Meaning
Ash is a tall, open tree with strong, springy wood, long used for tool handles and spear shafts. The kenning of its letter is "checking of peace", in Calder's translation, and the Auraicept explains it by those shafts: "A check on peace is nin, viz., ash, for of it are made the spear-shafts by which the peace is broken".
Our reading takes reach and resilience from the tree: people born in this month are read as taking a wide view and bending without breaking, with a strength that is best used with care for what it might disturb. The reading is ours.
The letter
Nion is the fifth letter of the stones, with five strokes to the right of the stemline, and the third of Graves' calendar. The reason is Roderick O'Flaherty: in 1685 he argued that since the alphabet was called Beth-luis-nion, N must once have stood third, and Graves built his order on that guess. Unicode, like the stones, keeps it fifth. Its Old Irish name nin means a fork or a loft, part of a weaver's beam in the glosses; it is not a tree name. The Auraicept glosses it as ash; the Ogam Tract offers "maw of spear, or nettles". Graves and the websites often spell it Nuin.
Ash in Irish lore
Irish tradition knew sacred trees, and medieval lore names five great trees of Ireland, three of them ashes. The cosmic world ash belongs to Norse sources, not to Irish ones, and is not part of this month.
In Graves' year
Ash runs from 18 February to 17 March. No source says where 29 February belongs; by our own convention it falls here, so in a leap year this month has 29 days. Planets, gemstones, animals and personality titles given to the Ash month on tree-sign websites are modern, after Paterson (1992) and later lists, and are not used here.
Correspondences
Each item with how it stands: “sourced” is in the work cited, “our construction” is EsoTerrier’s own, and “disputed” means the sources disagree.
- The Auraicept's explanation
- "A check on peace is nin, viz., ash, for of it are made the spear-shafts by which the peace is broken" (Calder 1917, p. 91) sourced
- The Ogam Tract's gloss
- "maw of spear, or nettles" (Calder 1917, p. 277) sourced
- O'Flaherty's gloss (1685)
- Nion, commonly Uinsionn, the ash tree of which spears are made sourced
- How the letter is tied to the tree
- A medieval gloss: the name means something else sourced
- Colour and bird words for the letter (a medieval curiosity)
- Colour: necht, "clear"; bird: naescu, "snipe". Words that begin with the letter, like the tract's lists of churches; not the tree's colour or animal sourced
- Our reading
- A tall, springy tree: taking a wide view and bending without breaking, with strength used carefully. our construction
How the schools read it
- The medieval tracts
- The kenning "checking of peace"; the Auraicept glosses the letter ash (uinnius).
- O'Flaherty, 1685
- Nion, commonly Uinsionn, the ash tree of which spears are made.
- Graves, 1948
- The third month, 18 February to 17 March.
- Ogham scholarship
- nin means fork or loft, part of a weaver's beam in the glosses; the tree is a learned gloss.
- Tree-sign websites
- The same dates; a planet, gemstone, animal and personality title, all modern. Not used here.
- EsoTerrier
- A tall, springy tree: taking a wide view and bending without breaking, with strength used carefully.
Claims about it
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The letter name Nion means ash.
falseWhat the record shows: Nin means a fork or a loft, part of a weaver's beam in the glosses. The ash is a medieval gloss; the Ogam Tract offers a spear or nettles instead.
-
The ash is the world tree of Celtic lore.
disputedWhat the record shows: The cosmic ash belongs to Old Norse sources, not Irish ones. Irish tradition knows sacred trees and the five great trees of Ireland, three of them ashes, but no world tree.
-
The Ash month belongs to an old Celtic calendar that the Druids kept.
falseWhat the record shows: No ancient or medieval source has a tree calendar or a tree for each birthday. The thirteen months are Robert Graves', set out in 1948.
-
The Ash month has a traditional planet, element, gemstone and animal.
falseWhat the record shows: Modern additions: the planets are Helena Paterson's (1992), the rest come from later web lists that disagree with one another. None is medieval or in Graves as a set.
