ar a reidhe ar a ghlOINE
's ar iomad a aingel fIND
ó 'n CIND go aoich arOILE.
This harmonious versification was replaced in the seventeenth century by a system in which account was no longer taken of consonantal rhyme or of the number of syllables.
The rules of Irish verse have nothing in common with classical Latin metres, which were based on the combination of short and long syllables. In Low-Latin, indeed, we find occasionally alliteration, rhyme, and a fixed number of syllables, but these novelties are obviously of foreign origin, and date from the time when the Romans borrowed them from the nations which they called barbarous. We cannot prove beyond yea or nay that they are of Celtic origin, but it is extremely probable that they are, for it is among the Celts both of Ireland and of Wales that the harmonizing of vowels and of consonants has been carried to the highest degree of perfection.
This learned art was not acquired without long study. The training of a poet (filé) lasted twelve years, or more. The poets had a regular hierarchy. The highest in rank, the ollamh, knew 350 kinds of verse and could recite 250 principal and 100 secondary stories. The ollamhs lived at the court of the kings and the nobles, who granted them freehold lands; their persons and their property were sacred; and they had established in Ireland schools in which the people might learn history, poetry, and law. The bards formed a numerous class, of a rank inferior to the filé; they did not enjoy the same honors and privileges; some of them even were slaves; according to their standing, different kinds of verse were assigned to them as a monopoly.
The Danish invasions in the ninth century set back for some time the development of Irish poetry, but, when the Irish had driven the fierce and aggressive sea-rovers from their country, there was a literary renascence. This was in turn checked by the Anglo-Norman invasion in the twelfth century, and thereafter the art of versification was no longer so refined as it had formerly been. Nevertheless, the bardic schools still existed in the seventeenth century, more than four hundred years after the landing of Strongbow, and, in them, students followed the lectures of the ollamhs for six months each year, or until the coming of spring, exercising both their talents for composition and their memory.
A catalogue of Irish poets, which has recently been made out, shows that there were more than a thousand of them. We have lost many of the oldest poems, but the Irish scribes often modernized the texts which they were copying. Hence the language is not always a sufficient indication of date, and it is possible that, under a comparatively modern form, some very ancient pieces may have been preserved. Even if the poems attributed to Amergin do not go back to the tenth century B.C., as has been claimed for them, they are in any case old enough to be archaic, and certain poems of the mythological cycle are undoubtedly anterior to the Christian era.
We have reason to believe that there have been preserved some genuine poems of Finn macCumaill (third century), a hymn by St. Patrick (d. 461), some greatly altered verses of St. Columcille (d. 597), and certain hymns written by saints who lived from the seventh to the ninth century. The main object of the most celebrated of the ancient poets up to the end of the twelfth century was to render history, genealogy, toponomy, and lives of saints readier of access and easier to retain by putting them into verse-form; and it is the names of those scholars that have been rescued from oblivion, while lyric poetry, having as its basis nothing more than sentiment, has remained for the most part anonymous. After the Anglo-Norman invasion, the best poet seems to have been Donnchadh Mór O'Daly (d. 1244). Of later date were Teig MacDaire (1570-1652), Teig Dall O'Higinn (d. 1615), and Eochaidh O'Hussey, who belonged to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The new school, which abandoned the old rules and whose inspiration is now personal, now patriotic, is represented by caoine (keens or laments), abran (hymns), or aislingi (visions), composed, among others, by Geoffrey Keating (d. c. 1650), David O'Bruadair (c. 1625-1698), Egan O'Rahilly (c. 1670-c. 1734), John MacDonnell (1691-1754), William O'Heffernan (fl. 1750), John O'Tuomy (1706-1775), and Andrew MacGrath (d. c. 1790). The greatest of the eighteenth century Irish poets was Owen Roe O'Sullivan (c. 1748-1784), whose songs were sung everywhere, and who, in the opinion of his editor, Father Dinneen, is the literary glory of his country and deserves to be ranked among the few supreme lyric poets of all time.
If, in order to study the subjects treated by the poets, we lay aside didactic poetry and confine ourselves to the ancient poems from the seventh to the eleventh century, we shall find in the latter a singular variety. They were at first dialogues or monologues, now found incorporated with the sagas, of which they may have formed the original nucleus. Thus, in the Voyage of Bran, we have the account of the Isles of the Blessed and the discourse of the King of the Sea; in the Expedition of Loégaire MacCrimthainn, the brilliant description of the fairy hosts; in The Death of the Sons of Usnech, the touching farewell of Deirdre to the land of Scotland and her lamentation over the dead bodies of the three warriors; and in the Lay of Fothard Canann, the strange and thrilling speech of the dead lover, returning after the battle to the tryst appointed by his sweetheart. Other poems seem never to have figured in a saga, like the Song of Crede, daughter of Guaire, in which she extols the memory of her friend Dinertach, and the affecting love-scenes between Liadin and Curithir; or like the bardic songs designed to distribute praise or blame: the funeral panegyric on King Niall, in alternate verses, the song of the sword of Carroll, and the satire of MacConglinne against the monks of Cork.