Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 15, 1904.djvu/30

 16 curse performed in heathen fashion, with one foot, one hand, one eye, and one breath, could cause death. He was an augur and could interpret dreams and find lucky days. He could hide his clients from their foes under magic fogs or by means of shape-changing. He could make a lethe-drink, could raise the elements, and by his magic wisp, the dlui fulle, he could cause insanity or idiocy. The privileges of the poets were so great, and such full advantage was taken of them, that they were twice publicly attacked, and only saved by powerful intercession. Public banquets were made in honour of the poets as late as 1451, and their circuits were continual sources of easy emolument. There was every encouragement for a man of good birth, fine wit, to enter the Ollamh's school, and become historian, poet, tale-teller, or judge, to his clan. For from the ranks of trained scholars the hereditary poets and judges (brehons) were chosen. Remnants of this organisation went on to the beginning of the seventeenth century, when it passed away after at least 1800 years of existence from the days of Cæsar to those of James II. The oral teaching in the little dark huts of the scholars that flocked from various quarters, the system of memorising vast masses of verse and prose, dealing with various natural and human phenomena deemed of the highest importance, the privileges of the doctors and the generous maintenance of the scholars, were alike under