In Norse mythology, the invention of runes is attributed to Odin: The Hávamál (stanzas 138, 139) describes how Odin receives the rune through his self-sacrifice. The text (in Old Norse and in English translation) is as follows:
Veit ec at ec hecc vindga meiði a
netr allar nío,
geiri vndaþr oc gefinn Oðni,
sialfr sialfom mer,
a þeim meiþi, er mangi veit, hvers hann af rótom renn.
Við hleifi mic seldo ne viþ hornigi,
nysta ec niþr,
nam ec vp rvnar,
opandi nam,
fell ec aptr þaðan.
I know that I hung on a windy tree
nights all nine,
wounded with a spear and given to Odin,
myself to myself,
on that tree of which no man knows from where its roots run
No bread did they give me nor a drink from a horn,
downwards I peered,
I took up the runes,
screaming I took them,
then I fell back from there
According to the 11th C. Lebor Gabála Érenn, and other Medieval Irish folklore, Ogham was first invented soon after the fall of the Tower of Babel, along with the Gaelic language, by the legendary Scythian king, Fenius Farsa. However, while it is possible that it was first used to write on wooden materials, now lost, the script cannot be shown to predate the 4th century AD. Use of "classical" Ogham in stone seems to have flowered in the 5th–6th centuries around the Irish Sea. The language of the Inscriptions from the 4th to 6th centuries is termed Primitive Irish. The transition to Old Irish, the language of the earliest sources in the Latin alphabet, takes place in about the 6th century.