Thanks very much Robin.
A quick guide on the development of the Irish language. There are lots of
wiki pages difficult to find, and it has just took 20 minutes to locate this
one i knew was there, which gives a precis of the history of the (written)
irish language and with links to the stages of development set out below:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Irish_language
4-6C -- Ogham (primitive Irish) 4-6C
6-10C -- Old Irish (which the text of the Cauldron poem is dated to)
10-12C -- Middle Irish
13-17C -- Early Modern Irish
The language of the Cauldron poem has been dated to the 7C by Old Irish
scholars, i am guessing because the poem in MS 1337 will be an exact copy.
The thing with the Irish language is it was around for 1200 years in print
and part of the training was the study of how Irish Letters came into existence.
The first book of the four in the Auraicept na n-Éces, is called The Book of
Fenius Farsaidh (a legendary king of Scythia) and the book details (somewhat
fancifully) how writing in Ireland came about. Fenius journeyed to the plain
of Shinar with 72 scholars, just after the collapse of the tower of Babel,
and sent them abroad to collect the 72 scattered languages, which took ten
years to complete, and which this wiki link sums up the most comprehensively:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogham
"After ten years, the investigations were complete, and Fenius created in
Bérla tóbaide "the selected language", taking the best of each of the
confused tongues, which he called Goídelc, Goidelic, after Goídel mac
Ethéoir. He also created extensions of Goídelc, called Bérla Féne (language
of the Féne, a legal/jurist's language), after himself, Íarmberla, after Íar
mac Nema, and others, and the Beithe-luis-nuin (the ogham) as a perfected
writing system for his languages. The names he gave to the letters were
those of his 25 best scholars."
It says at the start of the Book of Fenius in the Auraicept na n-Éces
http://www.nordic-life.org/nmh/AuraiceptEngOriginal.htm
"Query, was there not among the many languages something nobler to take
precedence of Gaelic ? Not hard. No indeed, on account of its aptness,
lightness, smoothness, and comprehensive ness. Wherefore is it-more
comprehensive than any speech? Not hard. Because it was the first speech
that was brought from the Tower, it was of such extent that it was more
comprehensive than any speech so that it was the one to be published at first."
The fourth book in the Auraicept na n-Éces, is the Book of Cenn Faelad, a
well authenticated person who died A.D. 679, and the core of the material
has been dated to the 7C. It appears that the Auraicept na n-Éces was a
primer used ion the bard schools. Calder translates it as the Scholars
Primer, but as i found out after a year and a half of asking, a more literal
translation would be
The working methods/systems/ (uaraicept) of the Knowing Ones - na n-Éces
I first found it around the time i found the imbas forosnai, and one look
will tell you this is Medieval quantum linguistics, and the ogham scales and
tall stories and head-crunchingly complex rules of grammer it lays out, is
so daunting to try and take on, it is no wonder people pretend it just
doesn't exist, as it really puts it up to the potential poet - have a look
at this and then lets talk poems kinda gig.
I have been banging my head on it for five years and there are some
interesting and highly poetic ideas embodied in it. The Tudor poets had a
lot of bluff to work with, whereas this stuff is all there in black and
white, the history of Gaelic letters all in head-wrecking apple pie order.
With this stuff, you can only go at it by instinct and in your own way. The
essential pattern of my learning method, seems to be overload, read, read,
don't make head nor tale and let it percolate over time, so this stuff, the
Cauldron poem and the one unifying thread which culminates at the word
Poetry, is a sort of 50/50 binary start, which ties into the higher learning
that basically routes to God (who, if there are any aetheists reading,
doesn't exist) being not He, but s/he, and my own theory that there is an
original Gaia-like poetic which existed prior to the Bronze Age Collapse
once Iron technology appeared and Gaia got supplanted by the He gods of
Appollo and Zeus, her grandkids, and so pretty much as Graves has it,
Ireland was the last place of this 50/50 s/he Poetic in which there is
balance generally. Not a difficult or illogical assertion to make when we
consider that the druids segued into the bards with minimal disruption.
Consider this passage from the start of the second book of the Auraicept na
n-Éces, after the tall tales of Fenius and getting down to the nuts and
bolts of grammer.
"Two divisions, i.e., two true arrangements, or two true other things, or
two true folds, or two intensive goings, or two intensive divisions, or two
supreme folds, or two goings on them, or two divisions on them, or two
distributions on them."
Beautiful in its own way, raw text to make poetry with.
Two true divisions, arrangements, folds, things, intensive divisions,
supreme folds, goings, distributions
And it is immediately followed
"These are the three or and the three er and the three fir of the Primer.
What are the two, three, four, and five folds of the Primer ? Not hard. Full
tone and diphthong, the two folds of the vowels: semivowels, mutes, and
aspirates are the three folds of the consonants, to wit: when there are four
of them, however, two folds of the vowels and two of the consonants, i.e.,
semivowels and mutes, for h is a mute. When there are five of them, however,
that is, two folds of the vowels and three of the consonants."
This is the part the student had to master, a tiny part, one paragraph in
the whole mass of grammatical studies. And there are gems of arresting word
combos in among the gloop, for example the below edit of a very large
paragraph cutting out the gloop
~
"Consanants - beautiful, bright, santily, delicate, owing to the smallness
of their sound... vowel is a voice foundation, voice path, it finds voice by
itself"
The most poetically sensible rendering of how the natural way of letters
works is in this edited squib
"there is science of law in the chief poet’s place, that is, there is
science out of you, quoth the disciple to the master.
Its meaning further, in the nature of the vowel and the consonant, letters
fall, shine, show, come.
They fall into letters, i.e., they are converted out of that primary nature
into letters.
They shine, i.e., out of these letters into words.
