Speaking for Ireland – Jon O’Sullivan – Irish Pagan School

In this video, Jon O’Sullivan discusses the concept of speaking for Ireland and the role of the Ollamh. He shares historical information about the file, ollamh, and the importance of bards in Irish society.

📄 The Colloquay of the Two Sages -https://codecs.vanhamel.nl/Immacallam_in_d%C3%A1_th%C3%BAarad
📄 The Three Things Required of a Poet by John Carey (1997)
https://www.ucc.ie/en/media/academic/seanmeanghaeilge/cdi/texts/Carey_Three-Things.pdf

✨ FREE LEARNING RESOURCES FOR A YEAR! – https://irishpagan.school/free
✨ Irish Pagan Resources Checklist available NOW – https://irishpagan.school/checklist/
👀 🟠 Patrons get to ask their own questions for these videos, and get the answers about a month before anyone else! 😉 Join us on Patreon – https://www.patreon.com/irishpaganschool/membership
✨ FREE Online Classes – https://irishpaganschool.com/courses/category/free
✨ 5 Day Morrigan Challenge – https://www.morrigan.academy/challenge

At the Irish Pagan School we offer Online Classes on Irish Paganism, Mythology, History, Heritage, Culture, Magic and Spirituality, taught by native Irish Educators, based in County Waterford, Ireland.

💥 JOIN THE MAILING LIST HERE — https://irishpaganschool.ck.page/yt
💥 Support this work on Patreon – http://www.Patreon.com/IrishPaganSchool

Have a question about Irish or Celtic Paganism?
Please Search Our Resources!
✨ The Irish Pagan School Blog – https://irishpagan.school/
✨ The Irish Pagan School YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/@IrishPaganSchool
✨ The Irish Pagan School Podcast – https://irishpaganschoolpodcast.buzzsprout.com/
✨ The Ogham Academy – https://ogham.academy
✨ The Morrigan Academy – https://morrigan.academy

Enroll in our online learning environment at the Irish Pagan School for full info on classes, courses and longer programmes – at https://IrishPaganSchool.com

Cynth A. B. Salas recommends The Irish Pagan School…
“IPS has truly excellent teachers and a large amount of content to choose from. Highly recommended if you are interested in Irish paganism, history, traditions, or lore.”

For your Irish Pagan Blog, Books, and Classes… PLUS your regular Irish Celtic Paganism Resources emails directly, join our Community Mailing List at – https://irishpaganschool.ck.page/yt

Stíofáinín O Meidhir recommends The Irish Pagan School…
“Fabulous courses, authentic Irish sources. A wide variety of education across the spectrum of Irish paganism and amazing free courses also.”

The Irish Pagan School on FB – https://www.facebook.com/TheIrishPaganSchool
On Instagram @irish.pagan.school – https://www.instagram.com/irish.pagan.school
Support this work on Patreon – http://www.Patreon.com/IrishPaganSchool

Rowan Ives recommends The Irish Pagan School…
“The courses at the Irish Pagan School offer an in-depth approach to Irish paganism that is based on genuine history and folklore. There is so much here for curious learners of all levels to gain knowledge and insight on their spiritual paths while avoiding the misinformation that is sadly common in popular modern paganism. I have benefited greatly from the classes and look forward to taking more.”

Thank you for watching… Please subscribe to this channel for more, like and share this video on social media and in your groups – it really helps to support native creators and tell YouTube you’d like to see more videos like this!
————————————————————————
All content is copyright ©The Irish Pagan School @Write Ireland
NOTE: This description may contain affiliate links to products we enjoy using ourselves. Should you choose to use these links, this channel may earn affiliate commissions at no additional cost to you. We appreciate your support!

Speaking for Ireland. I never claimed I do it, but is there someone who does? Well, Dagda dhaoibh agus fáilte. Hi, hello and welcome Jon O’Sullivan Irish Pagan School here. And my role and my passion is exploring our ancient Irish mythology, folklore, culture,

And everything else in order to try and share as much information as I can around this. And recently, yeah, we’ve we’ve hit some very interesting kind of sections of the internet sharing the content and the free resources that we do.

And yeah, someone kind of threw a comment at me about, well, it’s not like you speak for all of Ireland and no, absofuckinglutely not. I don’t speak for all of Ireland, but it did trigger something in my brain, a memory of something I read quite a while ago.

And there was, there was one person. There was a role in ancient Irish society for someone to speak not just on behalf of their tuath, not just on behalf of, you know, their local kind of rulers or anything like that, but on behalf of Ireland.

