OF THE ANCIENT POETS OF ERIN.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume VII, Issue 326, 18 July 1879, Page 19

OF THE ANCIENT POETS OF ERIN.

History and poetry have been intertwined from the earliest days, and in late years Lord Macaulay has shown to ns how gracefully they blend in his well-known " Lays of Ancient Rome," and Mr. Tennyson, out of dim recesses, has brought the figure of King Arthur, and thrown the electric light of genius upon his unspotted manhood ; but in ancient Erin the office of poet to her kings was a more important one than that held by our laureate ; indeed, the deference given to him was perhaps not unlike the respect accorded to our Lord Chancellor, for the poet was at once ft judge and guardian of history truth, or of the legendary lore which passed for truth ; he was a sage, a teacher ; and if he attained to the highest of the seven orders of poets (the ollamh) became a brehon, or judge, and was entitled to rank next to the monarch ; he had to qualify for this dignity by long years of training, and to be of his reputation, according to the following old versePurity of hand, bright without wounding, Parity of mouth, without poisonous satire, Purity of learning, without reproach ; Parity of husbandship (or marriage.) He who did not preserve these purities lost half his income and his legal power, and was subject to penalties besides. The bards appear to have inherited many of the offices of the ancient Druids, and Mr de Vere remarks that their colleges had been a sort of Pagan convents, and he suggests the thought that a people, however barbarous and revengeful in war, who had been trained to so much appreciation of " the beautiful, the pathetic, and the pure," was already in some degree prepared to cast away idolatry for Christianity, and to receive the Divine poetry " yesterday, to-day, and for ever," which, in the holy Psalms, St. Patrick brougbx to the Western Island. Milton says that " Heaven stoops to feeble virtue," and the Star in the East has shown for all time how earnest and pure study may find the knowledge which is above all other knowledge, It was not the design of St. Patrick to destroy the ancient books, but to purge them of evil [and the result of this was a compilation of laws, called the Senehut Mohr ;*] not to demolish altars, but to purify and lacep on them the Cross ; not to shut up schools, but to make them Christian— not to silence a nation's music, but to sanctify it. And we know that from the day he landed in the year a.d. 4d2, the name of the Saint has been the one most treasured in both the history and poetry of Erin.