This is part of Amergin's take on it, It is taken from the untitled poem
heading the 14C concordance of the many complex grammatical rules in the
bardic scheme. It needed no title as it was the fundamental text
underpinning the bardic Poetic, and a 1000 years of filidh poets would have
had it as Motion has Homer.
Question: How many divisions of sorrow that turn the cauldrons of sages? Not
hard; four. Longing, grief, the sorrows of jealousy and the discipline of
pilgrimage to holy places. It is internally that these are borne although
the cause is from outside. The poem asks the question, what is poetry? and
answers it in a truly logical way, though one cannot really grasp the full
of it unless they are familiar with a few tales from the topography of the
four cycles of irish myth. This is about a third of the total.
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There are then two divisions of joy that turn the Cauldron of Wisdom, i.e.,
divine joy and human joy.
In human joy there are four divisions among the wise. Sexual intimacy; the
joy of health untroubled by the abundance of goading when a person takes up
the prosperity of bardcraft; the joy of the binding principle of wisdom
after good (poetic) construction; and, joy of fitting poetic frenzy from the
grinding away at the fair nuts of the nine hazels on the Well of Segais in
the SÏdhe realm. They cast themselves in great quantities like a ram's
fleece upon the ridges of the Boyne, moving against the stream swifter than
racehorses driven in the middle-month on the magnificent day every seven years.
The Gods touch a person through divine and human joys so that they are able
to speak prophetic poems and dispense wisdom and perform miracles, as well
as offering wise judgment and giving precedents and wisdom in answer to
everyone's wishes. But the source of these joys (the Gods) is outside the
person although the actual cause of the joy is internal.
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