Insula Sanctorum et Doctorum; Or, Ireland's Ancient Schools and Scholars

by John Healy

The course in poetry extended over ‘twelve years of hard work;’[444] and besides the knowledge of the seven kinds of verse, in each of which the Ollave-poet was supposed to be able to compose extemporaneously, he was also required to know seven times fifty tales by heart for public recitation. These tales were of a wild and romantic character, but for that very reason were highly popular with all classes in ancient Erin. They included tales of Battles, Voyages, Cattle-spoils, Sieges, Sorrows, Slaughters, and so on, through the lost list of the legendary poems of Erin. Fortunately many of them still survive in manuscript, and a few have been published; which even in faulty translations are found to be exceedingly interesting and amusing. It was, doubtless, the popular and entertaining character of these romantic stories that placed the Ollave-poet at the head of the learned professions, even on an equality with kings and bishops in point of social dignity. There were seven grades or degrees in this great fraternity, from the fochloc, or scholar-poet, up to the great Ollave himself, who was the head of the school, or band of twenty-four that formed his train.

In like manner with the Brehons, there was an Ollave-Brehon who corresponded with a judge of the High Court in our own times; and then there were seven grades of inferior brehonship, descending from this high official to the raw law student, who was just beginning to take out his lectures and eat his dinners—for, in ancient, as in modern Erin, the lawyers made eating an essential part of their professional career. The fees of the Brehon were fixed by law, and to withhold them was a grave offence, for which a distress might be levied after an interval of three days.[445]

Whoever looks over, even in a cursory way, the four large volumes of the ancient Brehon code already published, will readily admit that to be an accomplished lawyer in ancient Erin required long and careful study under competent masters. At length the system grew so intricate and complicated that the Brehonship was confined to a few families, who transmitted from generation to generation the key to the interpretation both of the written and customary law. Every righ was entitled to have his own Brehon, who sat on stated days, generally in the open air, for the adjudication of all the causes arising in the tribe. The litigants might, of course, have their own advocates, but they were generally young Brehons of inferior degree belonging to the school of the chief Brehon. Amongst these legal families the MacEgans of Duniry in Galway, and Ormond in Tipperary, became the most celebrated, so that members of that family were employed as judges by most of the kinglets beyond the Shannon.

The Historical Poets or Chroniclers seem to have constituted a separate professional class in Ireland during this period. O’Donnell, in a passage from the Irish Life of St. Columba, clearly defines their duties, and he must have known them well, for the O’Clerys, his own hereditary Chroniclers, were the most illustrious members of that profession that ever appeared in Erin. It was their duty to record—(a) the achievements, wars, and triumphs of the kings, princes, and chiefs; (b) to preserve the genealogies and define the rights of noble families; (c) to ascertain and set forth the limits and extent of the sub-kingdoms and territories ruled over by the princes and chiefs. There is no statement in the Brehon Code as to the duties of the Chronicler so definite as this, because the code supposes that these things were perfectly well known to all the Feni, from their own daily experience.

In the earlier periods of our history these important duties were discharged by the Bards; but by degrees it was found more convenient to confine them to a separate class, which afterwards, like the Brehons, came to be hereditary. As the righ was entitled to have his Bard and Brehon, so also he was entitled to have his Chronicler to discharge those duties to which we have referred above. Up to the eleventh century the Chronicles were written in verse, but after that period they began to be written in prose; and in many cases they are written both in prose and verse—the verse being nearly always the older form of the Chronicle.

Many of these Rhyming Chroniclers record merely the local history of their own chieftains; but in other cases the poet-historian took a wider scope, and gave a narrative not only of Irish history, but of universal history, in a brief way, down to the time of St. Patrick. Most of these Chroniclers were laymen, although several of the most distinguished amongst them were monks or priests in some of the great monastic schools.

It is quite clear from various references both in our Annals, and in the Brehon Code, that these three professions were kept quite distinct from the sixth to the twelfth century, that they were taught by different professors, and in different schools—these professors being generally but not always laymen.

Perhaps the earliest school of this character to which we find any definite reference is the School of Tuaim Drecain. It is doubtless only one of many similar institutions that flourished in ancient Ireland, but as we have more accurate information, although incidental, concerning this establishment, we propose to give an account of this typical seminary in a separate section.

II.—The School of Tuaim Drecain.

St. Bricin’s School of Tuaim Drecain is one of those mentioned in O’Curry’s catalogue of celebrated schools in ancient Ireland. Moreover, although its founder and rector was a saint, whose festival is found marked in our martyrologies, it seems to have been a lay school of general literature, or, as we should say, a school of arts rather than of scripture or theology. It has besides produced one very distinguished Irish poet, some scraps of whose writings have come down to us, and therefore deserves a special notice at our hands.