[10] After this the High-kings of Ireland belonging to the northern Ui Neill resided in their own ancient palace of Aileach near Derry, and the High-kings of the southern Ui Neill families resided at the Rath near Castlepollard, or at Dún-na-sgiath ("the Fortress of the Shields") on the brink of Loch Ennell, near Mullingar. Brian Boru resided at Kincora in Clare. [11] See O'Donovan's letter from Navan on Brugh na Bóinne. [12] Also called Carthach. [13] See above, p. 211. [14] By Fothadh called "na Canóine" who persuaded Aedh Oirnide to release them from this duty. [15] _See_ "Fragments of Irish Annals" by O'Donovan, p. 210, and his note. [16] This story is also told in the "Three Fragments of Irish Annals," p. 9. [17] _See_ above, p. 170. [18] For Molling, _see_ above, p. 209-10. The following translation is by Standish Hayes O'Grady, "Silva Gadelica," p. 422. [19] For a description of the awful consequences of a saint's curse that make a timid lunatic out of a valliant warrior see O'Donovan's fragmentary "Annals," p. 233. CHAPTER XIX THE BARDIC SCHOOLS We must now, leaving verifiable history behind us, attempt a cautious step backwards from the known into the doubtful, and see what in the way of literature _is said_ to have been produced by the pagans. We know that side by side with the colleges of the clergy there flourished, perhaps in a more informal way, the purely Irish schools of the Brehons and the Bards. Unhappily however, while, thanks to the great number of the Lives of the Saints,[1] we know much about the Christian colleges, there is very little to be discovered about the bardic institutions. These were almost certainly a continuation of the schools of the druids, and represented something far more antique than even the very earliest schools of the Christians, but unlike them they were not centred in a fixed locality nor in a cluster of houses, but seem to have been peripatetic. The bardic scholars grouped themselves not round a locality but round a personality, and wherever it pleased their master to wander--and that was pretty much all round Ireland--there they followed, and the people seem to have willingly supported them.