Ireland the highest grade of fili, the ollam, had a standing in law equivalent to
that of a king or bishop. Patron and poet had a symbiotic relationship that
could be seen as almost conjugal in nature: the Indian purohita-, the poet-
sacrificer, was attached to his king in a ceremony that echoed the marriage
liturgy, and the poet in Ireland and Wales could be represented figuratively as
the spouse or lover of his patron.^11
The position of the poet in ancient India and medieval Ireland has
provided scholars with much further material for comparison.^12 In both
countries poetry was a hereditary profession that ran in certain families, the
art passing from father to son, as in the six families of Rishis responsible for
books 2–7 of the Rigveda. The poet had to acquire all the technical aspects of
the art and master an extensive body of traditional subject matter. This meant
a long period of rigorous training. Caesar says that the Druidic syllabus might
occupy up to twenty years. The fili, according to early Irish texts, trained for
seven years, attaining successive grades. He had to learn by heart a very large
number of narratives and genealogies in addition to other lore.^13 For the
education of the Brahman the Laws of Manu specify thirty-six years.
Thefinished poet in some cases had a stable relationship with a particular
noble prince or family; in other cases he travelled about with his dependants,
attaching himself to one court after another. For the services he rendered in
glorifying his patron he could expect handsome recompense. Both Indian
and Celtic poets were rewarded with gifts of horses and cattle, whereupon the
donor received further praise for his liberality.^14 According to one Irish source
the rewards for different fili grades ranged from one calf to ten cows, which
was the equivalent of five horses, a chariot, or a slave-woman. Vedic poets
(e.g. RV 1. 126; 6. 27. 8; 7. 18. 22 f.; 8. 2. 42, 19. 36 f., 46. 22–4) gratefully
record their patrons’ gifts of quantities of horses, chariots, cattle, and women.
Very similar acknowledgements appear in some of the early Welsh heroic
poems; one would think they were documents of the same culture.^15 If the
patron was mean, the poet could publicize that too. Zarathushtra (Y. 44. 18 f.)
(^11) P. Mac Cana, ‘The poet as spouse of his patron’,Ériu 39 (1988), 79–85. The title purohita-
means ‘praepositus’, and indicates his high position at court: Campanile (1977), 31 n. 51.
(^12) See Campanile–Orlandi–Sani (1974); Dillon (1975), 52–69; Campanile (1977), 27–33;
(1990b), 49–53; Watkins (1995), 71–8; Sergent (1995), 388.
(^13) See Thurneysen (1921), 66–70; D. Ó hAodha in Tristram (1991), 207 f.
(^14) Campanile (1977), 37–47; (1990b), 77–9, 82; Meid (1990), 15–17; Watkins (1994), 388,
538, 676; (1995), 73 f., 78–80, 115, 186 f.
(^15) Marwnad Cunedda 31–5 (Book of Taliesin 69 f.), Trawsganu Kynan Garwyn 1–24 (Book of
Taliesin 45), trs. in Koch–Carey (2000), 291, 301. For praises of the patron’s liberality see ibid.
343, 345, 350. A seventeenth-century Gaelic lament for four Macdonalds still praises their
generous gifts to poets of clothes, horses, and gold cups: K. H. Jackson, A Celtic Miscellany
(Harmondsworth 1971), 238.
30 1. Poet and Poesy