J. F. Campbell Collection > Transactions of the Ossianic Society > Volume 5

allotted to tliem, and many of tliem had their stately
castles in after times. When surnames became established,
the chief Bard was always styled as a prince or chief, with
the definite article The prefixed to his name, as the Mac
Egan or The O'Daly, just in the same manner that the
Prince of Thomond was styled " The O'Brien/'
Those learned men invariably kept houses of general
hospitality for all travellers, and where the literati might
remain any length of time they pleased to stop. The
annalists, in recording the deaths of many of those pro-
fessors of the bardic order, inform us that they were men
of wealth and affluence, and kept open houses for general
hospitality, in which they entertained the rich and the
poor. For example, the annalists state, that O'Duigenan of
Kilronan, in the County of Hoscommon, a learned historian,
who died in A.D. 1496, kept an open house of general
hospitality, and was one of the most wealthy Professors in
Ireland, in cattle and herds ; and again, that Mac Ward,
chief professor of poetry to O'Donnell (Prince of Tircon-
nell), president of several schools, a man profoundly
learned in poetry and other arts, had founded and main-
tained an open house for general hospitality. We also
read in the annals of many Medical Professors, who are
represented as learned in many arts, men of great affluence
and wealth, and also remarkable for hospitality.
It has been ascertained from the public legal Records
that the rental of the landed properties of several of those
professors even so late as the sixteenth century, would, at
the present day, amount to upwards of four or five thousand
pounds annually, besides the guerdons they received from
the ruling sovereigns and chiefs ; many of them are stated
to have maintained three or four schools on their estates,
at which pupils were boarded and educated gratuitously.
Throngliout our annals we learn that almost all those