inscriptions using the ogham writing system are known, but their language is still the subject of debate. It has been argued by Richard Cox in The Language of Ogham Inscriptions in Scotland (1999) that the language of these is Old Norse, but others remain unconvinced by this analysis, and regard

2343-399: The 5th century and never appear in inscriptions, suggesting an extended period of ogham writing on wood or other perishable material prior to the preserved monumental inscriptions. They are: úath ("H") and straif ("Z" in the manuscript tradition, but probably "F" from "SW"), and gétal (velar nasal "NG" in the manuscript tradition, but etymologically probably "GW"). It appears that

2414-486: The Discworld books, but many readers have written their versions. Another Nanny Ogg song is "A Wizard's Staff has a Knob on the End," a version of which has been written by Heather Wood , with music by Dave Greenslade . It is also notable that Nanny Ogg once gave Agnes Nitt lessons on how to sing, including how to sing in harmony with herself (using her alter ego, Perdita). Nanny Ogg is known for her romantic exploits. She has

2485-536: The Discworld equivalent of the ancient Irish alphabet Ogham . Several of Nanny's relatives play supporting roles in the Discworld books. Many others are mentioned briefly. Eldest son of Nanny Ogg, first mentioned in Wyrd Sisters . Like his father before him, he is the Lancre blacksmith. He is also the leader of the Lancre Morris Men, who treat Morris dancing as something between a contact sport and

2556-408: The Discworld universe, Nanny has written several books: The Joye of Snacks (a cookbook of aphrodisiac recipes, the publication of which plays a role in the plot of Maskerade ), Mother Ogg's Tales For Tiny Folk and Nanny Ogg's Cookbook . When she is drunk and/or bathing, Nanny sings bawdy songs such as "The Hedgehog Can Never Be Buggered At All" or "The Hedgehog Song." Only a few lines appear in

2627-469: The Irish were themselves invading western Britain, the desire to keep communications secret from Romans or Romanised Britons would still have provided an incentive. With bilingual ogham and Latin inscriptions in Wales, however, one would suppose that the ogham could easily be decoded by at least an educated few in the post-Roman world. The second main school of thought, put forward by scholars such as McManus,

2698-719: The Medieval association of each letter with a different tree. Ogham was added to the Unicode Standard in September 1999 with the release of version 3.0. The spelling of the names given is a standardisation dating to 1997, used in Unicode Standard and in Irish Standard 434:1999 . The Unicode block for ogham is U+1680–U+169F. Modern New Age and Neopagan approaches to ogham largely derive from

2769-680: The Moon goddess in her various forms. Graves' argument is extremely complex, but in essence, he argues that the Hebrews, Greeks and Celts were all influenced by a people originating in the Aegean, called ' the people of the sea ' by the Egyptians, who spread out around Europe in the 2nd millennium BC, taking their religious beliefs with them. He posits that at some early stage these teachings were encoded in alphabet form by poets to pass on their worship of

2840-664: The Ogham alphabet was modelled on another script, and some even consider it a mere cipher of its template script (Düwel 1968: points out similarity with ciphers of Germanic runes ). The largest number of scholars favour the Latin alphabet as this template, although the Elder Futhark and even the Greek alphabet have their supporters. Runic origin would elegantly explain the presence of "H" and "Z" letters unused in Irish, as well as

2911-912: The Order of the Lancrastian Empire. He is also notable for inventing the Lancrastian Army Knife. Nanny's grandson, Shane is a sailor and has taught her some 'basic foreign language', mostly made up of mangled words from French and other European languages. Neville is a thief and (prior to the events of Maskerade ) stole all the lead from the roof of the Ankh-Morpork Opera House. Afterward he hid at Mrs. Palm's establishment. When Nanny Ogg and Granny Weatherwax visit Ankh-Morpork in Maskerade , they also seek lodging with Mrs. Palm, and are surprised to learn that this

