this profession ,O'Curry tells us, and that it is probably because it gave them great rank and sustenance and just for speaking well, to which the Irish always seemed well suited.

They taught sons literature, history, horsemanship, chess, swimming and other knowledge. The daughters were taught sewing, cutting or fashioning and ornamentation, embroidery and other household learning. The peasant's sons did not learn the warrior part, however, which shows that Chiefs everywhere always know how to keep the peasants under control.

However, the producing classes soon became tired of supporting the large numbers of poets and a hue and cry against them resounded throughout Ireland. At one time, O'Curry says the Chief Poets called a meeting to discuss measures for their own safety and even considered whether they should banish themselves to Scotland until things got cooled down.

However, the powerful King Conor MacNesssa heard of their plight and welcomed them into Ulster where they were hospitably entertained and taken care of for years.

After the Christianization of Ireland in the ₅th Century, the Filid, adapting quite nicely to the change, assumed the poetic function of the outlawed Druids, the powerful class of learned men of pagan Ireland.

The resemblance between the Irish Epic and those found in early Sanskrit suggests that the tradition went back to Indo-European times. The oldest sagas were composed in a language first written down in the 7th and 8th centuries, from an oral tradition. (That's mainly why you get such a variety of spellings of the same person or thing.)

American historian Grant Madison maintained that the Scythians, from whom the Milesian McGoverns came, at one point in their history invaded India, developed Sanskrit as an Indo-European language and established to caste system to prevent their deterioration through intermarriage with dark native stocks.

From perusing THE BOOK OF MAGAURAN, there is no doubt the McGoverns considered their origins as Greek.

Teallach Eachach, (or Eochaidh), land of the McGoverns, was perhaps the intellectual capitol of Ireland, long before they came, which is most surprising since it was the seat of the great pagan God of Ireland, Crom, and his learned Druid hierarchy, including Ireland's Chief Poet, Dallan Forgiall, about the time the McGoverns came to this area.

Dallan was also known as Eochaidh, and his residence in Tullyhaw (the modern name for Teallach Eachach) suggests quite clearly that he was the intellectual and creative type who had the historical stamp of a McGovern on him. Dallan Forgiall very probably was a McGovern, son of one of the sons of Brian of Eochaidh Muighmedhon. (If you can believe it, this was pronounced, roughly, "Ochy Moyvane.")

It is not generally well known that in remote times there was a university presided over by Dallan Forgial, in Magh Sleacht, the district lying around Ballymagauran. (Crom's Place. Or "Crom Dubh (black), the little black man who first brought wheat to Ireland".)

As we noted in another place in this work, Dallan was probably the author of the Amra

Cholium Chille Eulogy of St. Columbkille (Columba), one of the earliest Irish poems

of any length. St. Columba, incidentally, went with the Irish Dalriada when they invaded

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