aois-dàna

** s pl Bards, poets. 2 Rehearsers of ancient poetry. 3 Genealogists. 4 Soothsayers. The aois-dàna were in high esteem throughout the Highlands. So late as the end of the 17th century they sat in the sreath or circle among the nobles and chiefs of families. They took the preference of the ollamh or doctor in medicine. After the extinction of the Druids, they were brought in to preserve the genealogy of families and to repeat genealogical traditions at the succession of every chieftain. They had great influence over all the powerful men of their time. Their persons, their houses, their villages, were sacred. Whatever they asked was given them; not always, however, out of respect, but from fear of their satire, which frequently followed a denial of their requests. They lost by degrees, through their own insolence and importunity, all the respect which their order had so long enjoyed. And consequently all their wonted profits and privileges. Martin says “They shut their door and windows for a day's time and lay on their backs in darkness with a stone upon their belly and plaids about their heads and eyes and thus they pumped their brains for rhetorical encomiums.”

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