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2982-491: The Primitive Irish of the early centuries AD. The supposed links with the form of the Greek alphabet that Macalister proposed can also be disproved. A fourth hypothesis, proposed by the scholars Rudolf Thurneysen and Joseph Vendryes , is that the forms of the letters derive from a numerical tally-mark counting system of the time, based around the numbers five and twenty, which was then adapted into an alphabet. According to

3053-452: The death of Tiffany's previous mentor, Miss Treason . While Nanny Ogg's bawdy sense of humor and sexually active past "would seem to contradict her association with the role of Mother", Nuttall points to this as evidence that Nanny "never truly fitted the role of Maiden" and that the character "represents female sexuality as powerful, natural, and something to be celebrated". Even in old age, she enjoys flirting and male attention, such as with

3124-424: The dwarf Casanunda . Nanny Ogg has impressive social skills, and often relies upon these rather than witchcraft to gather information or persuade others. Throughout the series she demonstrates the ability to socialize with all kinds of people, which sometimes leaves Granny wondering 'if Gytha has some sort of special magic'. In The Art of Discworld , Pratchett writes, "I've always suspected that Nanny is, deep down,

3195-569: The environment of the opera, returns to Lancre to learn how to be a witch from Granny and to serve as the third member of the Lancre Coven. A stage adaptation by Hana Burešová and Štěpán Otčenášek (partly using adaptation by Stephen Briggs ) premiered in Divadlo v Dlouhé , Prague in April 2006. Pratchett attended the closing performance five years later. BuzzFeed listed Maskerade as

3266-582: The evidence from early Irish sagas and legends indicate that ogham was used for short messages on wood or metal, either to relay messages or to denote ownership of the object inscribed. Some of these messages seem to have been cryptic in nature and some were also for magical purposes. In addition, there is evidence from sources such as In Lebor Ogaim , or the Ogham Tract , that ogham may have been used to keep records or lists, such as genealogies and numerical tallies of property and business transactions. There

3337-411: The fact that the inscriptions are believed to have been inspired by the manuscript sources, instead of being continuations of the original monument tradition. Unlike orthodox ogham, some medieval inscriptions feature all five Forfeda . Scholastic inscriptions are written on stemlines cut into the face of the stone, instead of along its edge. Ogham was also occasionally used for notes in manuscripts down to

3408-529: The fatally-ill son of an innkeeper. Agnes Nitt is chosen as a member of the chorus, where she meets Christine, a more popular but less talented girl whose father lent Bucket large sums of money to purchase the Opera House. The Opera Ghost, who has long haunted the opera house without much incident, begins to commit seemingly random murders staged as "accidents", and also requests that Christine be given lead roles in several upcoming productions. Due to her incredibly powerful, versatile and possibly magical voice, Agnes

3479-704: The goddess (as the muse and inspiration of all poets) in a secret fashion, understandable only to initiates. Eventually, via the druids of Gaul, this knowledge was passed on to the poets of early Ireland and Wales. Graves, therefore, looked at the Tree Alphabet tradition surrounding ogham and explored the tree folklore of each of the letter names, proposing that the order of the letters formed an ancient "seasonal calendar of tree magic". Although his theories have been discredited and discarded by modern scholars (including Macalister himself, with whom Graves corresponded), they were taken up with enthusiasm by some adherents of

3550-538: The international contacts that led to the existence of some of these stones. A third hypothesis, put forward by the noted ogham scholar R. A. S. Macalister was influential at one time, but finds little favour with scholars today. He believed – because ogham consists of four groups of five letters with a sequence of strokes from one to five – that ogham was first invented as a secret system of finger signals in Cisalpine Gaul around 600 BC by Gaulish druids, and

3621-399: The language of the monumental stone inscriptions is termed Primitive Irish . The transition to Old Irish , the language of the earliest sources in the Latin alphabet, takes place in about the 6th century. Since ogham inscriptions consist almost exclusively of personal names and marks possibly indicating land ownership, linguistic information that may be gleaned from the Primitive Irish period

