When Christianity took hold in Ireland, the druids gradually disappeared as a religious class. But part of their knowledge survived through another group of specialists, the filid (singular fili), the learned poets. Keepers of genealogy, history and law, masters of the word, the filid enjoyed enormous prestige and a feared power: satire, which according to tradition could wound and even kill.
Druids, vates and bards
Classical authors describe three classes of honoured men among the Gauls: the bards, singers of praise and satire; the vates, who dealt with divination and sacrifice; and the druids, philosophers and theologians. In Ireland the picture is different but similar in spirit. The fili seems to have gathered in himself some of the functions of the vates, including seership: the term is linked to a root meaning «to see». The Irish bard, by contrast, was a poet of lower rank, without the full training of the fili.
Grades and training
Medieval Irish legal treatises describe the filid as a class organised in grades. The highest was that of ollam, the master poet, who enjoyed an «honour price» equal to that of the king of a small kingdom. Each grade corresponded to a number of compositions known and to specific privileges: the size of the retinue, the right to hospitality, the reward for a poem.
Training was long, took place in poetic schools and was based on memory. The future fili had to learn:
- the traditional tales, classified by type (destructions, cattle raids, wooings, voyages, deaths);
- the genealogies of noble families;
- the poetic metres, numerous and complex;
- the lore of places, the dindshenchas;
- grammar and the archaic language of the law.
The Irish bardic schools survived, in renewed forms, until the seventeenth century, when the collapse of the Gaelic aristocracy brought them to an end.
Praise and blame
The social function of the fili was twofold. With praise he honoured the king or lord, fixed his fame and guaranteed his memory. With satire he could take honour away: in a society where honour was worth as much as life, satire was a real weapon.
| Function | Effect | Target |
|---|---|---|
| Praise | increases honour and fame | the generous lord |
| Satire | removes honour, shames | whoever refuses hospitality or reward |
| Memory | preserves genealogies and tales | the whole community |
Blisters on the face
Irish tradition attributed physical effects to satire. The glossary attributed to Cormac, a text from the early centuries of the Irish Middle Ages, tells the story of the poet Néde. King Caier, his uncle, had adopted Néde as his heir; but the king's wife fell in love with the young man and urged him to usurp the throne. At her suggestion, Néde asked the king for a gift he knew would be refused: a dagger that, because of a taboo, the king could not give away. When he was refused, Néde composed a satire. The next morning three blisters had appeared on Caier's face, named Shame, Blemish and Disfigurement. The king, disfigured, fled so as not to be seen and died of shame.
The tale is significant: in the Irish conception, a king had to be free of physical defects. By disfiguring him, satire made him unfit to rule.
Satire as ritual
Some texts describe a solemn form of satire, the glám dícenn, performed on a height, with the poet facing the target, in a prescribed posture and with prescribed gestures. Here satire takes on the features of a cursing ritual, not merely of a poetic composition.
Fear of the poets
The power of the filid also stirred resentment. Medieval sources recall tensions between kings and a poetic class seen as too demanding. According to tradition, at an assembly at Druim Cett there was even talk of expelling the poets from Ireland, and it was Saint Columba who defended them, securing that they be reduced in number and regulated, but not banished. Whatever its historicity, the episode shows how central they were to society.
A legacy of the word
The filid preserved and handed down much of the Irish mythological heritage, later written down by monks. Without them we would not have the tales of Cú Chulainn, of the Tuatha Dé Danann or of Fionn. Their example shows an ancient idea: the exact word, spoken by one who knows its force, builds or destroys reputation, memory, identity.
For Maestro Cornelio the figure of the fili is a model of discipline: years of study of language and memory in the service of a responsible word, never spoken lightly.
In short
- The filid were the learned poets of Ireland, heirs to part of druidic knowledge.
- They were organised in grades, up to the ollam, and trained in long, memory-based schools.
- With praise they conferred honour, with satire they removed it: a real weapon in a society of honour.
- The tale of Néde tells of a satire that raised three blisters on the face of King Caier.
- Their work preserved much of the Irish mythology that has come down to us.
