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Bardic Lore: Ogham

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This product requires the use of the Dungeons & Dragons,

Third Edition Core Books, published by Wizards of the Coast Inc.

This product utilizes updated material from the v3.5 revision.

Bardiicc Loore

The journals of Amergin Ó Míl

Ogham

Once, when I was but a lad in trouble, I ventured deep

into the forest, thinking like that I could escape the

wrath of my mother. Needless to say

I became lost in no time, one tree

looking much as the other. After I

calmed down, I decided to try to

find my way by the sounds; I

figured if I could find the creek that

passed near the town, then all

would be well. After what seemed

to me like hours I had not found any

trace of the creek, and the sounds of

the darkening forest began to fill me

with dread. I then heard an

unknown yet constant banging

noise, like metal on metal, and

thinking I could not be any more

lost than I already was, I decided to

follow it to its source. The forest

thinned out little by little, and

eventually I came across a standing

stone. Taller than me at the time, it

bore what looked to me like notches

made by a child all along the edge of

the stone. The notches were varied,

some straight, some crooked, some to

the left, others to the right, and a

few in geometric shapes. I had no

idea what they meant, and after studying them for a

moment, I continued on my way, realizing the

banging noise was coming from just up ahead.

Through the trees I saw an old man, bent over a stone

similar to the one I’d just seen,

hammering away with a chisel,

creating notches much like those on

the standing stone. I watched him

in rapture. I had no idea who he

was, but the care he took when

carving each notch told me he was

creating something for the ages.

After a while, without turning, he

suddenly spoke, asking me if I was

going to remain in the trees all

night. I joined at his side and he

smiled. He said he knew I was a

kid, as adults cannot pass through

the magical barrier of his ogham

stone. I asked him what that was,

ogham. I will never forget his

words. He said, “Ogham is a gift

from the Mother Goddess to her

children, the druids. She gave it to

her son, Oghma, the Danann

warrior-poet, and he in turn gave it

to us. It is a language of nature, of

magic. It is as deceptively simple as

some notches on a rock, but it hides

the secrets of creation.” I told him I

wanted to learn the secrets of ogham, thinking he

would do as every other adult around me had always

Bardic Lore: Ogham

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done, laugh and shoo me away. But he didn’t. He put

down the hammer and the chisel and looked at me

with eyes wise beyond time that I know could see into

my soul. “You are not a druid,” he said, and my heart

sunk. “You are a bard, a fili, and you must fulfill that

destiny first.” He reached into a pouch and pulled a

small stone with four notches carved on it. “This is

coll. It will help you on your studies. When you are a

fili come back to see me, and I will teach you then.” He

led me back to town, and to my mother, and went back

into the forest. It was twenty-two years before I went

back to study with Connor McCroghan, but he was

still waiting for me, and indeed he taught me the

secrets of ogham. And it is in his honor and memory

that I created the ogham stone that today marks his

resting place.

landscape, with samples appearing in use as late as

the 19th century. Most surviving samples of ogham

stones are to be found in the south of Ireland, in

Counties Kerry (with a 1945 survey finding an

amazing 121 markers) and Cork (81), with a

smattering scattered around the rest of Ireland,

Great Britain, the Isle of Man, Cornwall, Scotland

and Wales. Although ogham is not used on a day-to-

day basis in modern times, the knowledge of the

alphabet is still alive and widespread in Ireland

today, a link to the island’s mythical past.

Ogham was used mostly for short inscriptions,

often in the form of a name and a patronymic,

marking memorials to the dead or the borders

between two lands, with some also honoring local

deities. Ogham is not a language used to record

events or information, since the Celts trusted these

to the prodigious memories of their bards. Though

there is no concrete evidence that ogham was ever

used by the ancient druids as a kind of magical

writing, the notion has been hard to dispel; the

archeologist R.A.S. Macalister, for example, as late

as the 1930s, proposed that ogham was part of the

language of ‘druidic freemasonry,’ and many

modern ‘druidic’ groups use ogham in this capacity.

