The magi, the Sephoe, the gymnosophists, and the Irish adepts, held
much the same creed and the same dogmas with regard to the conduct of
life necessary to heighten the spiritual power. They all abstained from
animal food at such times as the rush of inspiration was on them and
the madness of prophetic rage; and at all times they favoured solitude,
living apart in the House of Learning or Bardic College, where they
admitted no obtrusive intimacies with lower intellects to disturb
their lofty and exalted moods of thought. The means, also, by which
they obtained mastery over diseases and the minds of men, with the
strange and subtle use they made of herbs, were all kept secret amongst
themselves; for they held that the prying eyes of shallow unbelievers
should never be suffered to intrude upon the sacred mysteries. And it
is certain that the bards possessed strange and mystic powers of wisdom
beyond and above all other men. It was therefore very dangerous to
offend a poet. If any one refused him a request he would take the lobe
of the person’s ear and grind it between his fingers, and the man would
die. Yet the bards were capable of much human emotion, and were the
sweet singers of sympathy when sorrow touched a household.
The following elegy from the Irish, written about two hundred years ago
by the Ard-Filé, or chief poet of the tribe, has many natural, pathetic
touches, and when chanted in Irish to the harp had power to melt the
hearts of all the hearers to tears.