I have found these links to be of interest and use, perhaps you will also.
This blog is a living thing and will grow with time.
TDK
On Bards, And Bardic Circleshttp://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/articles/onbards.html
What is a Bard
http://www.druidry.org/druid-way/what-druidry/what-druidism/what-bard
A bit or Bardic Druid Training
http://www.sacredfire.net/
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/herbermann/cathen08.txt
>>
Irish Poetry. There is no other vernacular poetry in Europe
which has gone through so long, so unbroken, and so interesting
a period of development as that of the Irish. The oldest poems
are ascribed to the early Milesians and are perhaps the most
ancient pieces of vernacular literature existing. None of the
early poems rhymed. There is little we can see to distinguish
them from prose except a strong tendency, as in the Teutonic
languages, toward alliteration, and a leaning toward
dissyllables. They are also so ancient as to be unintelligible
without heavy glosses. It is a tremendous claim to make for the
Celt that he taught Europe to rhyme, yet it has often been made
for him, and not by himself, but by such men as Zeuss, the
father of Celtic learning, Constantine Nigra, and others.
Certain it is that as early as the seventh century we find the
Irish had brought the art of rhyming verses to a high pitch of
perfection, that is, centuries before most of the vernacular
literatures of Europe knew anything at all about it. Nor are
their rhymes only such as we are accustomed to in English,
French, or German poetry, for they delighted not only in full
rhymes, like these nations, but also in assonances, like the
Spaniards, and they often thought more of a middle rhyme than of
an end rhyme. The following Latin verses, written no doubt after
his native models by Aengus Mac Tipraite some time prior to the
year 704, will give the reader an idea of the middle or
interlinear rhyming which the Irish have practiced from the
earliest times down to the present day:
Martinus mirus more
Ore laudavit Deum,
Puro Corde cantavit
Atque amavit Eum.
A very curious and interesting peculiarity of a certain sort of
Irish verse is a desire to end a second line with a word with a
syllable more than that which ends the first, the stress of the
voice being thrown back a syllable in the last word of the
second line. Thus, if the first line end with an accented
monosyllable, the second line will end with a dissyllabic word
accented on its first syllable, or if the first line end with a
dissyllable accented on its penultimate the second line will end
with a trisyllable accented on its ante-penultimate. This is
called aird-rinn in Irish, as:
Fall'n the land of learned men
The bardic band is fallen,
None now learn a song to sing
For long our fern is fading.
This metre, which from its popularity must be termed the
hexameter of the Irish, is named Deibhidhe (D'yevvee), and well
shows in the last two lines the internal rhyme to which we
refer. If it be maintained, as Thurneysen maintains, that the
Irish derived their rhyming verses from the Latins, it seems
necessary to account for the peculiar forms that so much of this
verse assumed in Irish, for the merest glance will show that the
earliest Irish verse is full of tours de force, like this
"aird-runn", which cannot have been derived from Latin. After
the seventh century the Irish brought their rhyming system to a
pitch of perfection undreamt of by any nation in Europe, even at
the present day, and it is no exaggeration to say that perhaps
by no people was poetry so cultivated and, better still, so
remunerated as in Ireland.
There were two kinds of poets known to the early Gael. the
principle of those was called the file (filla); there were seven
grades of files, the most exalted being called an ollamh
(ollav). These last were so highly esteemed that the annalists
often give their obituaries, as though they were so many
princes. It took from twelve to twenty years to arrive at this
dignity. Some fragments of the old metrical textbooks still
exist, showing the courses required from the various grades of
poets, in pre-Norse times. One of these, in elucidation of the
metric, gives the first lines of three hundred and fifty
different poems, all no doubt well known at the time of writing,
but of which only about three have come down entire to our own
time. If there were seven species of files there were sixteen
grades of bards, each with a different name, and each had its
own peculiar metres (of which the Irish had over 300) allotted
to him. During the wars with the Norsemen the bards suffered
fearfully, and it must have been at this time, that is during
the ninth and tenth centuries, that the finely-drawn distinction
between poets and bards seems to have come to an end. So highly
esteemed was the poetic art in Ireland that Keating in his
history tells us that at one time no less than a third of the
patrician families of Ireland followed that profession. These
constituted a heavy drain on the resources of the country, and
at three different periods in Irish history the people tried to
shake off their incubus. However, Columcille, who was a poet
himself, befriended them; at the Synod of Drum Ceat, in the
sixth century, their numbers were reduced and they were shorn of
many of their prerogatives; but, on the other hand, public lands
were set apart for their colleges, and these continued until the
later English conquest, when those who escaped the spear of
Elizabeth fell beneath the sword of Cromwell.
