Читать книгу 366 Celt: A Year and A Day of Celtic Wisdom and Lore - Carl McColman - Страница 39

The story of Senchán Torpéist and the remembering of The Tain provides an important glimpse into the role of the bard in Celtic society. To begin with, the bards were the keepers of history. Far more than mere poets, their job was to preserve the memory of the people, by safeguarding the genealogies and stories of great and valorous heroes, from the recent to the distant past. Clearly, if a tale as noble and heroic as The Tain had been lost, there had been a breakdown in the bardic system. In our world of Hollywood-style adaptations of stories, it might seem like no big deal if a story is lost—just make up a new one. But this would have been unthinkable to a bard. Any story worth telling is a story worth remembering—it is an aspect of the lore of the people. So the bard’s role was not only to entertain and inform, but perhaps more importantly, to archive and preserve.