They show to the learned out of them, to wit, their meanings and their
character.
They come out of those words into texts, and series of proverb, commentary,
and poetic composition......
--------------------------------------------------------
..five forms of ae are in existence, ae that nourishes while it is on the
mind, that sings at giving it, that sues while asking the reward for it,
that judges its greatness or its smallness, and that sits after being paid
his reward. "
We are also informed of the five species of language Fenius invented:
"..five species of the Selected Language, viz.: Language of the Irish,
Commentaries of the Poets, Parted Language, Obscure Language of the Poets
through which each of them addresses his fellow, and iarmbérla such as:
Cuic, a secret."
~
Irish language scholars are a highly specialized bunch, a bit like my
sisters eldest daughter who lived in Spain till she was ten with her younger
sister and brother, and now at 13 lives in Rome with her mum and Roman
father. Even at the age of six when you would ask her what a Spanish word
was in English, she had copped on that language was power and wouldn't tell
me, the little tyke. The Irish language scholars are a bit like that, but i
lurk on the Old Irish listerve and there is a man in America Dennis King who
seems to be the most convincing head there. In Trinity it is Katherine Simms
who wrote a very informative paper on The Poetic Brehon Lawyers, here:
http://www.humnet.ucla.edu/humnet/celtic/22papers/simms.pdf
~
As regrards your comments on extemporisation, I think you have a point.
Apparently at the top grade a poet would be expected to be able to compose
extempore, and because they were trained to compose entirely in the mind
before setting it down on velum, and because they had to commit to memory
the 350 tales in the corpus and have memory as the central component of
their practice, i imagine this would have happened. However, like rappers
today who engage in extemporised battles at the mic, i imagine a lot of the
extempore verse would be stock stuff they could trot out as if they had just
composed it on the fly.
The Irish example you ask of, appears in The Memoirs of the Marquis of
Clanricarde, (Ulick de Burgh - 1604-1657) which was first published in 1722
and Osborn Bergin recounts a three page section of in his 1912 lecture on
Bardic Poetry, which appears at the front of the book Bardic Poetry: Texts
and Translations, published in 1970 after Bergin's poems translations were
collected and published by the Dublin Instititute of Advanced Studies:
http://www.celt.dias.ie/publications/cat/f/f3-10.html
"The best description of a bardic school or college, is in the Memoirs of
the Marquis of Clanricarde, published in 1722, which gives a fair idea of
the training as practised in the early seventeeth century. The manners of
the professional classes in Ireland, indeed the whole structure of society,
were so wonderfully conservative that Clanricarde's description will
probably hold good for several centuries earlier."
de Burgh tells of the incident you mention, just after giving a description
of the school and how the poets were taught:
"The qualifications first required were reading well, writing the
mother-tongue, and a strong memory. It was likewise necessary the place
should be in the solitary recess of a garden or within a sept or enclosure
far out of reach of any noise, which an intercourse of people might
otherwise occassion.
The structure was a snug low hut, and beds in it at convenient distances,
each within a small apartment without much furniture of any kind, save only
a table, some seats and a conveniency for cloaths to hang upon. No windows
to let in the day, nor any light at all used but that of candles. The
students upon thorough examination being first divided into classes, wherein
a regard was had to everyone's age genius, and the schooling had before, if
any at all, or otherwise.
The professors (one or more as there was occasion) gave a Subject suitable
to the capacity of each class, determining the number of rhymes, and
clearing what was to be chiefly observed therein as to syllables. quartans,
concord, correspondence, termination and union, each of which were
restrained by peculiar rules. The said Subject (either one or more as
aforesaid) having been given overnight, they worked on it apart each by
himself upon his own bed, the whole next day in the dark, till at a certain
hour in the night, lights being brought in, they committed it to writing.
Being afterwards dressed and come together into a large room, where the
masters waited, each scholar gave in his performance, which being corrected
or approved of (according as it required) either the same or fresh Subjects
were given the next day."
~
The extempore bluff you refer to is recounted by Clanricarde in the Memoir.
A Munster rhymer had written a praise poem for a McCarthy aristocrat, which
offended the Earl of Thomond, Donnagh O'Brian, who promised to severley
chastize the poet when they met. The poet kept out of his way for a few
years until travelling along a road with his wife and there was no way to
avoid an encounter:
"There being no probability of escaping, the poet told his wife that he
would feign himself dead of a sudden, which she should humour by crying over
him; that if the earl asked the reason she should not conceal his name, but
beg forgiveness for the great folly he had been guilty of against the
lordship and family. The woman acted her part to the life, and the earl when
he was come up, being told whose the corpse was, he had the curiosity to put
questions himself to her, and asked whether the poet had repented of his
undutiful expression with relation to the O'Brians. The woman answered he
did heartily, and that being surprised upon sight of his lordship's
equipage, the horror of his own guilt most sensibly touching him, he fell
down dead on the spot.....being moved by compassion he (the earl) threw down
the woman some gold to bury her husband.
This being over, the reputed dead man springs up in an instant, and taking
hold of the reins of the horse on which the earl was mounted, pronounded a
very exquisite poem in his praise which brought him into full favour again.
It was pretended his piece was extemporary, and made by the poet whislt he
lay there as dead. But it is probably he composed it before at his
leisure....for the nature of the poem and great beauty of it shows it was a
work of study and time."
There is about half of what appears in Bergin's lecture, a page and a half
at this link.
http://books.google.ie/books?id=oVaUkHKOyLAC&pg=PA133&lpg=PA133&dq=%22concerning+the+poetical+seminary+or+school%22&source=bl&ots=L26uOTU0-h&sig=m71f3GMYsM5q84tnC6ZvZWUAbUw&hl=en&ei=AhJJSqywN4WF-Qad0skN&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1
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