What's me necklace?
#2 of Ireland notes '14
Your history/culture lesson for today!
In my most recent pieces of art, I'm sure you've seen that cryptic little necklace I'm wearing. My mom got it for me way back when I was in early high school (or maybe even middle school, I can't quite remember) on a business trip she had in Scotland. If you want to see it IRL, here's a nice pic of what it should look like: IMG link Mine doesn't actually look that good because it dulled rather quickly, so it looks more grey-ish and stoney than that shiny silver sheen in the pic. ^.^'' I need to look up how to polish pewter...
Anyway, the symbol is called an ogham, a letter of the Medieval Irish alphabet. Specifically, it's the letter H, called 'uath' (or 'huath' or 'uathe') in Medieval Irish; the ogham alphabet covers essentially the same letters as the Roman alphabet of the time, and consists of 20 letters. That's where the simple facts of this story end.
Based on the information my mom got from the company that made the necklace, the symbol "represents April and the hawthorn tree. It symbolises purity and protection, cleansing and abstinence. The ability to control external influences when dealing with a problem." April is my birthmonth, so that's why my mom got it - also because she knew I enjoy little cryptic things like this. You can also find these associations on many other sites by searching.
I did not remember any of this (aside from the fact the symbol meant April and the hawthorn tree) before going to Ireland. Being there and seeing exhibits about oghams made me go back to look things up.
My research found complications (of course). Almost more often than associating huathe (the hawthorn tree) with April, you'll find it instead associated with mid-May to early-June in the Celtic tree calendar. So far, I haven't quite yet found what causes this discrepancy. In this alternate (and seemingly more prevalent calendar,) my birthday instead falls under fearn (F), the alder tree.
However, a little more digging reveals that the whole notion of the "13-month Celtic tree calendar" is, in fact, a fabrication* - based on faulty research from the '40s and '50s (itself building on things from the 1600's) that has recently (around the '90s?) been debunked. Aside from the questionable notion that the different oghams were associated with times of the year, they certianly weren't all named after trees. (This was actually something you could see in the first Wiki article I linked about Ogham, specifically the "Letter names" section, which gives more details here.) Uath, then, instead means "fear" or "horror". So RAWR IMMA SCARY TIGER!
Interestingly, though, of all the ogham uath seems to be the one whose name/origins remain unclear, with some evidence suggesting that the "white-thorn" used in the original arboreal interpretation might not be as incorrect. Anyway, whatever it means, even if especially not April, I can still run with the fact that uath is H since that's my last initial.
Hope you enjoyed that little lesson! More stories of my time in Ireland coming soon.
*Don't tell that to fans of Celtic astrology, though! X-D And even if it's wrong, it's been around for so long that it seems to have established as part of Celtic-descendant-culture anyway, which is why you'll still see so many people promoting the Celtic tree calendar stuff in cultural and commercial ventures on the isles.