EDUCATION OF LAYMEN:
It has sometimes been asserted that in early times learning in Ireland was confined to ecclesiastics, but this assertion is quite erroneous. We have shown that there were numerous facilities afforded laymen both for a professional and a general education. Nearly all the professional men, physicians, lawyers (Brehons), poets, builders, and historians were laymen; lay tutors were employed to teach princes; and in fact laymen played a very important part in the diffusion of knowledge and in building up that character for learning that rendered Ireland famous in former times.[203] A glance through Ware’s Irish Writers, or O’Reilly’s Irish Writers, or Hyde’s Literary History of Ireland or Miss Hull’s Text Book of Irish Literature is enough to convince the most sceptical on this point.[204]