Many thanks for the informative discussion on the history of the laureate.
I am also interested in following the history of the Irish Ollave - relevant
in some way to the recent - although recently obscured - discussion on
metrical v free verse - in that (according to Graves), the Irish Bards
served an apprenticeship of memory - relying on the metrical beauty and
rhythm of verse to commit writings - which for them were sacred - to memory
for the benefit of their community - a spirit which I fear may be sadly
lacking in our poetry this century?

jh

Robert Graves - from the white goddess:

"Who can make any claim to be a chief poet and wear the embroidered mantle
of office which the ancient Irish called the tugen?  Who can even claim to
be an ollave?  The ollave in ancient Ireland had to be master of one hundred
and fifty Oghams, or verbal ciphers, which allowed him to converse with his
fellow poets over the heads of unlearned bystanders; to be able to repeat at
a moment's notice any one of three hundred and fifty long traditional
histories and romances together with the incidental poems they contained,
with appropriate harp accompaniment; to have memorised an immense number of
other poems of different sorts; to be learned in philosophy; to be a doctor
of civil law; to understand the history of modern, middle and ancient Irish
with the derivations and changes of meaning of every word; to be skilled in
music, augury, divination, medicine, mathematics, geography, universal
history, astronomy, rhetoric and foreign languages; and to be able to
extemporise poetry in fifty or more complicated metres...In the wilderness
the temptation to monomaniac raving, paranoia and eccentric behaviour has
been too much for many of the exiles.  They have no Chief Poet or visiting
ollave now to warn them sternly that the good name of poetry is dishonoured
by their mopping and mowing.  They rave on like Elizabethan Abraham-men,
until raving becomes a professional affectation; until the bulk of modern
poetry ceases to make poetic, prosaic or even pathological sense."





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