Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 15, 1904.djvu/28

 14 system of philosophy, mythology, and history is carefully handed down orally from generation to generation. The Vedic schools of India, where the early Vedas have been handed down from the days of the collection of the Rishis' songs, long before Alexander and Buddha, to our own days, by the carefully trained memories of master and pupil, give an example of the possibility of exact transmission in a stable society for many generations. Exact dates in the present uncertain state of Indian chronology are hard to get.

The secular or bardic schools of mediæval Ireland comprised a twelve-year course; that is to say, a pupil could not compass it in less than twelve years. These schools were undoubtedly the successors of the kind of school that Cæsar's Druids kept. We have some certain information as to the work they did. In the first year the pupils, memory was tested by the learning of twenty tales in prose, seven as Ollaire, three as Taman, ten as Drisac, so that when he became Fochluc he had learnt elementary grammar, certain poems, and ten more tales, and was regarded as a person capable of the minor kinds of poetry. In his third year as Mac Fuirmedh he went on with grammar, philosophy, poetry and ten new tales. In his fourth year as