After these Bards were some of my
first inquiries; and I received such answers as, for a while, made
me please myself with my increase of knowledge; for I had not then
learned how to estimate the narration of a Highlander.
They said that a great family had a Bard and a Senachi, who were
the poet and historian of the house; and an old gentleman told me
that he remembered one of each. Here was a dawn of intelligence.
Of men that had lived within memory, some certain knowledge might
be attained. 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.
Most of the domestick offices were, I believe, hereditary; and
probably the laureat of a clan was always the son of the last
laureat. The history of the race could no otherwise be
communicated, or retained; but what genius could be expected in a
poet by inheritance?
The nation was wholly illiterate. Neither bards nor Senachies
could write or read; but if they were ignorant, there was no danger
of detection; they were believed by those whose vanity they
flattered.
The recital of genealogies, which has been considered as very
efficacious to the preservation of a true series of ancestry, was
anciently made, when the heir of the family came to manly age.
This practice has never subsisted within time of memory, nor was
much credit due to such rehearsers, who might obtrude fictitious
pedigrees, either to please their masters, or to hide the
deficiency of their own memories.
