Can you guess what Birch-elder-aspen-ash-oak-pine-ash might spell? The brains behind Tree Day, being observed today in schools around the country, tell us that this miniwood, this copse, adds up to Brendan.
The quaint spelling has its origins in Ogham writing, which in turn reflects the fascination that trees had for our ancestors.
Ireland, 15,000 years ago, was not the green and pleasant land we know today. It was a barren waste, languishing under several hundred feet of ice. The only sounds were the whistling of the frozen wind, and the rumblings of the deep crevasses as they opened and closed across the rough surface of that huge, solid ocean. We were in the middle of an Ice Age.
The polar ice covered Scandinavia, Ireland, Britain and Denmark, and a smaller icecap, centred on the Alps, extended over central Europe. So much water was drawn from the oceans to form these gigantic glaciers that sea levels were some 350 feet lower than they are today.
Immediately south of the great polar ice sheets, the landscape was bleak and barren. During the short cool summers, heather and other hardy low-growing plants grew on the boggy soil; where the European forests stand today, a vast treeless tundra stretched away to the horizon.
But then the ice retreated, and within 7,000 years it had withdrawn to near its present limits. As the climate improved, the seeds of trees like oak and hazel were brought here by birds and animals across the land bridges connecting us with Britain and the rest of Europe; the seeds of other trees like birch and willow were light enough to be blown here by the wind.
By the time the first human settlers came to Ireland about 9,000 years ago, this land was once again a densely wooded place. Our ancestors lived, slept and hunted in these woods, deriving their protection and their livelihood from them, and so when they began to write is was not surprising that they should use the words they had for the various types of trees and shrubbery to name the letters of their alphabet.
The Ogham alphabet evolved around the 4th century AD, the characters consisting of simple combinations of straight lines that could be easily carved on stone. Each group of markings corresponded to a letter, and each of the 20 Ogham letters was assigned a name. B was beith, or birch; R was ruis, the elder; E was eadha, aspen; N was nin, the ash; D was dair, the oak; and ailm, Scots Pine, was the name for letter A.
And hence the Ogham forename of your humble scribe.