Indo-European Poetry and Myth

I counsel thee, Loddfáfnir, and take thou my counsel:

profit shalt thou, if thou takest it,

good thy gain, if thou learnest.

Thefirst line here very much resembles the Homeric formula, which may
have served a similar purpose in pre-Homeric gnomic poetry.

Assemblies and contests

For all the importance of the poet’s relationship to his patron, he was not a
closeted courtier but a public figure. The subject of encomiastic poetry, after
all, wanted his praises to be heard as widely as possible. He sought fame and
prestige by the liberality of his sacrifices, which meant feasts for crowds and a
captive audience for his eulogies. And the tales of past heroes that the poet
had to tell were interesting and beguiling to all.
It was a feature of Indo-European societies that the people, or the body of
fighting men, ‘came together’ at intervals for assemblies at which judicial and
other decisions were made.^123 Caesar (Bell. Gall. 6. 13. 10) tells of the annual
conventions in central Gaul to which all the Druids came and dispensed
justice to everyone who needed it. At all such events, one may suppose, poets
were in evidence and entertained the company with their songs. Pseudo-
Scymnus (186) notes of the Celts: σ7ν μουσικHι δ’Eγουσι τα`  $κκλησα,
‘they hold their assemblies with music’. These are what became the Welsh
eisteddfodau, still noted today (after their revival in the nineteenth century) as
festivals at which bards and minstrels compete for prizes. The most famous
of the Irish conventions, those at Tailtiu (Teltown), ‘seem to have been a
combination of political decision-making assembly, market, and poetic and
musical entertainment’.^124
Contests between rival poets are an ancient feature of such gatherings.
Some allusions in the Rigveda imply competition among Rishis, represented
figuratively as a chariot-race or a fight.^125 In some passages the term
samaryám is used, meaning a ‘sending together’ in the sense of a contest;
Durante has argued for a Greek cognate *JμKρο to account for the Achaean

(^123) Sergent (1995), 302 f., 314 f. The ‘coming together’ is expressed in the Sanskrit sám-iti-
(meeting, council, assembly) and the parallel Latin com-itia; cf. Tac. Germ. 11. 1, coeunt... certis
diebus, cum aut incohatur luna aut impletur.
(^124) Dooley–Roe (1999), 228.
(^125) e.g. RV 1. 157. 2, 167. 10, 178. 4; 2. 16. 7; 3. 8. 5; 4. 16. 21; 5. 44. 7; 6. 34. 1, 66. 11; 7. 23. 1 f.,

34. 1; 9. 110. 2; 10. 128. 1; F. B. J. Kuiper, IIJ 4 (1960), 217–80; G. Dunkel, JIES 7 (1979), 249–72.

72 1. Poet and Poesy