And that person had a title, and that role was someone who was very much recognised by every tuatha and every tribe. And that person was known as Ollamh Na h’Éireann, as in the chief poet or professor of Ireland. The word olive is still used today as a professor.

But Ollamh Na h’Éireann was a singular individual. And it wasn’t a chieftain, it wasn’t a king. It wasn’t even a druid. It was a bard. And so that is where things actually grow. Like when we talk about the ancient Irish culture, we’re talking about Tuatha, which was tribal lands all across the island.

We know, for example, that in the kind of early medieval period that there was no less than about 108 different distinct kind of tribes or tuatha within Ireland, each with their own chieftains and kings, each with their own kind of lineages and kind of arrangements and lands.

Now those then would have alliances, would have family connections to kind of greater powers. And it was it wasn’t exactly a top down feudal system, but it was more like a sideways kind of association, feudal system or clan system, which then led to a larger

Kind of, um, like clusters of allied kind of tribes, and which is where we get things like the Northern and southern O’Neill’s or Uí Neill’s and the [O’Connor’s], for example, in the South. And so these were the power plays that we had usual kind of installations of

Kingship or kings in Ireland from those kind of people. But each individual tribe had their own bards, had their own storytellers, and also had a person known as a file. And a file was the kind of best of the best.

And in fact, we know from the Lau tract in Ireland that a file could demand the same honour price as a king or chieftain for any harm done against them. Because, unlike most people of a tribe or tuath file were known as sóernemed, they had

Freedom to move in between tribes, they had freedom to carry stories and go around the island as a whole. And this was a big, big fucking deal, because if you were found outside your own tribal lands, you were pretty much game to be raided, taken hostage, sold back to your people or harmed.

So it was pretty fucking important, um, to recognise the role of those who could actually travel freely without, like, you know, worry and again, like you’re not going to have it’s not always going to be perfect. There’s always going to be times when harm can be done.

But understanding that underneath the Brehon law that a file could demand the same honour price as a chieftain, you’re less likely to kind of come to harm and that kind of circumstance, because it’s going to cost a fuck ton the hostage, that person back, or to

Pay for any damage or harm done against that person. And that’s not even taking on board the ability of the bard or file themself to perform satire against you. Satire being a recognised legal status which would shift or change someone’s role or position within society. Satire could topple kings.

Absofuckinglutely the legal satire placed against them could end their rule. As we have seen in the Mythological Cycle, when Bres is toppled from his seat by the bard, the Tuatha Dé Danann bard, Caipre. But yeah, all of the herein speaking of Ireland, get us back on track.

Um, yeah. So there were like birds. Birds are kind of your locals. You’re kind of like general performers, file were the people who kind of sat in the noble halls, who had access to the upper echelons of society, and again, they were the well respected. And again, you’d have to be skilled.

You’d have to have a significant amount of skill to go from a bard to being a file, and then to go from a file to being an ollamh was another kind of like duration. Like we know that in order to kind of get training, for example, to become a druid or a

Brehon or a bard, you’re talking 12 years, and then from there you’d have to kind of level your experience and grow, and you’d be put to the ceist or question, in order to show and prove that you had your knowledge, not just that you could remember stuff and

Relate stuff, but also that it would be performed in the right way, that it be pronounced in the right way. There’s actual rules and parameters around the metre in which you would do a particular bardic performance, which is where we get the the indications of Rosc poetry, which is

Some of the oldest kind of form of poetry that we know in Ireland. So there it’s fascinating. This whole area is fascinating. And so when you go from being a file to being an ollamh and there was, Professor John

Carey of UCC, did a lovely kind of paper on this about the three things that a file would need to become an ollamh. I don’t have that paper to hand. It’s been a while, but it’s it’s kind of imbas forosnai, which is like your the, the

Access to inspiration and being able to turn inspiration into knowledge. There’s a [dialect on Kanab] which being able to speak off the top of your head. So if someone asks you the question about, oh, why is that mound or that river or that

Lake name, that way you have to be able to pull the answer out. And then this is where there’s a there’s a third one on it, which was kind of changed by none other than Saint Patrick, who had to kind of undermine or change or alter, the,

The profession of bards and files to remove their divinatory kind of practices, because that was magic and shouldn’t be done by laypeople. And all the while saints accordingly, are rocking around, banishing serpents and pulling off miracles or magical practices because it’s in the name of their god.