Modern Irish Poetry. Much of the ancient poetry in the schools
was in the nature of a memoria technica, the frame in which
valuable information was enshrined, but the bards attached to
the great houses chanted a different strain. So numerous are the
still-surviving poems from the Battle of Clontarf down to the
sixteenth century that Meyer has remarked that the history of
Ireland could be written out of them alone. When the great
houses fell beneath the sword of Elizabeth, of Cromwell, and of
William, it is unnecessary to mention that the entire social
fabric of Gaeldom fell with them, and amongst other things the
colleges of the bards and brehons, which had existed, often on
the same spot and in possession of the same land, for over a
thousand years. The majority of learned men were slain, or
driven out, or followed their masters into exile. No patrons for
the native arts remained in Ireland, and, worse still, there was
no security for the life of the artist. The ancient metres, over
three hundred of which had at one time been cultivated, and
which, although reduced to less than a score in the Elizabethan
period, were still the property only of the learned and highly
educated, so intricate were the verse forms, now died away
completely. There was, perhaps, not a single writer living by
the middle of the eighteenth century who could compose correct
verses in the classical metres of the schools.
On the other hand, however, there arose a new kind of poetry, in
which the consonant rhyming of the old school was replaced by
vowel chiming or vowel rhyming, and in which only the syllables
on which the stress of the voice fell were counted; a splendid
lyrical poetry sprung up amongst the people themselves upon
these lines. The chief poets in these latter times were in very
reduced circumstances, mostly school masters or farmers, and
very different indeed in status from the refined, highly
educated, and stately poets who had a century or two before sat
at the right hand of powerful chieftains advising them in peace
and war. A usual theme of the new poets, who seemed to revel in
their newly found freedom of expression, was the grievances of
Ireland sung under a host of allegorical names, the chances of
the Stuarts returning, and the bitterness of the present
compared with the glories of the past, or the vision of Ireland
appearing as a beautiful maiden. The poets of the South used
even to hold annual bardic sessions, though such attempts must
always have been attended with great danger, for the possession
of a manuscript was often a sufficient cause for persecuting or
imprisoning the possessor; many fine books were on this account
hidden away or walled up lest they should bring the owner into
trouble with the authorities. Even as late as 1798, the
grammarian Neilson of County Down, who was a Protestant
clergyman of the Established Church and perfectly loyal to the
Government, was arrested by a dozen dragoons and accused of
treason because he preached in Irish.
It is very difficult to convey in the English language any idea
of the beautifully artistic and recondite measures in which the
poets of the last two or three centuries have rejoiced, both in
Ireland and in the Highlands of Scotland, where also they
produced a splendid lyrical outburst, about the same time as in
Ireland, and on the same lines. Suffice it to say that most of
their modern poetry was written and is being written to this
very day upon a wonderful scheme of vowel sounds, arranged in
such a manner that first one and then another vowel will strike
the ear at skillfully recurring intervals. Some poems are
written entirely on the ae sound, others on the u (oo), i (ee)
or a (au) sounds, but most upon a delightful intermingling of
two or more of them. Here is a typical verse of Tadhg Gaelach
O'Sullivan, who died in 1800 and who consecrated his muse, which
had first led him astray, to the service of religion, his poems
producing a sound effect for good all over the South of Ireland.
The entire poem was made upon the sounds of e (ae) and o, but,
while the arrangement in the first half of the verse is o/e,
e/o, o, the arrangement in the second half is o, e/o, e/o, e/e.
To understand the effect that this vowel rhyming should produce,
we must remember that the vowels are dwelt upon in Irish, and
not passed over quickly as they are in English:
The p oets we pra ise are up-ra ising the n otes
Of their l ays, and they kn ow how their t ones will delight,
For the g olden-haired l ady so gr aceful so p oseful
So Ga elic so gl orious enthroned in our sight.
Unf olding a t ale how the so ul of a f ay
Must be cl othed in the fr ame of a l ady so bright,
Unt old are her gr aces, a r ose in her f ace is,
And n o man so sta id is but fa ints at her sight.
Owen Roe O'Sullivan, the witty and facetious namesake of the
pious Tadhg Gaelach, is the best know of the southern poets, and
Raftery, who, like his famous Scottish contemporary Donnchadh
Ban Mackintyre, was completely illiterate, but who composed some
admirable religious as well as secular pieces, is best known in
Connacht.
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