There are a great many allusions to this Ogam writing in the ancient epics, especially in those that are purely pagan in form and conception, and there can be no doubt that the knowledge of letters must have reached Ireland before the island became Christianized. With the introduction of Christianity and of Roman letters, the old Ogam inscriptions, which were no doubt looked upon as flavoring of paganism, quickly fell into disuse and disappeared, but some inscriptions at least are as late as the year 600 or even 800. In the thoroughly pagan poem, _The Voyage of Bran_, which such authorities as Zimmer and Kuno Meyer both consider to have been committed to parchment in the seventh century, we find it stated that Bran wrote the fifty or sixty quatrains of the poem in Ogam. Cuchulainn constantly used Ogam writing, which he cut upon wands and trees and standing stones for Queen Medb's army to read, and these were always brought to his friend Fergus to decipher. Cormac, king of Cashel, in his glossary tells us that the pagan Irish used to inscribe the wand they kept for measuring corpses and graves with Ogam characters, and that it was a source of horror to anyone even to take it in his hand. St. Patrick in his Confession, the authenticity of which no one doubts, describes how he dreamt that a man from Ireland came to him with innumerable letters. In Irish legend Ogma, one of the Tuatha De Danann who was skilled in dialects and poetry, seems to be credited with the invention of the Ogam alphabet, and he probably was the equivalent of the Gaulish god Ogmios, the god of eloquence, so interestingly described by Lucian. We may take it then that the Irish pagans knew sufficient letters to hand down to Irish Christians the substance of their pagan epics, sagas, and poems. We may take it for granted also that the greater Irish epics (purely pagan in character, utterly untouched in substance by that Christianity which so early conquered the country) really represent the thoughts, manners, feelings, and customs of pagan Ireland. The effect of this conclusion must be startling indeed to those who know the ancient world only through the medium of Greek and Roman literature. To the Greek and to his admiring master, the Roman, all outside races were simply barbarians, at once despised, misinterpreted, and misunderstood.