Page:The Celtic Review volume 3.djvu/91

76 peaceful branch’ before they will be subdued. In Emain Macha, the palace of the Ulster king, which stood near the present city of Armagh, there were three separate courts or halls for the warriors of the Red Branch; one of these called, from the sparkling of the sunlight upon the weapons, the Teite Brecc, or ‘Speckled House, was kept exclusively for the weapons of the warriors, because, as we are told, it was not safe to have them hung in the banqueting-house, so frequently would the feasts have ended in blood had the weapons been at hand. The shaking of the bardic wand to preserve or restore peace is worthy of notice. These wands seem to have been little spikes or crescents, with gently-tinkling bells upon them, the shaking of which quieted the most turbulent assembly. Sencha, the bard alluded to above, who is called ‘the pacificator of the hosts of Ulad, and the man most eloquent of the men of the world, three fair words from whom would pacify the men of the earth, from sunrise to sunset,’ is described as carrying at his shoulder ‘a bronze branch’ (Mesca Ulad, p. 39). Even he, however, does not seem always to have ventured to interpose his authority (ibid., p. 11).

Again, in the Agallamh an dá Shuadh, or the ‘Dialogue of the two Sages,’ the symbol is thus described: ‘Neidhe (a youthful bard) made his journey with a silver branch over him. The anradhs, or poets of the second order, carried a silver branch, but the ollamhs, or chief poets, carried a branch of gold; all the other poets bore a branch of bronze.’

Only the king and the bard possessed this power of quelling strife, but we do not read that the king exercised it outside the walls of his palace, where he frequently struck what seems to have been a sort of pillar of bronze, or perhaps a gong, with his silver wand. The bards, however, interposed, as Diodorus observes, between fighting armies, and commanded them to desist, a command which they seldom seem to have dreamed of disobeying.

(To be continued.) .