has always been the Ir. word for poet, and it is unfortunate that a considerable body of Ir. poetry, (filidheacht, filíocht )is called in Eng. “bardic” poetry, with the misleading suggestion that it is the work of the Ir. bard. The word ƒ. is cognate with the Welsh gwel(-ed )(”to see”) and originally the ƒ. was the “seer,” the “diviner”; hence it does not occasion surprise that ƒ. and drui (”druid”) were at one time interchangeable words, and that some of the knowledge of the ƒ. was then regarded as knowledge gained by means of occult practices. However, the ƒ gained most of his knowledge by the more usual process of learning at school—there were special schools for filid —and the knowledge thus gained was always regarded as an important part of his qualifications. The ƒ. in earlier times was not sharply distinguished from the breithem , “judge” (literally, the maker of judgments) and the senchaid , “historian,” “reciter of lore”; indeed, it is possible that at one time he combined their functions with his own, and that their emergence as separate classes is the result of specialization. The ƒ. was from the beginning a member of an important and highly organized corporation classed among the saer-nemed (privileged classes). There were seven grades of filid , the highest being the ollam filed , a fully qualified ƒ. appointed to the service of a king. A ƒ. was usually attached to the household of a chief, his calling was hereditary, and the office of ƒ. to the head of a clan was, in later times at any rate, often the prerogative of a particular family. He was at all times distinguished from the bard , whose qualifications and status were inferior. The word bard is derived from the Celtic bardos , who, among the Gauls, was predominantly the “singer of praise.” It is sometimes assumed that the ƒ. arrogated to himself the function of the bard as a singer of praise (as well as a proclaimer of satire) and that this function as such was overshadowed by those which he must have undertaken in part from the druid at the advent of Page 413 Christianity. However that may be, singing the praise of his chief was the foremost function of the ƒ. in the Middle Ages.
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