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Astronomy and the physical sciences, as well as the knowledge of "the nature of the eternal God," were, according to Caesar, extensively studied in the Gallic schools. Some elements of those intellectual pursuits may also have occupied the attention of the Irish student during the twelve, fifteen, or twenty years of his preparation for being ordained to the highest degree of ollamh.
It must have been true only with regard to their mode of teaching, in that they gave no books to their pupils, but confined themselves to oral instruction. The order of Ollamh comprised various sub-orders of learned men. And the first of these deserving our attention is the class of "Seanchaidhe," pronounced Shanachy.
In this passage he gives us a glimpse of a system which he had not studied sufficiently to embrace in its entirety. The qualifications of an ollamh which we have just enumerated, that is to say, of the highest doctor in Celtic countries, already prove how their literature grew out of the clan system.
The ollamh seems to have been the historian of the monarch of the whole country; the shanachy had the care of provincial records.
The Chiefs of territories sat, each in an appointed seat, under his own shield; the seats being arranged by order of the Ollamh, or Recorder, whose duty it was to preserve the muster-roll, containing the names of all the living nobles. The Champions, or leaders of military bands, occupied a secondary position, each sitting' under his own shield.
"Don't be after giving me away to the Chief and the Senior that believe me, by me own account, to be descended from Ollamh Fodla, that was King of Tara, and owned the cow-grazing from Trim to Athboy, and ate boiled turnips off shields of gold before potatoes were invented, when the bog-oaks were growing as acorns on the tree.
The "flight" itself and all its details are given by the Rev. C. P. Meehan. The entire number of souls on board the small vessel which bore them away was, according to Teigue O'Keenan, Ollamh of Maguire, "ninety-nine, having little sea-store, and being otherwise miserably accommodated."
Hence the professions of ollamh, shanachy, bard, brehon, physician, passed from father to son a very injudicious arrangement apparently, but it seems nevertheless to have worked well in Ireland.
The highest in rank, the ollamh, knew 350 kinds of verse and could recite 250 principal and 100 secondary stories. The ollamhs lived at the court of the kings and the nobles, who granted them freehold lands; their persons and their property were sacred; and they had established in Ireland schools in which the people might learn history, poetry, and law.
Occasionally, as in the case of the Ollamh Fodla, by whom the halls of Tara are reputed to have been built, the king was himself the bard, and so combined both offices, but this appears to have been rare. Even as late as the sixteenth century, refusal of praise from a bard was held to confer a far deeper and more abiding stigma upon a man than blame from any other lips.
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