I’ve just had a super new ring made for me by Irish designer Breda Haugh. It’s in sterling silver with a single pink sapphire stone set around Ogham symbols.
Wikipedia tells us that Ogham is “an Early Medieval alphabet used to write the early Irish language (in the so-called “orthodox” inscriptions, 1st to 6th centuries AD), and later the Old Irish language (so-called scholastic ogham, 6th to 9th centuries)”, and that “according to the High Medieval Bríatharogam, names of various trees can be ascribed to individual letters.”
Here are the Ogham inscriptions on my ring explained in terms of the trees and their personal significance (I was born in September and my son’s name is Fionn by the way):
And guess what? Thanks to Unicode you can digitally create your own story in Ogham too. Here is the Ogham Unicode block (via Wikipedia):
Evertype even offers a Unicode Ogham script font for you to use: Everson Mono Ogham.
I love it when the old meets the new in a different, stylish way that resonates personally, culturally and historically with our roots.
And, if there’s a digital way to make that experience easier for you to create, then all the better!
More information on Ogham
To find out more about the historical origins of Ogham and the relationship with trees, check out these sources:
- Mac Coitir, N (2003) – Ireland’s Trees Myths Legends & Folklore. Cork: The Collins Press
- The Book of Ballymote – held in the library of the Royal Irish Academy, Dublin
- The National Museum of Ireland: Section on Archaeology
- Ogham in 3D: Dublin Institute of Advanced Studies