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Lay Schools and Schools of Philosophy
lower classes of the English lived in Ireland in his day
for the sake of study, and while some of them became
monks, others preferred to give themselves over to getting
an education, passing from one professor's house to another.
These foreigners, Bede adds, were cheerfully received
by the Irish, who provided them with food and shelter,
books andteachingjWithoutpaymentofanykind. 1
Doubt-
less most of these Anglo-Saxon students pursued their
studies in the monastic colleges, but others must have
studied in the lay schools as well. They would all carry
a knowledge of Irish and of Irish poetry back to their
own country and'we have to keep facts such as these in
mind in considering the early sources of English litera-
ture.
The masters, according to the old Irish law tracts, were
also answerable for the misdeeds of the students, except
in one case only, namely, when the scholar was a foreigner
and paid for his food and education. The degrees of
wisdom were given in the lay schools as in the monastic
schools, and the laws describe these learned degrees
minutely, giving the Irish name of each, and the number
of years of study required to attain them. Thus the
highest degree in poetry, as in other branches of study,
was the ollamh (ollave), and then after one another,
according to their rank, came the Cli, the Cana, the Doss,
the MacFuirmeadh, and the Forloc. The students pursued
their learning for twelve years or perhaps more. At
last when a poet graduated as an ollamh he knew 350 kinds
of versification and was able to repeat 250 prime stories
and a hundred stories of the second rank. We still have
the remains of the books from which the poets drew their
knowledge. 2
1 EC. Hist., Book III, XXVII.
2 Book of Ballymote, H. 2.12, a parchment MS. in Trinity College, Dublin.
See Hyde, MacTernan Prize Essays II, Irish Poetry, p. 65.
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