Irish Druids and Old Irish Religions

Irish Bards. 41
rattlin^fT^ and connected by a flexible shank. The coni was
a metallic horn ;
the drum, or tioiiipan, was a tabor
;
the
piob-inda, or bagpipes, were borrowed from the far East
;
bellows to the bag thereof were not seen till the sixteenth
century. The Irish us^d fogkair, or whole tones, and/^^^^//^/>beg,
or semi -tones. The cor, or harmony, was cJiruisich,
treble, and croiian, base. The names of clefs were from the
Latin. In most ancient languages the same word is used
for Bard and Sage. Lonnrot found not a parish among
the Karelians w^ithout several Bards. Ouatrefages speaks
''
of Bardic contests thus : The two bards start strophe after
strophe, each repeating at first that which the other had
said. The song only stops with the learning of one of
the two."
Walker ungallantly wrote, " We cannot find that the Irish
had female Bards," while admitting that females cried the
Caoinc over the dead. Yet in CatJduina we read, " The
daughter of Moran seized
the
the harp, and her voice of music
praised the strangers. Their souls melted at the song, like
the wreath of snow before the eye of the sun."
The Court Bards w^ere required, says Dr. O'Donovan,
to have ready seven times fifty chief stories, and twice
fifty sub-stories, to repeat before the Irish King and his
chiefs. Conor Mac Neasa, King of Ulster, had three
thousand Bards, gathered from persecuting neighbouring
chiefs.
" Musician, herald, bard, thrice may'st thou be renowned.
And with three several wreaths immortally be crowned."
BrehoHs— Breitheamhain—were legislative Bards and,
;
said Walker, in 1786, they '' promulgated the laws in a kind
of recitative, or monotonous chant, seated on an eminence in
the open air." According to McCurtin, the Irish l^ards of
the sixth century wore long, flowing garments, Irin^cel and
ornamented with needlework. In a Life of Coluiiiba, 1827,