·called) was t9 recite· the poetys _ coinp1ositions. Ana then the poem~ were ·chanted, not sung. The chant was done to the iaecompaniment of -the Cruitire (Harper) lwho, we presume, either pluycd an aclcompaniment he had already learned or improvi:sed one t:o suit the sentiments expressed in the poem. The File and his retinue attached themselves to the prince of a clan, and such st'Ore did some of these princ.es set 1by the dompo.sitions of 1a famous poet that the sum of £600 is said to have been paid on one !occasion for a single poem. I have already .said that DonEgal ·t.vas famous for its Bards. Few of us perhaps realise that the townland of Lettermaoaward, on one side of the Giweebarra Bridge, derives it:s name from the bestkm:>wn of the Bardic Clans, the !Clan "Mac an Bhaird" (son of the bard). There is a strong traditi:on, too, that there l\Vas a Bardic School in Glencolumcille. The Male 'an ,Bhaird poets attached themselves tb the O'Donnells, princeis of Tirconaill, and the most illustrious among them was Eoghan Ruadh iMac an Bhaird who, · 1according to the Annals of the Four Masters, 1Was "lhe last Chief Ollamh to the O'Donnell in i;::!oetry". :Eoghan acompanied the Earls of Tirconaill and Tireoghain to Rome in 11607. 'Two years 1afterwar.ds he wrote the famous poem beginning with the words, A Bihe1t'~n a fuair Faill, which 1was translated by Clarence l\fang1an ~nd entitled "Oh woman of the piercing 'Wail." .The poem represents Nuala, sister of the O'IDonnells, mourning alone over the graves :of her· two brothers, Rory and Cathbarr, in 1R0irr..e. The Bardic :schools flourished from the 13th to the 17th century. ,But after the battle of Kins1ale and the flight of the Earls the ·main prop of the siehools w.as broken. True it is that the poets continued to write in the bardic metre, and 'some of their finest poems kept appearing untii 165·0 or later. But with s1ch:ools 1and patrons gone the output and quality were bound to decline. ERA OF SONGS-And now began another era, He na n-Amhran or the Era of the Songs. We saw that the Bards ·compJsed poems which were meant to be 1Chanted to an, accompaniment played on tpe harp. Now we come to .a new type of poe'try, the Amhran i0r Song. In the bardic poems each line had a certain number of syllables and was ·constructed after the style of the ancient ciompositions such as the Ode;s of Pindar and Hor!ace ; moreover, the verse had to conform to a very rigid pattern of assonances. In the Amhrain, strict metrical composi1tion was sacrificed and the less exacting method adopted of 'Constructing a line which depended for its rhythm not on fixed metrical standards but on stress of voice or on a fixed number of feet, regardles1s of syUables. The assonance, however, had to be observed. It is in this form that we have the best our our traditional Gaelic son.gs. With regar.d to the compo1sition of these old songs it is interesting to note that the technique employed 1was the reverse of mlodern methods. Whereas, at present, the lyric appears first ,and then the musician composos a melody to suit the words, the lyric..iwriters iof the 17th 295
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