ᚂ

Luis

a blaze, or a herb

Something bright, or something that keeps a herd alive

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
l /l/
Position
2
Group
Aicme Beithe
Root meaning
luise, flame; or lus, herb — no link to rowan
Medieval tree gloss
rowan (imposed; the name does not support it)
Unicode
U+1682
Timing
While it burns; a growing season
Yes / No
Yes

Upright

  • a flame
  • brightness
  • a healing herb
  • what sustains a herd
  • vitality
  • an ember
  • care
  • lustre

In the rune poems

lí súla

lustre of the eye

Bríatharogam Morainn mac Moín · Luis
carae cethrae

friend of cattle

Bríatharogam Maic ind Óc · Luis
lúth cethrae

sustenance of cattle

Bríatharogam Con Culainn · Luis

The second letter, and the first problem

Ogham's tree alphabet gets one letter in before it runs into trouble.

The medieval glossators assigned Luis the rowan, caertheand. There is no etymological connection whatsoever between luis and the Irish word for rowan. They are different words with different roots, and no amount of scholastic ingenuity closes the gap.

What luis actually is, is one of two things. It may be luise, a blaze, a flame, a glow. Or it may be lus, a herb or a plant — the ordinary Old Irish word, which survives in plant names throughout the language.

Both are defensible and the kennings are split between them, which is itself informative. It suggests the name's sense was already ambiguous when the kennings were composed, and that the composers were working with a word they did not fully own.

The kennings take two different roads

This is the useful thing about having three independent lists: when they diverge, the divergence is evidence.

Lí súla, lustre of the eye, points squarely at the flame reading. Lí is brightness, sheen, radiance. A blaze or a glowing ember catches the eye, and the phrase is about a light source rather than a plant.

Carae cethrae, friend of cattle, and lúth cethrae, sustenance of cattle, point just as squarely at the herb. Neither has anything to do with fire. Both describe something that keeps livestock healthy or fed, which in early Irish terms means either good grazing or a medicinal plant used on animals.

So two of the three lists read the name as a plant and one reads it as a flame. What none of the three does is mention a tree of any kind, let alone a rowan.

Cattle, and why they keep appearing

Two of Luis's three kennings are about cattle, and this recurs across the Ogham corpus — Gort's kennings are about pasture, and cattle turn up again in the tree lists' margins.

Early Irish society was a cattle economy in a much more literal sense than most. Wealth was reckoned in cows. The legal unit of value was the sét, and the cumal, originally a female slave, was priced in cattle. The great prose epic of the tradition, Táin Bó Cúailnge, is a cattle raid. Honour-price, compensation and status were all measured against herds.

A plant that keeps cattle healthy is therefore not a footnote. It is the difference between a household's wealth surviving the year and not. Whatever luis named, the kenning-makers thought its relationship to livestock was the important thing about it.

In reading

Modern Ogham sets will give Luis as rowan, with protection and psychic power attached, following the medieval gloss and Graves after it. That reading has no support in the name or the kennings, and it is worth knowing where it came from.

Read from the sources instead, Luis splits along the same line the kennings do.

As a flame, it is brightness that draws attention: something luminous, a clear signal, the thing in a situation that is visible and warm. Lí súla is a compliment.

As a herb, it is quiet maintenance: the thing that keeps something alive and is not dramatic about it. Care rather than rescue. In practical readings this is often the more useful sense, and it points at whatever in a situation is doing the unglamorous work of sustaining it.

The two are not as far apart as they look. Both describe something small that other things depend on.

Questions to sit with

  • What is quietly keeping this alive that nobody is thanking?
  • Is the bright thing here the important thing, or just the visible one?
  • Two of three kennings are about feeding animals. What in your life needs feeding rather than fixing?

Frequently asked questions

Either a blaze, from Old Irish luise, or a herb or plant, from lus. Both are defensible and the kennings are split between them. What it does not mean is rowan, despite that being the tree the medieval glossators assigned it.

Because there is no etymological connection between luis and caertheand, the Irish word for rowan. They are different words with different roots. Luis is the second letter of the alphabet and the first place the medieval tree scheme runs into a name that will not cooperate.

Lí súla, lustre of the eye, which fits a flame. Carae cethrae, friend of cattle, and lúth cethrae, sustenance of cattle, which fit a herb. Two of three lists read it as a plant and one as a fire. None of the three mentions a tree.

Because early Ireland reckoned wealth in cows quite literally. The legal units of value were measured against cattle, the tradition's central epic is a cattle raid, and honour-price and compensation were counted in herds. A plant that kept livestock healthy was the difference between a household surviving the year and not.

Modern sets give rowan, protection and psychic power, following Graves. From the sources it splits two ways: brightness that draws the eye, or the quiet thing that keeps something alive without being dramatic about it. The second is usually more useful in practice, and both describe something small that other things depend on.

Ogham

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