fili

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fili (poets). The fili of early medieval Ireland evolved from a professional poetic class found in all Celtic societies, the bards, who according to Diodorus Siculus ‘singing to the accompaniment of instruments like lyres, praise some and defame others’. Other sources stress the rich rewards paid by Celtic aristocrats for such praise poetry. In early Christian Ireland the advent of literacy caused a cleavage to occur in the poetic order about 700 ad between a literate class of fili influenced by the Latin studies of the church, whose surviving compositions are religious or historical rather than simple eulogies of the aristocracy, and on the other hand various grades of oral poets, including the admall who composed for minor kings and nobles, the tuathbard who served the ordinary landowners, the professional satirist, dul or cáinte, banned by the church but patronized by warrior bands, and assorted ballad singers and buffoons. The 12th‐century reform of the church, which evicted native poetic learning from church schools, coincided with a growing together of learned fili and the increasingly well‐educated secular bards to form a single, literate, hereditary class of aes dána or ‘men of the [poetic] art’. This excluded professional satirists and buffoons, who may have gradually become obsolete. These bards of the post‐ Norman period styled themselves filidh or fir dhána. Their schools were run by master‐poets or ollamhain, whose teaching was not wholly oral, and they have left behind a wealth of bardic poetry, dating between c.1200 and 1660 ad, valuable not only as literature, but as contemporary historical documents. Famous hereditary schools included the O'Dalys (Uí Dhálaigh), O'Higgins (Uí Uiginn), Wards (Meic an Bhaird), and MacNamees (Meic Con Midhe).

Bibliography

Breatnach, L. (ed.), Uraicecht na Riar (1987)
Breatnach, P. , ‘The Chief's Poet’, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, sect. C, 83 (1983)

Katharine Simms

fili, file, filid (pl.), filidh (pl.). Member of a privileged, powerful caste of poets, diviners, and seers in early Ireland. To be distinguished from the lower-status bard and the brehon, whose learning dealt more with the law. Of the seven orders of fili, the ollam is the highest and most often cited. The simple translation of ‘poet’ is misleading, as much of the writing of the fili in his guise as senchaid [historian] was in prose, including sagas and romances, historical narratives, panegyrics, topography (see DINDSHENCHAS), genealogies, and especially satires, for which he was feared; the ModIr. file, however, may be glossed as ‘poet’. Although his calling was hereditary, each fili was attached to the household of a chief; being fili to the head of a clan was the prerogative of a particular family. Trained for at least twelve years in rigorous mental exercise, the fili might use an esoteric language, bérla na filed; his craft was filedecht. Some commentators have compared the status of the fili to the brahmin of India or to the Christian clergy of early modern Europe.

Bibliography

See Gerard Murphy , ‘Bards and filidh’, Eigse, 2 (1940), 200–7;
G. Turville-Petre , ‘On the Poetry of the Scalds and the Filid’, Ériu, 22 (1971), 1–22;
Liam Breatnach , Uraiceacht na Riar: The Poetic Grades in Early Irish Law (Dublin, 1987)