Bard's blessing

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The bard's blessing (Scottish Gaelic : beannachadh-bàird) or poet's congratulation, was the custom of old in the Scottish Highlands of old, to meet the bride coming forth from her chamber with her maidens on the morning after her marriage and to salute her with a poetical blessing called beannachadh-bàird.

Scottish Highlands Place

The Highlands is a historic region of Scotland. Culturally, the Highlands and the Lowlands diverged from the later Middle Ages into the modern period, when Lowland Scots replaced Scottish Gaelic throughout most of the Lowlands. The term is also used for the area north and west of the Highland Boundary Fault, although the exact boundaries are not clearly defined, particularly to the east. The Great Glen divides the Grampian Mountains to the southeast from the Northwest Highlands. The Scottish Gaelic name of A' Ghàidhealtachd literally means "the place of the Gaels" and traditionally, from a Gaelic-speaking point of view, includes both the Western Isles and the Highlands.

Bride woman who is about to be married or who is newlywed to a man or woman

A bride is a woman who is about to be married or who is newlywed.

Room distinguishable space within a building or other structure

In a building, a room is any space enclosed within four walls to which entry is possible only by a door that connects it either to a passageway, to another room, or to the outdoors, that is large enough for several persons to move about, and whose size, fixtures, furnishings, and sometimes placement within the building support the activity to be conducted in it.

The earliest reference to beannachadh bàird comes from the postscript of a letter from Professor Garden to John Aubrey, written in Aberdeen 1691–1692. The definition given came from a divinity student from Strathspey whose informant was his father, aged 97.

"A Bard in common Irish signifies a little poet or a fhymer, they use to travel thorow countries and caming into ane house, salute with a rhym called in Irish Beannacha p baird, i.e. the Bard's salutation qch is onlie a short verse or rhym touching the praise of the master and mistris of the house."

If at any jovial meeting, any man retired, for however short a time, he was obliged, before he was permitted to resume his seat, to make an apology for his absence in rhyme.

Chair Piece of furniture for sitting on

One of the basic pieces of furniture, a chair is a type of seat. Its primary features are two pieces of a durable material, attached as back and seat to one another at a 90° or slightly greater angle, with usually the four corners of the horizontal seat attached in turn to four legs—or other parts of the seat's underside attached to three legs or to a shaft about which a four-arm turnstile on rollers can turn—strong enough to support the weight of a person who sits on the seat and leans against the vertical back. The legs are typically high enough for the seated person's thighs and knees to form a 90° or lesser angle. Used in a number of rooms in homes, in schools and offices, and in various other workplaces, chairs may be made of wood, metal, or synthetic materials, and either the seat alone or the entire chair may be padded or upholstered in various colors and fabrics.

A rhyme is a repetition of similar sounds in the final stressed syllables of two or more words. Most often, this kind of "perfect" rhyming is consciously used for effect in the final positions of lines of poems and songs. Less strictly speaking, a rhyme may also variously refer to other types of similar sounds near the ends of two or more words. Furthermore, the word rhyme has come to be sometimes used as a shorthand term for any brief poem, such as a rhyming couplet or nursery rhyme.

If he had no talent for poetry, or if, from humour he did not choose to comply, which was seldom the case, he was obliged to pay such a proportion of the reckoning as the company thought proper to propose. This according to Martin Martin was beannachadh-bàird.

Poetry form of literature

Poetry is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and rhythmic qualities of language—such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre—to evoke meanings in addition to, or in place of, the prosaic ostensible meaning.

Humour tendency of experiences to provoke laughter and provide amusement

Humour, also spelt as humor, is the tendency of experiences to provoke laughter and provide amusement. The term derives from the humoral medicine of the ancient Greeks, which taught that the balance of fluids in the human body, known as humours, controlled human health and emotion.

Martin Martin was a Scottish writer best known for his work A Description of the Western Islands of Scotland. This book is particularly noted for its information on the St Kilda archipelago. Martin's description of St Kilda, which he visited in 1697, had also been published some years earlier as A Late Voyage to St Kilda (1698).