It would seem that the alphabet’s legendary origin

provides the source for such beliefs.

—From the journal of Amergin Ó Míl

The Celtic lands hold an undisputable sway over

the realm of the imagination, especially the modern

one, where the perceptions of what druids, bards

and faeries are have been greatly—if not wholly—

shaped by the myths and literature of these places.

Out of a combination of these two we also get

ogham writing, an alphabet written as a series of

notches and straight lines carved on the edge of a

piece of stone or wood, boasting a mundane and

mythical origin with only a very thin line separating

both.

As described in The Book of Ballymote ,

compiled circa 1390 C.E. in the Co. Sligo town of

Ballymote, ogham is a creation of Oghma,

orator-warrior of the Tuatha Dé Danann, divine

patron of poetry and eloquence, as a secret speech

meant only for the learned. Ogham was more likely

a secret due to the fact that only druids had any use

for a written language, though a few outside of the

druidic class would be able to understand the

symbols. From The Book of Ballymote we also get

the key to understanding the ogham alphabet.

The earliest examples of ogham (OH-am or

OH-gam) date back to 2200 B.C.E., based on

markings found in small chalk slabs in excavations

in southern England. Ogham evolved with the

introduction of the Latin alphabet to Ireland,

adopting letters not found in the native Irish

language, and providing a limited outlet for Irish

thought in the written form. Ogham seems to have

found its heyday between the 4th- to 8th-century,

though the alphabet never truly disappears from the

The most commonly acknowledged form of

Irish ogham is called the Beith-Luis-Nion , the

Birch-Rowan-Ash, which takes its name from the

first, second and fifth letters. There were originally

twenty letters, divided into four families called

Bardic Lore: Ogham

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aicme (fifteen consonants and five vowels), each

with five sounds. A fifth aicme was added later

bringing in five diphtongs, while some British

inscriptions feature an upturned arrow as a symbol

for the letter ‘P,’ a letter, much like ‘Q’ or ‘Z,’ which

was not used in the early Irish language and came

into use via loanwords from Latin, Romance and

Scandinavian sources. Each ogham character is

named after a tree, and though together they form

words, individually each letter carries a symbolic

link to the tree it is named after. Ogham is written

bottom to top, and always along a foundation lined

called a druim , or principal ridge. All ogham

characters are in contact with the druim, scribed on

either side or across the ridge. When written

vertically (the traditional form), ogham is read from

below to above, while when written horizontally,

ogham is written and read from left to right. In

particularly long vertical inscriptions, along a

dolmen, for example, the ogham would be read

clockwise, starting at the bottom-left corner,

continuing along the top stone, and coming down

the right.

The .. Beith-Luis-Nion

The accompaning chart shows the 25 ogham letters,

along with their Irish name, rough pronunciation

from the Irish, and associated tree. It is interesting

to note that the last aicme, the diphthongs, are

presented in some ogham keys as representing the

letters ‘K,’ ‘P,’ ‘V,’ ‘X’ and ‘W.’ To avoid confusion,

we have included five new ogham characters (left)

to represent these letters common in English,

allowing you to create messages in a language other

than Irish.

