BARDIC SCHOOLS, LEARNED FAMILIESLaw Schools
Originally church schools played a key role in reducing
the mass of inherited Irish customary law to written
texts between the seventh and the ninth centuries, and
then examining these texts in detail through glosses
and commentaries. These secular studies were dis-
continued by the twelfth-century Continental monas-
ticorders, and for a while in the later thirteenth century,
Irish annals record no scholars of native law, whether
clerics or laymen. Once again the first signs of revival
appear in Uí Maine. The Mac Áeducáin (Egan, Keegan)
family were lay landowners under the rule of the
Ua Cellaig chiefs, who had become experts in Old Irish
customary law by the beginning of the fourteenth cen-
tury. In 1309, Gilla na Náem mac Duinnsléibe Meic
Áeducáin was the first to be described as “ollam[pro-
fessor] of Connacht in law,” a “chief master of juris-
prudence.” In all, some forty members of this family
were noted in the Irish annals, the overwhelming
majority as experts in law. Their most famous school
was that of Mac Áeducáin of Ormond in North Tipperary,
but another was sited in Dún Daigre (Duniry, County
Galway), and the family established separate branches,
serving Anglo-Irish lords and Irish chieftains of
Connacht, Meath, Longford, and north and south
Munster. Their most famous manuscript, the early-
fifteenth-centuryLeabhar Breac (Speckled Book) of
Duniry, shows that their schools were not confined to
copying, glossing, and commenting on the law tracts,
since much of this book’s contents consists of religious
tracts and saints’ lives from the pre-reform church
schools of the twelfth century. In the Ua Briain
(O’Brien) lordship of Thomond (County Clare), lawyers
of the Mac Áeducáin family were rivalled by the almost
equally prolific Mac Fhlannchada (MacClancy) law
school, and the more-localized Ua Duib dá Boirenn
(O’Davoren) school, serving the Ua Lochlainn
(O’Loughlin) chiefs of the Burren, County Clare. To the
scribes of this latter school we owe many surviving
copies of Old Irish law tracts. Other less prominent law
schools were those of the Ua Deoradáin (O’Doran) fam-
ily in Leinster, Ua Breisléin (O’Breslin) in Fermanagh,
and Mac Birrthagra (MacBerkery) in Eastern Ulster.
Medical Schools
Because later Irish annals concentrate on Connacht and
Ulster, learned families from other parts of Ireland are
often best known by the manuscripts they left behind.
This is especially true of the medical families, many
of whom were located in the south of Ireland, such as
the Ua hIceda (O’Hickey), Ua Cuinn (Quin), Ua Laide,
Mac an Lega (both anglicized as “Lee”) physicians of
Munster, the Ua Bolgaide (Bolger) family in Leinster,
and the Ua Cenndubáin (Canavan) physicians of south
Connacht. Better-documented by the annals were the
Ua Siadail (O’Shiel), Ua Duinnsléibe (Dunlevy), and
Ua Caiside (Cassidy) families of Longford, Donegal,
and Fermanagh respectively. Medical schools were the
exception to other centers of bardic learning in that
their Irish medical tracts were translations of Latin
textbooks from contemporary Continental schools of
medicine, giving their patrons the benefit of the latest
scientific advances, such as they were. Their pupils,
however, shared the basic training in Irish spelling,
grammar, and metrics which was common to all the
bardic schools, and men from medical families often
served as scribes, compiling learned anthologies of
history, poetry, and law in the other schools.
The music of harp and tympanum (an instrument
like a zither) was also studied in bardic schools, and
we know the names of leading musicians’ families,
Ua Coinnecáin (Cunningham) and Mac Cerbaill
(MacCarvill). However, no Irish musical notation has
survived from the medieval period.
KATHARINE SIMMSReferences and Further Reading
Breatnach, Liam, ed. Uraicecht na Riar: The Poetic Grades in
Early Irish Law. Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced
Studies, 1987.
Caerwyn Williams, John E. The Court Poet in Medieval Ireland.
London: British Academy, 1971.
Carney, James. The Irish Bardic Poet. Dublin: The Dolmen
Press, 1967.
———. “The Ó Cianáin Miscellany.” Ériu21 (1969): 122–147.
Henry, Françoise, and Geneviève Marsh-Micheli. “Manuscripts
and Illuminations.” In New History of Ireland 2, edited by Art
Cosgrove, 780–815. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987.
MacCana, Proinsias, “The Rise of the Later Schools of Filid-
heacht.” Ériu25 (1974): 126–146.
Murphy, Gerard. “Bards and Filidh.” Éigse2 (1940): 200–207.
Ó Cuív, Brian, ed. Seven Centuries of Irish Learning. Dublin:
Stationery Office, 1961.
Ó Muraíle, Nollaig. A Celebrated Antiquary. Maynooth,
Ireland: An Sagart Press, 1996.
O’Rahilly, Thomas F. “Irish Poets, Historians and Judges in
English Documents, 1538–1615.” Proceedings of the Royal
Irish Academy36 (1921–1924): 86–120.
Simms, Katharine. “The Brehons of Later Medieval Ireland.” In
Brehons, Serjeant and Attorneys, edited by Daire Hogan and
W.Nial Osborough, 51–76. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1990.
———. “Literacy and the Irish Bards.” In Literacy in Medieval
Celtic Societies, edited by Huw Pryce, 238–258. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1998.
Walsh, Paul. Irish Men of Learning. Edited by Colm O’Lochlainn.
Dublin: Three Candles Press, 1947.
See alsoÁes Dána; Duanairí;Education; Law
Schools, Learned Families; Medicine; Scriptoria;
Historical Tales; Dinnsenchas; Genealogy;
Grammatical Treatises; Law Tracts; Lyrics;
Metrics; Wisdom Texts; Poetry, Irish;