We must now, leaving verifiable history behind us, attempt a cautious step backwards from the known into the doubtful, and see what in the way of literature is said to have been produced by the pagans. We know that side by side with the colleges of the clergy there flourished, perhaps in a more informal way, the purely Irish schools of the Brehons and the Bards. Unhappily however, while, thanks to the great number of the Lives of the Saints,[1] we know much about the Christian colleges, there is very little to be discovered about the bardic institutions. These were almost certainly a continuation of the schools of the druids, and represented something far more antique than even the very earliest schools of the Christians, but unlike them they were not centred in a fixed locality nor in a cluster of houses, but seem to have been peripatetic. The bardic scholars grouped themselves not round a locality but round a personality, and wherever it pleased their master to wander—and that was pretty much all[Pg 240] round Ireland—there they followed, and the people seem to have willingly supported them.

There seems to be some confusion as to the forms into which what must have been originally the druidic school disintegrated itself in the fifth and succeeding centuries, but from it we can see emerging the poet, the Brehon, and the historian, not all at once, but gradually. In the earliest period the functions of all three were often, if not always, united in one single person, and all poets were ipso facto judges as well. We have a distinct account of the great occasion upon which the poet lost his privilege of acting as a judge merely because he was a poet. It appears that from the very earliest date the learned classes, especially the "f?lès," had evolved a dialect of their own, which was perfectly dark and obscure to every one except themselves. This was the Béarla Féni, in which so much of the Brehon law and many poems are written, and which continued to be used, to some extent, by poets down to the very beginning of the eighteenth century. Owing to their predilection for this dialect, the first blow, according to Irish accounts, was struck at their judicial supremacy by the hands of laymen, during the reign of Conor mac Nessa, some time before the birth of Christ. This was the occasion when the sages Fercertné and Neidé contended for the office of arch-ollav of Erin, with its beautiful robe of feathers, the Tugen.[2] Their discourse, still extant in at least three MSS. under the title of the "Dialogue of the Two Sages,"[3] was so learned, and they contended with one another in terms so abstruse that, as the chronicler in the Book of Ballymote puts it:—

    "Obscure to every one seemed the speech which the poets uttered in that discussion, and the legal decision which they delivered was not clear to the kings and to the other poets.

    "'These men alone,' said the kings, 'have their judgment and[Pg 241] their skill, and their knowledge. In the first place we do not understand what they say.'

    "'Well, then,' said Conor, 'every one shall have his share therein from to-day for ever.'"[4]

This was the occasion upon which Conor made the law that the office of poet should no longer carry with it, of necessity, the office of judge, for, says the ancient writer, "poets alone had judicature from the time that Amairgin Whiteknee delivered the first judgment in Erin" until then.

That the Bardic schools, which we know flourished as public institutions with scarcely a break from the Synod of Drumceat in 590 (where regular lands were set apart for their endowment) down to the seventeenth century, were really a continuation of the Druidic schools, and embodied much that was purely pagan in their curricula, is, I think, amply shown by the curious fragments of metrical text-books preserved in the Books of Leinster and Ballymote, in a MS. in Trinity College, and in a MS. in the Bodleian, all four of which have been recently admirably edited by Thurneysen as a continuous text.[5] He has not however ventured upon a translation, for the scholar would be indeed a bold one who in the present state of Celtic scholarship would attempt a complete interpretation of tracts so antique and difficult. That they date, partially at least, from pre-Christian times seems to me certain from their prescribing amongst other things for the poet's course in one of his years of study a knowledge of the magical incantations called Tenmlaida, Imbas forosnai,[6] and Dichetal do chennaib na tuaithe, and making him in another year learn a certain poem or incantation called Cétnad, of which the text says that—

    "It is used for finding out a theft. One sings it, that is to say, through the right fist on the track of the stolen beast" [observe the antique assumption that the only kind of wealth to be stolen is cattle][Pg 242] "or on the track of the thief, in case the beast is dead. And one sings it three times on the one [track] or the other. If, however, one does not find the track, one sings it through the right fist, and goes to sleep upon it, and in one's sleep the man who has brought it away is clearly shown and made known. Another virtue [of this lay]: one speaks it into the right palm and rubs with it the quarters of the horse before one mounts it, and the horse will not be overthrown, and the man will not be thrown off or wounded."

Another Cétnad to be learned by the poet, in which he desires length of life, is addressed to "the seven daughters of the sea, who shape the thread of the long-lived children."

