Matheson Collection > Sar-obair nam bard Gaelach

INTRODUCTION. Ixvix.
note whose songs were of too local and circumscribed a range for
general popularity. Had any compositions of sufficient worth been
produced in this dark interval in the history of Highland bardism, they
would no doubt have been handed down, like those of older date.
In this essay, to illustrate that distinguished order in Celtic society,
the bards — the system under which they so long flourished, beneficially
exerting their accorded power, a picture has been given, rather of that
which formerly existed, than what could have been witnessed in many
by-gone generations. It was among the Gael,, that the primitive
manners and usages were preserved, when elsewhere they were
suppressed or amalgamated with those of the conquerors. Under
pretence of abolishing a mischievous superstition, the Emperors pro-
hibited the practice of druidism ; but although the " Romans carried
their gods as far as they did their eagle, they were not able to extend
the one or the other over the mountains of Caledonia." Little, how-
ever, it has been seen, is to be found here or elsewhere concerning this
religious belief. Most of the historians, who allude to druidism,
flourished when the phenomenon had nearly disappeared, and " all that
they have done, serves only to excite our curiosity without satisfying it,
and to make us regret the want of a history, which seems to have been
replete with instruction and entertainment."
If the age of bardism, in its primary sense, is gone, it is satisfactory
to preserve a memorial of what it was, and evidence of its present state.
In the following pages are the flowers and blossoms of Gaelic poetry,
culled with careful discrimination, and without the encumbrance of
redundant stems and foliage,
The piper is now held in the same esteem as the harper of old, and
his performance is a noble substitute for the softer strains of the
clarsach ; but would not a bard in his multifarious office, combining
poet, historian, genealogist, etc., be a useful and becoming personage in
the train of a chief? At a Highland banquet about fifty years ago, a
call was made for the bards to be brought to the upper end of the
room. "The bards are extinct," observed Mac Nicail of Scoirebreac.
" No," quickly rejoined Alastair buidh Mac Ivor, " but those who
patronised them are gone ! "