Nor sets in order what the winds disperse.
Thus many, not succeeding, most upbraid
The madness of the visionary maid,
And with loud curses leave the mystic shade.
Æn. Lib. iii. ver. 445.
To flitting leaves, the sport of every wind,
Lest they disperse in air our empty fate:
Write not, but, what the powers ordain, relate.
Lib. vi. l. 116—120.
82. I think if any sense is to be made of this poetical description, we must understand that each leaf had or was a letter.
Quæcumque in foliis descripsit carmina virgo,
Digerit in numerum, atque antro seclusa relinquit:
Illa manent immota locis, neque ab ordine cedunt:
Verum eadem verso tenuis cum cardine ventus
Impulit et teneras turbavit janua frondes,
Nunquam deinde cavo volitantia prendere saxo,
Nec revocare situs, aut jungere carmina, curat:
Inconsulti abeunt, sedemque odere Sibyllæ.
It seems pretty clear that if whole words had been written, each word upon a leaf, and these words in verse, the inquirer might easily have put them together. From this it may fairly be inferred, that if letters were written at all, there could only have been one on each leaf.
83. In the religious rites of a people I should expect to find the earliest of their habits and customs, and the above passage relating to this Celtic Sibyl can mean nothing except that the leaves themselves were used either as letters (each leaf standing for a letter) or the names of letters, each written on a leaf which the wind might easily blow away. But it is probable that the leaves themselves may have been used, and that this practice may have been derived from the letters having the names of trees, and may have been adopted for the sake of mystery, which we know was greatly affected in all the old religions. The way in which this passage is connected by Virgil, a native of Cisalpine Gaul, with the Celtic or Cimmerian Sibyl of Cuma, where he died and was buried, and the misletoe of the Druids, carries it back to a period antecedent to any ancient Italian history which we possess. I cannot help believing that it has a close connexion with the Irish practice of calling their letters after the names of trees.[1]
84. There have been authors who have wasted their time in inquiries into the mode in which the inventor of the alphabet proceeded to divide the letters into dentals, labials, and palatines. There surely never was any such proceeding. The invention was the effect of unforeseen circumstance—what we call accident; and when I consider the proofs, so numerous and clear, of the existence of the oldest people of whom we have any records, the Indian Buddhists in Ireland, and that in that country their oldest alphabet has the names of trees, I cannot be shaken in my opinion that the trees first gave names to letters, and that the theory I have pointed out is the most probable.
85. I suspect that, some how or other, our practice of calling the parts of our books leaves came from this custom. The bark of the Irish birch-tree, the Papyrus, or the roll of skin, had no leaves.
86. From Mr. Davies I learn that the Welsh bards had a similar alphabet to that of the Irish. He says, “The Antiquarians claim an alphabet of their own, which, in all its essential points, agrees with that of the bards in Britain. 1⟨.⟩ It was Druidical. 2. It was a magical alphabet, and used by those Druids in their divinations and their decisions by lot. 3. It consisted of the same radical sixteen letters which formed the basis of the Druidical alphabet in Britain. 4. Each of these letters received its name from some tree or plant of a certain species, regarded as being, in some view or other, descriptive of its power, and these names are still retained.
87. “So far the doctrine of the British Druids is exactly recognized in the Western island. The same identical system is completely ascertained and preserved. Yet there are circumstances which point out a very ancient and remote period for the separation of these alphabets from each other⟨.⟩” Mr. Davies then observes, that “among other things the order of the letters is different.” He says, there are three kinds of writing; and adds, “The third, which is said
- ↑ If it were consistent with the object of this dissertation, I think I could prove by strong circumstantial evidence, that Virgil was initiated into the order of Druids or Chaldeans or Culdees. I am not the first person who has held this opinion. I believe it was held by the great Roger Bacon, but being too profound for his ignorant compeers, like the circular orbits of Pythagoras, it was turned into ridicule.
