A GOOD Lesson

The top corner rock of the grave in the center picture was the one we were interested in studying. Two years ago we had placed straws in the grooves and thought we were looking at edge Ogam.

Edge Ogam is a writing system using Ogam letters (vertical) strokes with spaces) in association with an edge. Dr. Berry fell showed an example in the middle of his book, America, B. C.

We thought we could easily read the letters. See the left picture. Starting at the right the top sticks read M-B-L-M-L-M-B-M-L sounds. There are many “M” sounds. Larry had picked up stories of Peter Cornstalk IV’s death and thought maybe he was the mad buried in the grave. The Indian name I found for Cornstalk IV had many “M” sounds.

Freda told us that Cornstalk IV was buried somewhere else. She showed us a picture of the area. But we believed we still had a stone with edge Ogam on it. So we went to the grave along with Freda.

She gave us a good lesson in the stone mason’s trade. It turns out that a stone mason uses a narrow long punch, like a nail, to make holes in a stone along the line where he chooses to break the stone. So the grooves you can see in the right small picture are left over after the stone mason has tapped the stone to separate it from the stone he or she will polish.

So what we thought was Ogam is the residue of a stone mason at work. I went back to look at Barry Fell’s picture showing edge Ogam. I concluded that any person attempting to decipher edge Ogam had better have much supporting evidence, so much evidence that the letters can be predicted before looking at the edge Ogam.

Arkansas slogans boast that it is the Natural State. Freda is a valuable natural resource for Arkansas. I hope other Arkansas people; especially the academic and official personnel recognized her talents.

Thank you, Freda. It was a good lesson.