That the Bardic schools, which we know flourished as public institutions with scarcely a break from the Synod of Drumceat in 590 (where regular lands were set apart for their endowment) down to the seventeenth century, were really a continuation of the Druidic schools, and embodied much that was purely pagan in their curricula, is, I think, amply shown by the curious fragments of metrical text-books preserved in the Books of Leinster and Ballymote, in a MS. in Trinity College, and in a MS. in the Bodleian, all four of which have been recently admirably edited by Thurneysen as a continuous text.[5] He has not however ventured upon a translation, for the scholar would be indeed a bold one who in the present state of Celtic scholarship would attempt a complete interpretation of tracts so antique and difficult. That they date, partially at least, from pre-Christian times seems to me certain from their prescribing amongst other things for the poet's course in one of his years of study a knowledge of the magical incantations called _Tenmlaida, Imbas forosnai,_[6] and _Dichetal do chennaib na tuaithe_, and making him in another year learn a certain poem or incantation called _Cétnad_, of which the text says that-- "It is used for finding out a theft. One sings it, that is to say, through the right fist on the track of the stolen beast" [observe the antique assumption that the only kind of wealth to be stolen is cattle] "or on the track of the thief, in case the beast is dead. And one sings it three times on the one [track] or the other. If, however, one does not find the track, one sings it through the right fist, and goes to sleep upon it, and in one's sleep the man who has brought it away is clearly shown and made known. Another virtue [of this lay]: one speaks it into the right palm and rubs with it the quarters of the horse before one mounts it, and the horse will not be overthrown, and the man will not be thrown off or wounded." Another _Cétnad_ to be learned by the poet, in which he desires length of life, is addressed to "the seven daughters of the sea, who shape the thread of the long-lived children." Another with which he had to make himself familiar was the _Glam dichinn_,[7] intended to satirise and punish the prince who refused to a poet the reward of his poem. The poet--