The alphabet given by the saint was simply the common Roman letter then in use.

The Celtic characteristic veneration for antiquity and religion, has still preserved it; and strange to say, the Irish of the nineteenth century alone use the letters which were common to the entire Roman Empire in the fifth.

The early influence of ecclesiastical authority, and the circumstance that the priests of the Catholic Church were at once the instructors in and the preservers of letters, will account for the immediate disuse of whatever alphabet the druids may have had.

The third objection is a mere _argumentum ad ignorantiam_.
[Illustration: CUNEIFORM CHARACTERS.] It is to be regretted that the subject of Ogham writing has not been taken up by a careful and competent hand.[161] There are few people who have not found out some method of recording their history, and there are few subjects of deeper interest than the study of the efforts of the human mind to perpetuate itself in written characters.

The Easterns had their cuneiform or arrow-headed symbols, and the Western world has even yet its quipus, and tells its history by the number of its knots.
[Illustration: The Quipus] The peasant girl still knots her handkerchief as her _memoria technica_, and the lady changes her ring from its accustomed finger.