Another with which he had to make himself familiar was the Glam dichinn,[7] intended to satirise and punish the prince who refused to a poet the reward of his poem. The poet—

    "was to fast upon the lands of the king for whom the poem was to be made, and the consent of thirty laymen, thirty bishops"—a Christian touch to make the passage pass muster—"and thirty poets should be had to compose the satire; and it was a crime to them to prevent it when the reward of the poem was withheld"—a pagan touch as a make-weight on the other side! "The poet then, in a company of seven, that is, six others and himself, upon whom six poetic degrees had been conferred, namely a focloc, macfuirmedh, doss, cana, clí, anradh, and ollamh, went at the rising of the sun to a hill which should be situated on the boundary of seven lands, and each of them was to turn his face to a different land, and the ollamh's (ollav's) face was to be turned to the land of the king, who was to be satirised, and their backs should be turned to a hawthorn which should be growing upon the top of a hill, and the wind should be blowing from the north, and each man was to hold a perforated stone and a thorn of the hawthorn in his hand, and each man was to sing a verse of this composition for the king—the ollamh or chief poet to take the lead with his own verse, and the others in concert after him with theirs; and each then should place his stone and his thorn under the stem of the hawthorn, and if it was they that were in the wrong in the case, the ground of the hill would swallow them, and if it was the king that was in the wrong, the ground would swallow him and his wife, and his son and his steed, and his robes and his hound. The satire of the macfuirmedh fell on the hound, the satire[Pg 243] of the focloc on the robes, the satire of the doss on the arms, the satire of the cana on the wife, the satire of the clí on the son, the satire of the anrad on the steed,[8] the satire of the ollamh on the king."

These instances that I have mentioned occurring in the books of the poets' instruction, are evidently remains of magic incantations and terrifying magic ceremonies, taken over from the schools and times of the druids, and carried on into the Christian era, for nobody, I imagine, could contend that they had their origin after Ireland had been Christianised.[9] And the occurrence in the poets' text-books of such evidently pagan passages, side by side with allusions to Athairné the poet—a contemporary of Conor mac Nessa, a little before the birth of Christ, Caoilte, the Fenian poet of the third century, Cormac his contemporary, Laidcend mac Bairchida about the year 400, and others—seems to me to be fresh proof for the real objective existence of these characters. For if part of the poets' text-books can be thus shown to have preserved things taught in the pre-Christian times—to be in fact actually pre-Christian—why should we doubt the reality of the pre-Christian persons mixed up with them?

The first poem written in Ireland by a Milesian is said to be the curious rhapsody of Amergin the brother of Eber, Ir, and Erimon, who on landing broke out in a strain of exultation:—

"I am the wind which breathes upon the sea,
I am the wave of the ocean,
I am the murmur of the billows,
I am the ox of the seven combats,
I am the vulture upon the rock,
I am a beam of the sun,
[Pg 244]I am the fairest of plants,
I am a wild boar in valour,
I am a salmon in the water,
I am a lake in the plain,
I am a word of science,
I am the point of the lance of battle,
I am the god who creates in the head [i.e., of man] the fire [i.e., the thought]
Who is it who throws light into the meeting on the mountain?
Who announces the ages of the moon [if not I]?
Who teaches the place where couches the sea [if not I]?"[10]

There are two more poems attributed to Amergin of much the same nature, very ancient and very strange. Irish tradition has always represented these poems as the first made by our ancestors in Ireland, and no doubt they do actually represent the oldest surviving lines in the vernacular of any country in Europe except Greece alone.

The other pre-Christian poets[11] of whom we hear most, and to whom certain surviving fragments are ascribed, are Feirceirtné, surnamed filé, or the poet, who is usually credited with the authorship of the well-known grammatical treatise called Uraicept na n-éigeas or "Primer of the Learned."[12] It was he[Pg 245] who contended with Neidé for the arch-poet's robe, causing King Conor to decide that no poet should in future be also of necessity a judge. The Uraicept begins with this preface or introduction: "The Book of Feirceirtné here. Its place Emania; its time the time of Conor mac Nessa; its person Feirceirtné the poet; its cause to bring ignorant people to knowledge." There is also a poem attributed to him on the death of Curoi mac Daire, the great southern chieftain, whom Cuchulain slew, and the Book of Invasions contains a valuable poem ascribed to him, recounting how Ollamh Fódla, a monarch who is said to have flourished many centuries before, established a college of professors at Tara.

There was a poet called Adhna, the father of that Neidé with whom Feirceirtné contended for the poet's robe, who also lived at the court of Conor mac Nessa, and his name is mentioned in connection with some fragments of laws.

Athairné, the overbearing insolent satirist from the Hill of Howth, who figures largely in Irish romance, was contemporaneous with these, though I do not know that any poem is attributed to him. But he and a poet called Forchern, with Feirceirtné and Neidé, are said to have compiled a code of laws, now embodied with others under the title of Breithe Neimhidh in the Brehon Law Books.

There was a poet Lughar at the Court of Oilioll and Mève in Connacht about the same time, and a poem on the descendants of Fergus mac Róigh [Roy] is ascribed to him, but as he was contemporaneous with that warrior he could not have written about his descendants.

[Pg 246]

There is a prose tract called Moran's Will,[13] ascribed to Moran, a well-known jurist who lived at the close of the first century.

Several other authors, either of short poems or law fragments, are mentioned in the second and third centuries, such as Feradach king of Ireland, Modan, Ciothruadh the poet, Fingin, Oilioll Olum himself, the great king of Munster, to whom are traced so many of the southern families. Fithil, a judge, and perhaps some others, none of whom need be particularised.

At the end of the th............