Writing

Making your mark

Great care must be taken when talking about Celtic writing.

Across Europe, the Celtic peoples had developed an alphabet of their own, based on others that they had encounted, like Greek or Etruscan. By the 7th century BC there were three Celtic languges that had combined into one, called 'Lepontic'. This languge had an alphabet that was used on stone inscriptions. Some of these stones also had an inscription in latin on the same stone. This has given the linguists the chance to decipher this Celtic language, and construct an alphabet from it.

Here is that alphabet, with the equivalent letters of our own. Where there are letters missing, there is no match, and some letters have muliple symbols. Perhaps in the future other inscriptions will be found and the alphabet will expand, but for now, this is all there is!

A	B	C	D	E
F	G	H	I	J
K	L	M	N	O
P	Q	R	S'	S
S	T	U	V	W
X	Y	Z

The only other artifact that has this writing on it is a calendar, inscibed on bronze sheet, and covering a 19 year period. Only fragments of it have been found.

Now for the controversial bit!

In Britain, there was a group of religious people called Druids (see DRUIDS). They had very different beliefs from the native people (see GODS), in as much that they worshiped the sun and had a different calendar of festivals. The Druids in Ireland had their own alphabet called 'Ogham'. This spread in small amounts to the western fringes of Britain. The Druids became powerful by attaching themselves to the ruling classes as adivsors and priests, (there is no evidence of priests in Britain before their arrival). In the proccess of controlling the Britons they impossed a number of religious laws (giessars). One of these laws was that the people were not allowed to read and write. So writing dissapeared (or did not get established) in Britain!