The Minchin Manuscript is a 19th Century Irish Spell Book Written Entirely in Ogham!

What if I told you that, while Victoria was still on the English throne, an Irish folk healer carefully copied more than eighty curing charms into a pocket notebook — and wrote every single word in the Ogham alphabet?

That’s the jaw dropping discovery at the heart of a brand new paper by Dr Deborah Hayden and Prof David Stifter in the Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy (2025).

Let’s unpack why this matters for anybody who loves Ogham, Irish folk magic, or the tangled story of our native scripts.

Ogham: a Living, Shapeshifting Tradition

Hayden & Stifter open with a reminder that Ogham isn’t a one-and-done relic but a script with four distinct life stages:

“Recent research on ogam distinguishes four distinct periods in the usage of the script… classical, reformed, antiquarian and, finally, revivalist ogam.” 

Most of us meet Ogham in its classical or monumental stone carving phase (4th–7th c.).

The Minchin Manuscript, however, belongs to the tail end of the antiquarian period, just before modern Celtic Revivalists turned the letters into logo material and ogham tattoos.

That alone forces us to rethink the timeline: the script was still being used, not merely studied, in rural Ireland c. 1850.

Meet the Irish Spell Book

“National Library of Scotland (Edinburgh), Advocates’ Manuscript 50.3.11 is a 66-page notebook dating to the nineteenth century and consisting of healing charms and prayers for a variety of ailments… with the exception of a single page at the end, its contents are written entirely in ogam script.” 

Sixty-six pages of tight Ogham lines, every stroke ruled like school copy book work.

Toothache, burns, stitches, evil eye – it’s all there, a working healer’s arsenal. And because the language is mostly Irish (with dashes of Latin and English) the scribe had to think in Irish while writing in Ogham.

No antiquarian show off; this was practical magic on the kitchen table.

Why Hide the Charms in Ogham Script?

One of the paper’s most exciting angles is the double duty of secrecy:

“Healing charms of this kind merited concealment… The length of the notebook and the careful precision with which the script has been written suggest… a very deliberate and pre-meditated act of scribal and cultural transmission.” 

Writing in Ogham locks your charm away from prying eyes – just as medieval doctors once scribbled prescriptions in Latin.

For the charm maker, secrecy wasn’t only about intellectual property; it amplified the spell’s power by making the words special, set apart.

Ogham as a Badge of Irish Identity

That protective impulse ties neatly into the bigger cultural picture:

"Ogam became what Erich Poppe has described as ‘an emblem of the linguistic and cultural identity of Ireland.'"

By the 1800s English was the colonial default, yet this little healer insists on the old strokes — a quiet statement that Irish words, Irish cures, and Irish scripts still mattered.

A Flash Back to the Very Beginning

And, because every good Ogham story circles back to legend, the authors quote the Auraicept na nÉces on why Ogma invented the script:

“Now Ogma, a man well skilled in speech and poetry, invented the Ogham… that this speech should belong to the learned apart, to the exclusion of rustics and herdsmen.” 

Nineteen centuries later, our Minchin scribe is still tapping that current of prestige and mystery.

 More on Auraicept na n-Éces here...

What this Means for Us at the Ogham Academy

• Continuity of practice – The Minchin Manuscript proves that Ogham remained a working magical script into living memory, not just a stone-age fossil.

• Method for modern study – Because the text is already digitised, we can run side-by-side transliteration drills, perfect for sharpening your own Ogham reading.

• Authentic inspiration – If you’re crafting charms today, you now have a model rooted in verifiable folk tradition, not Victorian occultism.

Ready to Learn More?

I’ve popped a full link to Hayden & Stifter’s open access paper at the end of this post – absolutely worth a cuppa and a slow read.

And if you’d like a hands-on primer before tackling nineteenth century scribbles, download the free Quick & Easy Ogham Guide right here: ogham.academy/guide.

Go raibh míle maith agat for reading, and happy carving, writing, and charming with Ogham!

Full citation:

Deborah Hayden & David Stifter, “Ogam, cryptography and healing charms in the nineteenth century: observations on ‘The Minchin Manuscript’,” Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy 125C (2025): 1–44. [Access & Downbload Here]