Though the office had ceased, its effects might
continue; the poems might be found, though there was no poet.
Another conversation indeed informed me, that the same man was both
Bard and Senachi. This variation discouraged me; but as the
practice might be different in different times, or at the same time
in different families, there was yet no reason for supposing that I
must necessarily sit down in total ignorance.
Soon after I was told by a gentleman, who is generally acknowledged
the greatest master of Hebridian antiquities, that there had indeed
once been both Bards and Senachies; and that Senachi signified 'the
man of talk,' or of conversation; but that neither Bard nor Senachi
had existed for some centuries. I have no reason to suppose it
exactly known at what time the custom ceased, nor did it probably
cease in all houses at once. But whenever the practice of
recitation was disused, the works, whether poetical or historical,
perished with the authors; for in those times nothing had been
written in the Earse language.
Whether the 'Man of talk' was a historian, whose office was to tell
truth, or a story-teller, like those which were in the last
century, and perhaps are now among the Irish, whose trade was only
to amuse, it now would be vain to inquire.
