Notes On Literature, Science, And Art.

and dreary lists of names of members present at a Lodge , with which so many reports are sadly overloaded . If it be necessary , as I confess I fear it is , to minister a little to the vanity of Masons to entice them to read a Masonic periodical , I , for one , had rather risk my neck in a balloon than herd safely on the solid earth with those un-Masonic Masons . Rose Cottage , Stokesley .

On An Ogam Inscription.

ON AN OGAM INSCRIPTION .

THE forthcoming part of the " Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy , " for their department of Polite Literature and Antiquities , is devoted to a memoir , by the Right Rev . Dr . Graves , Lord Bishop of Limerick , on a most remarkable Ogam inscription found on a stone monument from the Killeen of Aghlish , a disused burial ground in the parish of Minard , in the county of Kerry . For twelve or thirteen centuries , Dr . Graves thinks , it had stood at the head of a Christian gravebut recentlyto save it from being carried

, , away by some mason who wanted a lintel-stone , it had been removed to the museum of the Academy , where , it is to be hoped , it will find for all future time an abiding resting-place . The monument , in addition to the Ogam inscription , has also inscribed upon it the cross known as the Irish cross . The outline of the cross is formed not by straight lines , but by arcs of circles , and the cross itself is sin-rounded by a circle . Examples of it occur on fifth or

sixth century Christian monuments in Ireland , ancl it may be seen worn on the breasts of Irish children on every anniversary of St . Patrick ' s Day , whence it is often called Patrick ' s Cross . The question of the probable origin from an Eastern source of this form of cross is discussed in the memoir . There is

also to be found on this monument a remarkabl y disguised form of a cross , known to antiquaries as swastika , a form which only appeared in the Roman Catacombs towards the end of the third century , and held its ground on the monuments of the fourth . Into Ireland it was probably introduced in or soon after the time of St . Patrick . The Ogam characters are distinct , and' the Bishop has little doubt as to reading them as follows : " MAQI MAQA—APILOGDO , " the first two words being on the rihtthe third being on the left hand side

g , of the stone . A great deal of interest attaches to the determination , after very careful consideration , that the third word is the Ogam equivalent of Aedhlogodh , which is the genitive case of a well-known proper name belonging to a chieftain living in the sixth century , and in the neighbourhood of the place where the monument was found . The chieftain Maeltuile , called the Lord of Kerry , was the son of Aedholga , to whose memory there is strong

probability this monument was inscribed . "At one time , " the Bishop concludes , " I might not have appealed with so much confidence to the testimony of the ancient pedigrees recorded in our manuscripts as , to establish my case , I have here done . But a more careful examination of some of these documents has led me to take a different view of the subject . It cannot be denied but that some of these pedigrees are merely ancient . Thus the ' Book of Leinster ' is it-self a manuscript nearly 800 years old . "