Filí

< fili > (plural: filid, filidh)...."Member of a privilegedpowerful caste of poets,diviners and seers in early Ireland.To be distinguished from thelower-status bard and the brehon...[1] The fili (or filè)[a][b] (Old Irish pronunciation: [/ˈfʲilʲi/]), plural filid, filidh (or filès), was a member of an elite class of poets in Ireland, and later Scotland, up until the Renaissance.

[d][e] In an early society where most people were illiterate – including its hierarchy of chieftains, sub-kings and kings – the oral tradition was an important means of communicating current news and historical events.

[l][m] The ancient traditions of the inauguration ceremony at Scone beside the River Tay in Scotland, including the recital of the future kings ancestry, probably originated from the Hill of Tara in County Meath, Ireland.

It was important for leaders to treat the filid with respect, and to reward them handsomely, in order to get good quality information on current affairs.

[w][x] The tales regaled by the filid were classified as:[3] Bérla na filed – "language of the poets" – was possibly an esoteric mix of:[Web 1] According to the Textbook of Irish Literature, by Eleanor Hull: The file is to be regarded as in the earliest times as combining in his person the functions of magician, lawgiver, judge, counsellor to the chief, and poet.

However, the culture placed great importance on the fili's ability to pass stories and information down through the generations without making changes in those elements that were considered factual rather than embellishment.

The synergy between the rich and ancient indigenous oral literary tradition and the classical tradition resulted in an explosion of monastic literature that included epics of war, love stories, nature poetry, saint tales and so forth which collectively resulted in the largest corpus of non-Latin literature seen in Europe since Ancient Greece.

The ultimate accommodation of Christianity within Irish Gaelic society resulted in a strain on the resources of the Chiefs and in that they were required to provide land and titles for both fili and bishop alike.

The hereditary poets that were a fixture of court life in medieval Ireland serving as entertainers, advisors and genealogists maintained practices of and enjoyed a similar status as the pre-Christian fili.

This high social status existed right into Elizabethan times, when English nobility were horrified to see the Gaelic chieftains not just eating at the same table as their poets, but often from the same dish.

Besides its value to historians, this canon has contributed a great deal to modern literature beginning with retellings by William Butler Yeats and other authors involved with the Celtic Revival.

Now fantasy literature and art draws heavily from these tales and characters such as Cúchulainn, Finn McCool and the Tuatha Dé Danann are relatively familiar.

Finally, practitioners of Celtic Reconstructionist Paganism are working to reconstruct trance and visionary techniques that were used by the filid,[citation needed] such as imbas forosnai and aspects of the tarbhfeis ritual.