|
There are some schools that we know about: there were schools of law run by the MacEgans and the O’Davorens, and we know where they were. There were schools of poetry - especially by the O’Dalys, and there were schools of history run by the O’Mulconrys and they were spread out across different parts of Ireland. But every Irish lord who was worth anything retained his bardic poet; and the bardic poets were so politically aware that the Elizabethan government pursued them, legislated against them, and indeed attempted to suppress them because they represented, to a very large degree, the historical, diplomatic, personal awareness of the Irish lords. They formed an essential part of the make-up of the social milieu in which these lords functioned, and a very interesting thing is that when it came to the reformation, quite a number of people belonging to these hereditary, learned classes migrated into the Franciscans; and they’ll reappear as, for instance, Michael O'Clery became of the O'Clery learned family, but he is the chief of the four masters, the greatest collector of the historical resources that survived, so to speak, the shipwreck of the Elizabethan period.
Indeed, something like a third of all of what we know about Ireland before the coming of the English in 1169, was preserved by the labour of Michael O'Clery and his companions. We find, for instance, some of these families producing the leading clerics who become bishops and archbishops; and quite a number of the people who belong, so to speak, to the cultural elite of Ireland in the later middle ages and in the Elizabethan period, transmuted themselves into the leading clerics of the counter-reformation religious and cultural push.
Ìý
|
