Aicmi (Ogham Groups)
Aicme Ailme
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Origin 300 to 600 CE
Aicme Ailme is the fourth of the four aicmi, or groups, of five letters each that make up the twenty letters of Ogham, the ancient Irish alphabet attested on stone inscriptions from roughly the fourth to the sixth century CE, and it is the one group made up of vowels, A, O, U, E and I, rather than consonants. It takes its name from its first letter, Ailm, whose plant identification is debated among scholars, with birch, elm, pine and fir all proposed by different sources. Vowels in Ogham are carved differently from the consonant aicmi, typically as notches cut across the central line rather than strokes to one side of it, giving Aicme Ailme a visually distinct form from the other three groups. As with the rest of Ogham, the specific tree by tree symbolism popularised in modern sources such as Robert Graves's 1948 book The White Goddess is a modern literary layer rather than a straightforward continuation of the medieval Irish tradition.
Facts
Origins
Origin Period300 to 600 CE 1Tradition: Ogham inscriptions on stone Origin Period600 to 1000 CE 1Tradition: Medieval Irish manuscript tradition (In Lebor Ogaim and Auraicept na n-Eces) Origin PeriodAicme Ailme is attested in inscriptional ogham from the fourth to the sixth century, with the alphabet's grammatical and literary elaboration in the medieval Irish tradition continuing through the tenth century. 1 Place of Origin Origin of the NameThe group is named for its own first letter, ailm. Its five letters are the vowels a, o, u, e and i, written as one to five notches cut across the stemline. The word aicme means 'family' or 'class'; the grouping is a feature of the script itself and is set out in the medieval Ogam Tract. 1 Identity
Member LettersAilm, Onn, Ur, Eadhadh, Iodhadh 1 Learn More
Aicme Ailme, the Fourth Family, and the Tree Question
Aicme Ailme is the fourth group, named for ailm, and its five letters are ailm, onn, ur, edad and idad, representing the vowels a, o, u, e and i. In the script these are cut as one to five notches across the stemline. A fifth group, the forfeda or supplementary letters, was added later to write sounds the original twenty could not.
The popular name tree alphabet needs qualifying: the medieval Irish glossaries do give tree names for many of the letters, and some letter names are certainly tree words, but McManus has shown that only about a third are securely trees, that others are ordinary words of quite different meaning, and that the systematic tree scheme is a later scholastic construction. The elaborate tree calendar and tree divination widely circulated today derive from Robert Graves's The White Goddess (1948), a work of poetic imagination that scholars of early Irish have consistently rejected as history.
Sources A Guide to OgamDamian McManus with Auraicept na n-Eces: The Scholars' PrimerGeorge Calder (ed.), The White Goddess: A Historical Grammar of Poetic MythRobert Graves
How the Fourth Family Is Cut
The fourth ogham family holds all five vowels and is cut in a way that sets them apart at a glance.
The geometry
Aicme Ailme is cut as short strokes crossing the line at a right angle. Its five members carry one to five of them: Ailm, Onn, Ur, Eadhadh and Iodhadh, with the values A, O, U, E and I.
On a standing stone these are often mere notches on the arris that do not run onto either face, which is why the family is sometimes described as notched rather than stroked. That makes it the least durable of the four: the edge weathers first, and a notch has less material behind it than a stroke carried down a face. Inscriptions whose consonants are legible and whose vowel counts are uncertain are a recognised pattern in the corpus.
Square against oblique
The only thing separating this family from the third is the angle of the crossing, square against oblique. Careful editions of ogham inscriptions therefore describe the angle of every crossing character rather than simply transcribing a letter, because on a worn stone that angle is what the reading turns on.
Where the alphabet ends
Iodhadh, five notches, is the twentieth and last letter of the alphabet proper. The additional characters known as the forfeda are composite shapes rather than stroke counts, vary between manuscripts, and are effectively absent from the orthodox epigraphic corpus. A modern chart showing twenty-five ogham characters as one alphabet is merging two different things.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Attributed To
The Auraicept explains the grouping of ogham letters into aicmi of five.
Disciplines That Use This
The four aicmi, the letter groups the alphabet is organised into.
Originates in Language
Sources
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