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Ceirt

a bush; later confused with 'rag'

Something whose meaning fell out from under it

Ogham glyphs are shown in Unicode, laid out left to right. On a standing stone the letters run bottom to top along the arris, so this row is a convenience rather than a facsimile.

Sound
q /kʷ/
Position
10
Group
Aicme hÚatha
Root meaning
from PIE *perkʷos, oak — but collapsed into ceirt, a rag
Medieval tree gloss
apple (imposed from the 'shelter' kenning)
Unicode
U+168A
Timing
Already past; the sense is gone
Yes / No
The question may no longer mean what it did

Upright

  • a rag
  • poverty
  • shelter
  • what is worn out
  • a lost meaning
  • insignificance
  • a survivor
  • obsolescence

In the rune poems

clithar baiscill

shelter of a lunatic, or of a wild hind

Bríatharogam Morainn mac Moín · Ceirt
bríg anduini

substance of an insignificant person

Bríatharogam Maic ind Óc · Ceirt
dígu fethail

dregs of clothing

Bríatharogam Con Culainn · Ceirt

A sound that outlived its language

Ceirt is a fossil, and the most linguistically valuable letter in the alphabet.

It represents /kʷ/, the voiceless labiovelar — a k pronounced with rounded lips, the sound at the start of Latin quis. Primitive Irish had it. Old Irish did not: the labiovelars merged into plain velars, and by the manuscript period the distinction was gone from the spoken language entirely.

So an alphabet designed in the fourth or fifth century has a letter for a sound that had disappeared by the seventh. The letter kept being copied because alphabets are conservative, and by the time the Auraicept was compiled nobody using it had ever pronounced the distinction.

This is also the Q-Celtic marker. Irish is a Q-Celtic language precisely because it kept /kʷ/ where Welsh and Gaulish turned it into /p/ — the classic pair being Irish mac against Welsh map, son. Ceirt is that division of the Celtic languages, written down.

The name that collapsed

The etymology is where this gets genuinely strange.

The name traces to Proto-Indo-European *perkʷos, a word for oak or tree, which gives Latin quercus and stands behind Welsh perth, a bush or brake. That is a respectable, ancient, arboreal origin.

Then the sound changes happened. Once /kʷ/ merged and the word shifted, ceirt became indistinguishable from an entirely different Old Irish word — ceirt, meaning a rag, a tatter, a piece of worn cloth.

Speakers stopped hearing an old word for a bush and started hearing the ordinary word for a rag. The name did not change; the language moved underneath it, and the meaning fell out.

That is precisely what the kennings record. They were composed after the collapse.

Kennings about being poor

Two of the three lists describe poverty directly, and they are unsentimental about it.

Dígu fethail, dregs of clothing. Dígu is refuse, the worst of something, what is left after the good has been taken. This is not modest dress; it is rags.

Bríg anduini, substance or worth of an anduine — a nobody, a person of no standing. In a society where legal capacity ran on honour-price and kin, a person without standing had almost no capacity at all. The kenning names what such a person's whole property amounts to.

Clithar baiscill is the disputed one. Clithar is shelter. Baiscell has been read as a lunatic or wild person, and alternatively as a wild hind. Either way it is shelter for something living outside settled society.

All three describe the margins. This is the letter of what people have when they have nothing.

The glossators, needing a tree, took clithar — shelter — and reasoned that an apple tree gives shelter and fruit to a wanderer. Hence apple, aball. From an oak root, through a rag, to an apple, by way of a word for shelter.

In reading

Modern Ogham sets give Ceirt as apple: beauty, choice, the Otherworld. That is three removes from anything the sources say.

Read from the kennings, Ceirt is what is left over and still functioning. A rag is cloth that has finished being a garment and is still cloth. It has value — rags were reused, sold, and made into other things — but it has come down in the world and everyone can see it.

In a spread it marks reduced circumstances without marking disaster. Something that has been better, is being used anyway, and is doing a job. It reads well on questions about making do.

The clithar kenning adds shelter, and shelter of a specific kind: not a house, but cover for someone who does not have one. Ceirt is the letter of provision at the margin.

And there is a reading in its own history that is hard to ignore. This is a letter whose meaning fell out from under it while the letter stayed the same. In a spread that is worth asking about directly — whether a word, a role or a relationship still means what it did when it was named.

Questions to sit with

  • What is still doing its job while everyone can see it has come down in the world?
  • Is there a word or a role in your life that stopped meaning what it used to and kept its name?
  • All three kennings are about the margins. Who in this situation has no standing?

Frequently asked questions

Originally a bush, from Proto-Indo-European *perkʷos, the oak word behind Latin quercus. But sound changes made the name collapse into the homophone ceirt, meaning a rag or tatter, and the kennings were composed after that collapse — they describe poverty, not trees.

Because it preserves /kʷ/, the voiceless labiovelar, which Primitive Irish had and Old Irish lost. It is also the Q-Celtic marker: Irish kept /kʷ/ where Welsh and Gaulish turned it into /p/, giving Irish mac against Welsh map. Ceirt is that division of the Celtic languages, written down.

Because of one kenning. Clithar baiscill, shelter of a lunatic or a wild hind, gave the glossators the idea of a tree offering cover and fruit to a wanderer, so they assigned aball, apple. From an oak root, through a rag, to an apple, via a word for shelter.

The margins. Dígu fethail is dregs of clothing, meaning rags. Bríg anduini is the worth of a person with no standing, which in a society running on honour-price meant almost no legal capacity. Clithar baiscill is shelter for something living outside settled society.

What is left over and still functioning: a rag is cloth that has finished being a garment and is still cloth. It marks reduced circumstances rather than disaster, and reads well on making do. Its own history adds a second reading — whether a word, role or relationship still means what it did when it was named.

Ogham

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