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Bard professional poet in medieval Gaelic and British culture

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Gaelic is an adjective that means "pertaining to the Gaels". As a noun, it refers to the group of languages spoken by the Gaels, or to any one of the languages individually. Celtic languages are spoken in both Ireland and Scotland, in Scotland it is very often referred to just as "Gaelic", but in Ireland it is referred to as "Irish".

Irish poetry

Irish poetry includes poetry in two languages, Irish and English. The complex interplay between these two traditions, and between both of them and other poetries in English and Scottish Gaelic, has produced a body of work that is both rich in variety and difficult to categorise.

Alasdair mac Mhaighstir Alasdair was a Scottish poet, lexicographer, political writer and memoirist, respected as perhaps the finest Gaelic language poet of the 18th century. He served as a Jacobite military officer and Gaelic tutor to Prince Charles Edward Stuart.

The Contention of the bards was a literary controversy of early 17th century Gaelic Ireland, lasting from 1616 to 1624, probably peaking in 1617. The principal bardic poets of the country wrote polemical verses against each other and in support of their respective patrons.

The aois-dàna served as advisers to nobles and chiefs of clans throughout the Scottish Gàidhealtachd until the late 17th century. Many of them specialised in preserving the genealogy of families and recited family trees at the succession of chieftains.

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In the strictly academic context of Celtic studies, the term Celtic literature is used by Celticists to denote any number of bodies of literature written in a Celtic language, encompassing the Irish, Welsh, Cornish, Manx, Scottish Gaelic and Breton languages in either their modern or earlier forms.

Muireadhach Albanach Ó Dálaigh was a Gaelic poet and crusader and member of the Ó Dálaigh bardic family.

Ó Dálaigh family

The Ó Dálaigh were a learned Irish bardic family who first came to prominence early in the 12th century, when Cú Connacht Ó Dálaigh was described as "The first Ollamh of poetry in all Ireland".

Vivienne Margaret 'Meg' Bateman is a Scottish academic, poet and short story writer.

Bardic Poetry is the writings produced by a class of poets trained in the Bardic Schools of Ireland and the Gaelic parts of Scotland, as they existed down to about the middle of the 17th century or, in Scotland, the early 18th century. Most of the texts preserved are in Middle Irish or in early Modern Irish, however, even though the manuscripts were very plentiful very few have been published. It is considered a period of great literary stability due to the formalised literary language that changed very little.

Seán "Clárach" Mac Domhnaill (1691–1754) was an Irish language poet in the first half of the 18th century.

Scottish Gaelic literature refers to literature composed in the Scottish Gaelic language, a member of the Goidelic branch of Celtic languages, along with Irish and Manx.

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MacMhuirich bardic family Scottish Gaelic poets (13th–18th cent.)

The MacMhuirich bardic family, known in Scottish Gaelic as Clann MacMhuirich and Clann Mhuirich, was a prominent family of bards and other professionals in 15th to 18th centuries. The family was centred in the Hebrides, and claimed descent from a 13th-century Irish bard who, according to legend, was exiled to Scotland. The family was at first chiefly employed by the Lords of the Isles as poets, lawyers, and physicians. With the fall of the Lordship of the Isles in the 15th century, the family was chiefly employed by the chiefs of the MacDonalds of Clanranald. Members of the family were also recorded as musicians in the early 16th century, and as clergymen possibly as early as the early 15th century.

Poetry of Scotland

Poetry of Scotland includes all forms of verse written in Brythonic, Latin, Scottish Gaelic, Scots, French, English and Esperanto and any language in which poetry has been written within the boundaries of modern Scotland, or by Scottish people.

Literature in the other languages of Britain

In addition to English, literature has been written in a wide variety of other languages in Britain, that is the United Kingdom, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands. This includes literature in Scottish Gaelic, Welsh, Latin, Cornish, Anglo-Norman, Guernésiais, Jèrriais, Manx, and Irish. Literature in Anglo-Saxon is treated as English literature and literature in Scots as Scottish literature.

References

Edward Dwelly British lexicographer

Edward Dwelly (1864–1939) was an English lexicographer and genealogist. He created the authoritative dictionary of Scottish Gaelic, and his work has had an influence on Irish Gaelic lexicography. He also practised as a professional genealogist and published transcripts of many original documents relating to Somerset.

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