A Critical Review and Update of Robert Graves "The White Goddess" - An Investigation (Page 9)

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Summary so far: The date for the events of the Cad Goddeu ('The Battle of the Trees') suggested by Graves seems too early for any supposed event involving replacement of an older alphabet with a newer alphabet in Britain to have taken place. However, the events may have happened earlier. If we explore 1700 BCE as their possible date of occurence, there were several alphabets or collections of sounds that might have been the 13-consonant alphabet that Graves calls the "Beth-Luis-Nion", which Graves suggests was already in use in Britain by some group living there, at the time when what he suggested were the "Celts" arrived. And there may have been was a Semitic language spoken in Britain around 1700 BCE, by the Picts who were there mining tin. Around 1700 BCE, there was a power struggling going on over tin to make bronze. During the same window of time, there may have been peoples arriving in Britain. And they may have brought a new variant of the Semitic Phoenician languages that later came to be called "Celtic".

KEY QUESTION NINE:
If a new alphabet arrived in Britain in 1700 BCE, what could that alphabet have been?

There are only two alphabets (that I've been able to find) with fifteen consonants. One is Ogham, which will be discussed below.
The other, surprisingly, but in the end not a surprise, is Old English.

Stephen Oppenheimer, in "The Origins of the British" (2006) has an entire chapter entitled:
Were There Saxons in England Before the Romans Left?

He notes that: "a new script appeared on stones and ornaments in certain parts of England, replacing Roman script in the post-Roman period for up to two hundred years and then lasting for a further four hundred after Roman script reappeared. This script is runic, and consists of an alphabet with character made up mostly of short lines set at angles, such as could be cut into wood with a knife." (OB 368)

"Munich-based linguist Theo Vennemann, has an interesting theory of the origins of runes. Based on a number of interlocking stylistic, phonetic, semantic and structural features, he argues the are derived from Phoenician script, not Roman or Greek." (OB 371)

Furthermore: " Old English and Old Frisian both changed their treatment of vowels compared with other Low German languages such as Old Saxon." (OB 346)
"While English is structurally most similar to its neighbour Frisian, its vocabulary was more strongly influenced at an 'early' stage by Scandinavian languages. This effect was already apparent in Old English before the Vikings arrived on the scene . . " (OB 348)

That fits quite well with Graves' theory about the Milesians' stop-over in Denmark.

Consonants in Old English:
http://babaev.tripod.com/archive/grammar41.html - lists:
Labials - p, b, f, v
Dentals - d, t, s, þ (English thin), ð (English this)
Velars - c [k], g, h
Liquids - r, l
Nasals - n, m

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_English doesn't agree with that list, and has a different set of about 22.
Stop - p b t d k ɡ
Affricate - tʃ (dʒ)
Nasal - m n (ŋ)
Fricative - f (v) θ (ð) s (z) ʃ (ç) (x) (ɣ) h
Approximant - r j w
Lateral approximant - l

Old English was first written in runes (futhorc) - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_English
The consonants symbolized by rune letters are approximately:
f(2) th r c g j h n y(2) g(2) x s t b m l ng d k kk st


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The second alphabet with fifteen consonants is the Ogham Alphabet.
Graves theorizes that the alphabet that was in use in Britain at that time was an Ogham alphabet. Was there an Ogham alphabet in use in Britain?

This is the part of the "White Goddess" for which Graves is despised among certain scholars for invention, and muddying up the academic record, i.e. The Fabrication of 'Celtic' Astrology by Peter Berresford Ellis (1997) .

Taking what is said at as the most current thinking: "The evidence points to a creation date for ogham not post-dating the 4th century." That's AD.
See Wikipedia on Ogham;
Curtis Clark, inventor of digital Ogham alphabet, points to this Wikipedia entry as the latest thinking.





Graves had based his theory on R.A.S. Macalaster, who "believed that ogham was first invented in Cisalpine Gaul around 600 B.C. by Gaulish druids as a secret system of hand signals, and was inspired by a form of the Greek alphabet current in Northern Italy at the time. . . . Later scholars are largely united in rejecting this theory however, primarily because a detailed study of the letters show that they were created specifically for the Primitive Irish of the early centuries AD. The supposed links with the form of the Greek alphabet that Macalister proposed can also be disproved." [The scholar that seems to be being quoted is: A Guide to Ogam (Maynooth monographs) by Damian McManus (1991).]

Graves quotes:
115 Dr. Macalister suggests that the Ogham alphabet, when complete with the extra letters, corresponds fairly closely with an early, still somewhat Semitic, form of the Greek alphabet, known as the Formello-Cervetri which is scratched on two vases, one from Caere and the other from Veii in Italy, dated about the fifth century B.C. The letters are written Semitically from right to left . . . [HE'S WAY OFF ON THESE DATES TOO.]

116 I conclude that the twenty letters of the Ogham alphabet were in existence long before the Formello-Cevetri alphabet was brought to
Italy from Greece and that the Gallic Druids added the five foreign letters to them [vowels].


MORE ON OGHAM:
http://www.amazon.com/review/R2ZQB40NDQBB7N
For more useful texts on the Ogham, I highly suggest R.A.S. Macallister's Corpus Inscriptionum Insularum Celticarum and The Secret Languages of Ireland (both which include work by Charles Graves), and George Calder's "Auriacept Na n-Éces - The Scholar's Primer." Some of Charles Graves' exceptional work on the Ogham can be found on-line, for free. Just do a search for: "On the Ogam Inscriptions," Hermathena, Vol. 3, c.19 C. His work on the Ogham was purely outstanding.

CONCLUSION: