RE-ORGANIZATION OF BARDIC SCHOOLS:
The members of Bardic Order became so numerous and exacting in their demands as to arouse widespread dissatisfaction with the result that the complete abolition of the Order was contemplated. Owing to the timely intervention of St. Columba reform was substituted for abolition. At the Convention of Drum-Ceata in 573 A.D. St. Columba who had received part of his own education in a Bardic School pleaded the cause of the bards with such success that the whole system of public secular education was reorganized. The scheme was devised by the chief poet (ard-ollamh) of Ireland, Dallan Forgaill. There was to be a chief school or college for each of the five provinces; and under these were several smaller schools, one for each tuath or district. They were all endowed with lands and all those persons who needed it received free education in them. The heads of these schools were ollamhna doctors of literature and poetry, and were all laymen.[201]
There was now a great tendency towards specialization. Many schools became noted for the excellency of their teaching in particular branches of learning according to the individual tastes or bent of mind of the teachers or the traditions of the several schools. These subjects whether Law, History, Antiquities, Poetry, etc. were commonly taught by the same family for generations.[202]
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]
RELATION OF THE LAY SCHOOL TO THE MONASTIC SCHOOL:
Though differing in aim, both the lay school and the monastic school were so closely related to the social system that there does not appear to have been any actual antagonism between them. They were to a large extent complementary. As an instance of the friendly relations which obtained between the ecclesiastics and the lay school we might cite the fact, already referred to, that St. Columba pleaded the cause of the bards. St. Columba himself had practical experience of the bards as teachers. We are told that after he had spent some years at the monastic school of Finnian of Movilla and having been ordained deacon he placed himself under the instruction of an aged bard called Gemman.[205] Nor did his monks in the severe and pious solitude of Iona lose their love for their national poetry. On one occasion it is recorded they inquired from the saint why he did not ask an Irish poet who visited Iona to recite a poem for them after the sermon—a question that did not scandalize the saint in the least.[206] We know also that much of the pagan literature was preserved by monastic scribes, and some of the finest Old Irish poems that have been discovered were written by monks on the margin of MSS. they were copying.[207] These examples are given for the purpose of removing a false impression that there was a clear cut line of demarcation between the study of native and classical literature. As a learned French Celticist writes: “On aurait tort de croire qu’en Irelande il y eût entre les savants addonés aux lettres classiques où à la théologie, alors leurs inseparable associée,—et les gens des lettres voués à la culture de la littérature nationale, la ligne de séparation presque infranchissable qu’on remarque pendant le moyen âge sur le continent.”[208]
On the other hand many laymen attended Monastic schools at some period of their lives not only to get religious instruction but to get a wider general education.[209] Besides laymen were sometimes professors in the monastic schools, and even occupied the important position of Fer-leighinn or Principal of a monastic school, for example Flann Mainistrech (d. 1056 A.D.), a layman and the most learned scholar in Ireland of his time, was appointed Fer-leighinn of Monasterboice. About a century earlier the lay ollamh, Mac Cosse, held a similar position in the great school of Ros-Ailithir, now Ros Carbery, in Cork.[210]
Owing to the increasing popularity of the monastic schools and the appointment of laymen as professors in monastic schools there was a tendency to introduce into the Bardic school some of the subjects which attracted lay students to monastic schools. St. Bricin’s College at Tomregan (recte Tuaim Drecain) near Ballyconnel in Cavan, founded in the seventh century, though having an ecclesiastic for Principal was typical of the lay schools. It had one school for law, one for classics, and one for poetry and general Gaelic learning. Each school was under a special druimcli, or head professor,[211] corresponding apparently to a Dean in a modern university.