Uosal Institution of ffireat Britain, 



WEEKLY EVENING MEETING, 

 Friday, January 26, 1894. 



Basil Woodd Smith, Esq. F.R.A.S. F.S.A. Vice-President, 

 in the Chair, 



Alfred Perceval Graves, Esq. M,A. 



Old Irish Song. 



In the dim morning twilight of Ancient Erin, legend describes her 

 Fileas, or musical bards, as constant attendants upon the king and 

 chieftain. 



As Mr. Alfred M„ Williams, the American critic, picturesquely 

 puts the tradition, " Surrounded by the Orsidigh, or instrumental 

 musicians, who fulfilled the function of a modern military band, they 

 watched his progress in battle for the purpose of describing his feats 

 in arms, composed birthday odes and epithalamia, aroused the spirits 

 of clansmen with war songs, and lamented the dead in the caoines, or 

 keens, which are still heard in the wilder and more primitive regions 

 of Ireland." 



We must, of course, discount much of the legendary colour which 

 enthusiasts like Walker take on trust. But this is the picture of the 

 early Irish bard presented to us by the chroniclers. Amongst other 

 privileges, he wore a tartan with only one shade of colour less than 

 that upon the king's robe, and his assassination involved a blood- 

 penalty inferior only to the royal eric. But before attaining such 

 high honours, he had to satisfy the moral requirements of " purity of 

 hand, bright without wounding, purity of mouth without poisonous 

 satire, purity of learning without reproach, purity as a husband in 

 wedlock." 



He had, moreover, to pass through a decidedly arduous courtship 

 of the Muse before lie was entitled to claim her favour ; indeed, some 

 writers go so far as to say that, like the patriarch, he had to serve 

 seven years for her, committing to memory an almost incredible 

 number of earlier compositions, and giving the closest study to the 

 laws of verse, before he could become a poet on his own account. 



When it is added that these laws of Irish verse, as finally formu- 

 lated by the early Celtic professors, were the most complicated ever 

 invented — not only limiting the sense within the stanza, but fixing 

 the amount of alliteration and the number of syllables in each line, 

 to say nothing of their assonantal requirements — we may well under- 

 stand that although Early Irish verse may be granted, according to 

 Professor Atkinson, to be the most perfectly harmonious combinations 

 of sounds that the world has ever known, it must also be conceded 



Vol. XIV. (No. 88.) n 