Bardic Lore: Ogham

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Ogham Letter

Ogham Name

Pronunciation

English Letter

Tree name

Beith

Beh

Birch

Luis

Loo-ish

Rowan

Fearn

Fair-un

Alder

Saille

Sal-yeh

Willow

Nion

Knee-un

Ash

Huath

Hoo-uh

Hawthorn

Duir

Der

Oak

Tinne

Tin-uh

Holly

Coll

Cull

Hazel

Quert

Kwert

Apple

Muin

Muhn

Vine

Gort

Gor-it

Ivy

Ngetal

N-getal

Reed

Straif

Strauff

Blackthorn

Ruis

Roo-ish

Elder

Ailm

All-em

White fir

Ohn

Gorse

Or-uh

Heather

Eadha

Eh-tha

Poplar

Idho

I-tho

Ye w

Éabhadh

Evahd

Ór

Ohr

Uilleann

U-lenn

Ifín

Eh-feen

Eamhancholl

Evan-chol

Eite

Eh-deh

Start of Inscription

Feather

Spás

Sbaws

Space

Bardic Lore: Ogham

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Ogham Magic

As mentioned, most ogham inscriptions served

practical purposes, and while hard archeological

evidence has so far dispelled any notion that the

druids used ogham for magical purposes, there is no

reason to place this restriction in your campaign

world. Here are various ways to incorporate ogham

into your game.

ogham key (such as a version of The Book of

Ballymote), or from prior successful attempts

through the use of the Decipher Script skill (at least

three successful skill checks with DCs of 25 or

higher) and a period of study as deemed appropriate

by the Gamesmaster.

Regardless of the class variations in your

campaign, we strongly suggest that ogham remain a

rather secret language, or at the very least the

mastery of it. Druids should be the undisputed

masters of ogham, with bards running a close

second, but beyond that, if the language becomes

too widespread, it looses some of its mystique.

Druids, Bards and Ogham

Perhaps historical druids did not use ogham in a

magical capacity, but fantasy druids would

certainly find ways to tap into the arcane power of

each letter’s tree, turning ogham for druids into

what Draconian is for arcane spellcasters, the

language of magic. The easiest way to incorporate

ogham into your campaign world is to make it the

written form of the secret Druidic language,

allowing druids to communicate with each other in

a seemingly ordinary way. It is possible that

non-druids may learn the ogham alphabet (most

likely through the use of the Decipher Script skill,

DC 20 or higher, depending on the complexity of

the message), but where they would see a grave

marker for Connor the son of Croghan, a druid

would be able to naturally read “between the lines,”

as it were, seeing not only the letters, but the tree

symbolism and the mystical associations encoded

in each, thus reading a completely different

message (and that’s before having to use read

magic to see if there is a spell encoded in the ogham

as well).

Ogham Markers

Once a druid learns the magical capabilities of

ogham, it is possible to use this knowledge for the

creation of magical ogham markers. It is suggested

that the following feat be limited to druids, and

perhaps to bards as well. The feat prerequisites

specify that the character know the ogham

language; if you are using the option that ogham is

the written version of Druidic then there is no need

for further limitations. If ogham is a separate

written language from Druidic, however, we once

again restate our suggestion that ogham be kept as

secret a language as possible.

The Scribe Ogham feat acts in some ways as

combination Scribe Scroll and Craft Wondrous Item

limited to ogham markers. It signifies that the

character has managed to tap into the magic of the

ogham letters and learned how to imbue the

carvings with eldritch energies. Since it is the

writing that possesses the magic, any suitable stone

or wooden surface can be enchanted with magical

ogham writing. Note that it is not necessary to have

this feat in order to write ogham; any character with

knowledge of the language can do that, though,

unless they have this feat, the ogham will be of a

mundane nature. Magical ogham writing seems

mundane to the untrained eye, revealing its hidden

treasure only to spellcasters trained in the ogham

language or those using a read magic spell. The

Spellcraft and Use Magical Device skills can be

Bards, by their very nature, end up picking a

little bit of everything, even things supposed to be a

secret. In a Celtic, or Celtic-inspired campaign,

where bards are intrinsically linked to the druids,

members of this class would be able to learn to read

and write ogham without much problem (add

Ogham to the list of allowable choices for the Speak

Language skill), as well as use it as a magical script.

In campaigns where the bard doesn’t exactly follow

the Celtic model, it would still be possible for her to

learn it, though prior exposure would be necessary,

whether it is from a mentor, a book showing the

d20 HighMoon Media Productions Bardic Lore - Ogham.pdf

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