CLIAR-SHEANCHAIN

CLIAR-SHEANCHAIN, V 129: When a troop of bards used to travel in company from the house of one gentleman to another, and whose hospitality they often put to an undue test, they were called the cliar-Sheanchain. They were going to Balranald in North Uist when they were met by M’Codrum, the local bard, who was more than their match and drove them off by his superior wit, and saved Balranald’s store. Angus M’Innes, October 16, 1896. [See C.R. IV 80.]

 

There are stories aplenty about the cliar-Sheanchain, and John Shaw has written extensively about the tradition, which goes back many centuries. They take their name, Seanchan’s Band, from Senchán Torpéist, Ireland’s chief poet in 600AD. They were a notorious problem, arriving in large bands, with wives and children and dogs, eating their hosts out of house and home and refusing to leave unless unrealistic demands were met (or they lost in a battle of wit and eloquence – beàrradaireachd or gearradh cainnte).

The Scottish Parliament enacted laws against them in 1407 and 1574, and there is evidence that some were hanged in Edinburgh in the late 1500s. John Lorne Campbell argued that this was conscious suppression of “the intellectual class of Gaeldom”.

 

 

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