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3692-492: The letters are named after various trees. For this reason, Ogham is sometimes known as the Celtic tree alphabet . The etymology of the word ogam or ogham remains unclear. One possible origin is from the Irish og-úaim 'point-seam', referring to the seam made by the point of a sharp weapon. It is generally thought that the earliest inscriptions in Ogham date to about the 4th century AD, but James Carney believed its origin

3763-447: The mission of Palladius by Pope Celestine I in AD 431. A variation is the idea that this alphabet was first invented, for whatever reason, in 4th-century Irish settlements in west Wales after contact and intermarriage with Romanised Britons with knowledge of the Latin alphabet. In fact, several ogham stones in Wales are bilingual, containing both Irish and British Latin , testifying to

3834-468: The most powerful of the witches, and part of her charm lies in the way she prevents people from finding this out." Nanny Ogg is the matriarch of her vast extended family. Although she is an affectionate mother and grandmother, Nanny is a tyrant to her daughters-in-law and orders them to perform household chores. Nanny Ogg claims in Lords and Ladies that her ancestors invented the ancient language of Oggham,

3905-482: The name idad is probably an artificial form of iubhar "yew", as the kennings support that meaning, and concedes that ailm may possibly mean "pine tree," as it appears to be used to mean that in an 8th-century poem. Thus out of twenty letter names, only eight at most are the names of trees. The other names have a variety of meanings. Of the forfeda , four are glossed by the Auraicept: The fifth letter

3976-463: The neopagan movement. In addition, Graves followed the BLNFS order of ogham letters put forward by Macalister (see above), with the result taken up by many New Age and Neopagan writers as the 'correct' order of the letters, despite its rejection by scholars. The main use of ogham by adherents of Neo-druidism and other forms of Neopaganism is for the purpose of divination. Divination with ogham symbols

4047-520: The now-discredited theories of Robert Graves in his book The White Goddess . In this work, Graves took his inspiration from the theories of the ogham scholar R. A. S. Macalister (see above) and elaborated on them much further. Graves proposed that the ogham alphabet encoded a set of beliefs originating in the Middle East in Stone Age times, concerning the ceremonies surrounding the worship of

4118-530: The number of known inscriptions in the contemporary Elder Futhark ), of which the highest concentration by far is found in the southwestern Irish province of Munster . Over one-third of the total are found in County Kerry alone, most densely in the former kingdom of the Corcu Duibne . Later inscriptions are known as " scholastic ", and are post 6th century in date. The term 'scholastic' derives from

4189-522: The other letter names had fallen out of use as independent words, and were thus free to be claimed as "Old Gaelic" tree names, while others (such as ruis , úath or gort ) were more or less forcefully reinterpreted as epithets of trees by the medieval glossators. McManus (1991, §3.15) discusses possible etymologies of all the letter names, and as well as the five mentioned above, he adds one other definite tree name: onn "ash" (the Auraicept wrongly has "furze"). McManus (1988, p. 164) also believes that

4260-638: The plain of Shinar to study the confused languages at Nimrod 's tower (the Tower of Babel ). Finding that they had already been dispersed, Fenius sent his scholars to study them, staying at the tower, coordinating the effort. After ten years, the investigations were complete, and Fenius created in Bérla tóbaide "the selected language", taking the best of each of the confused tongues, which he called Goídelc , Goidelic , after Goídel mac Ethéoir. He also created extensions of Goídelc , called Bérla Féne , after himself, Íarmberla , after Íar mac Nema, and others, and

4331-422: The presence of vocalic and consonantal variants "U" vs. "W", unknown to Latin writing and lost in Greek (cf. digamma ). The Latin alphabet is the primary contender mainly because its influence at the required period (4th century) is most easily established, being widely used in neighbouring Roman Britannia , while runes in the 4th century were not very widespread even in continental Europe . In Ireland and Wales,