Yeah, different talk for a different day on that one, I’m sure if anyone is interested. But yeah, we do know that there was an individual who went above ollamh and they were known specifically as Ollamh Na h’Éireann, and their job was to speak for

Ireland, to speak for Ireland in its totality, like, you know, regardless of chieftains tuatha, kingdoms, conflicts, regardless of, you know, brehons, druids, bards, anything at all. There was one person who was known as Ollamh Na h’Éireann.

And there is a story that we have from our cycles which is known as “The Colloquy of the Two Sages”. And in this there’s a young guy who kind of is born with the bardic ability in him. And he levels to become a file very quickly.

And he goes outside the normal structure of learning and practice. He ends up going outside of Ireland and he comes back and he’s gained a lot of abilities because of his nature and because of his bloodline. And he comes back and he challenges for the seat of Ollamh Na h’Éireann.

And so it’s a lovely kind of story about that. And now me, I refer to myself as a bard. I don’t even refer to myself as a file. I don’t like. I’m nowhere near being an ollamh. Like I am a decade on in my journey of practising and learning and teaching all

About our ancient Irish culture and our mythology, and the joy I have in doing that is something that, you know, really, I makes me smile every day and, you know, helps me get to the office and do these videos.

But I would never presume to speak for Ireland because I’m not there as yet. I’m not there. I have not gained enough of a position or practice. But who’s to say, you know, give me another couple of decades, you know, I might become file, I might then become ollamh.

And heck, we haven’t had an Ollamh Na h’Éireann in quite a while. You know, someone’s a generation since our culture was so drastically undermined. But why would we not have someone who can speak for Ireland? But at the moment, no. I’m going to be very clear. I do not speak for Ireland.

I don’t speak on behalf of the entire island of Ireland. I speak on behalf of my culture where I can. I speak on behalf of myself and my experiences. I speak on behalf of my tuath, the tribe in the community that we have built around the

Irish Pagan School and I speak on behalf of myself and my partner in some areas of the Irish Pagan School, and they speak on their behalf in regards to their side of things and the Irish Pagan School as well.

So yeah, the reason why I wanted to kind of touch on this is I’m not telling you how to live your life. I’m not here to kind of tell you, okay, I will tell you you’re wrong if you have misinformation, if some part of your practice has been appropriated, I will

Tell you you’re wrong. But in most cases, I’m here to point you to the resources to guide the way and say, listen, have you considered this? This is how to approach things maybe a bit more ethically, maybe a bit more honestly, maybe a bit more openly.

Here’s how to kind of touch base with an authentic connection to Ireland. The authentic gods that we have here, as opposed to misconstrued, copied over information or information, shifted and changed through other kind of practices or spiritual beliefs. You know, so that’s all I’m here to do.

And again. You don’t have to listen to me. Totally fine. You know, you gotta look after yourself. You got to do your own practice and kind of follow your own pathway. But time and again, people, you know, come to us, they get learning. And sometimes it’s uncomfortable for them.

And sometimes they’re like, you know, they, they, they hit on something that kind of challenges their sense of self or their sense of well-being or their sense of or their experiences. And in some cases, they step away. Oh, it’s all terrible. Like, yeah, go on, whatever. And then they leave.

But you’d be surprised how many of them actually come back after a time of decompressing, after a time of integrating and processing, they realise that, you know, maybe there is more for them to learn if they are willing to, as we say here at the Irish Pagan School, just do the work.

So that is where we are. I don’t speak for Ireland, but who knows, maybe. Maybe it is a place for me as Ollamh Na h’Éireann, and maybe I can grow in that way. And I’m going to keep investing in my own education, investing in my own abilities and

My own skills to maybe, you know, challenge myself to step up and to grow more in the role that I have chosen, the path I have chosen myself as a bard to become a file. Who knows, maybe I one day will demand the same honour price as someone of, you know,

Heightened status within Ireland society. But until then, if you’re looking to know more, if you want to level up your knowledge and your skills, all you got to do is go to Irish Pagan School forward slash free (irishpagan.school/free). We have a whole lot of free resources there, a year’s worth of

Teaching. If you were to do one a week or so . There’s a whole lot of content available, and then you can go deeper again, go to the Irish Pagan School itself. We have a lot more kind of deeper learning classes, and we have a lot

To kind of get into and to explore for yourself and more content released every month in the school, as well as more free resources coming out all of the time. So make sure you’re on our mailing list as well. So until next time, look after yourself.

Take care. And for me, bard, Dagda bard. Look after yourself, take care and Slán.