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4402-449: The script was carved into the edge ( droim or faobhar ) of the stone, which formed the stemline against which individual characters are cut. The text of these "Orthodox Ogham" inscriptions is read beginning from the bottom left-hand side of a stone, continuing upward along the edge, across the top and down the right-hand side (in the case of long inscriptions). Roughly 380 inscriptions are known in total (a number, incidentally, very close to

4473-413: The side benefit of distracting Granny from becoming obsessive and self-centred, or so Nanny believes to her great relief. En route, they meet Henry Slugg, an Ankh-Morporkian opera singer who adopted a Brindisian persona of Enrico Basilica to further his career but yearns for Ankh-Morporkian cuisine after years of Brindisian pasta, squid and tomato sauce; and Granny makes a deal with Death for him not to claim

4544-625: The stones as being Pictish in origin. However, due to the lack of knowledge about the Picts, the inscriptions remain undeciphered, their language possibly being non- Indo-European . The Pictish inscriptions are scholastic, and are believed to have been inspired by the manuscript tradition brought into Scotland by Gaelic settlers . A rare example of a Christianised (cross-inscribed) Ogham stone can be seen in St. Mary's Collegiate Church Gowran , County Kilkenny . As well as its use for monumental inscriptions,

4615-532: The stroke angle and direction. The groups were Five additional letters were later introduced (mainly in the manuscript tradition), the so-called forfeda . A letter for p is conspicuously absent, since the phoneme was lost in Proto-Celtic , and the gap was not filled in Q-Celtic , and no sign was needed before loanwords from Latin containing p appeared in Irish ( e.g. , Patrick). Conversely, there

4686-670: The supplementary letters into a series of diphthongs , changing completely the values for pín and emancholl . This meant that the alphabet was once again without a letter for the 'P' sound, forcing the invention of the letter peithboc (soft 'B'), which appears in the manuscripts only. The letter names are interpreted as names of trees or shrubs in manuscript tradition, both in Auraicept na n-Éces ('The Scholars' Primer') and In Lebor Ogaim ('The Ogam Tract'). They were first discussed in modern times by Ruaidhrí Ó Flaithbheartaigh (1685), who took them at face value. The Auraicept itself

4757-413: The tree or plant linked to each letter. Only five of the twenty primary letters have tree names that the Auraicept considers comprehensible without further glosses, namely beith "birch", fearn "alder", saille "willow", duir "oak" and coll "hazel". All the other names have to be glossed or "translated". According to the leading modern ogham scholar, Damian McManus, the "Tree Alphabet" idea dates to

4828-490: The word ogham means letters , while the alphabet is called beith-luis-nin after the letter names of the first letters (in the same way that the modern word "alphabet" derives from the Greek letters alpha and beta ). The order of the first five letters, BLFSN, led the scholar Macalister to propose that a link between a form of the Greek alphabet used in Northern Italy in the 6th and 5th centuries BC. However, there

4899-550: Was being psychologically manipulated and blackmailed by the second ghost, Mr Salzella (Director of Music at the Opera House), who assumed the identity to commit the murders and theft, and frame Walter if he ever came close to being caught. With the witches' help, Walter is able to overcome his fears and help defeat Salzella, who is killed by believing that the fencing staged in opera is actual lethal swordplay, dying despite not actually being injured, although not before delivering

4970-472: Was created by Irish scholars or druids for political, military or religious reasons to provide a secret means of communication in opposition to the authorities of Roman Britain." The serious threat of invasion by the Roman Empire, which then ruled over neighbouring southern Britain, may have spurred the creation of the alphabet. Alternatively, in later centuries when the threat of invasion had receded and

5041-434: Was inspired by a form of the Greek alphabet current in Northern Italy at the time. According to this idea, the alphabet was transmitted in oral form or on wood only, until it was finally put into a permanent form on stone inscriptions in early Christian Ireland. Later scholars are largely united in rejecting this hypothesis, however, primarily because a detailed study of the letters shows that they were created specifically for

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