noted in their time. The course of study at the schools established
for the training of the fili in the tenth and eleventh centuries was
certainly, as has been pointed out, very different from that of the
ecclesiastical schools (see Joyce, vol. i. p. 430). No classical
instruction was included in this training, but it is not certain that
this separation of studies was so complete before what is called the
"antiquarian age" set in. Cormac mac Cuninan, for example, was a
classical scholar, and at the same time skilled in the learning of the
fili. It should also be observed that the course at the ecclesiastical
schools, as handed down to us, hardly seems to be classical enough to
have produced a Columbanus or an Erigena; the studies that produced
these men must have been of a different kind, and the lay schools as
originally established by Sanchan Torpest may have included much that
afterwards gave place to a more purely Irish training. The tale of
Troy seems to have been known to the fili, and there are in their works
allusions to Greek heroes, to Hercules and Hector, but it has been
pointed out by Mr. Nutt that there is little if any evidence of
influence produced by Latin or Greek literature on the actual matter or
thought of the older Irish work. On this point reference may be made
to a note on "Mae Datho's Boar" in this volume (p. 173), but even if
this absence of classical influence is established (and it is hard to
say what will not be found in Irish literature), it is just possible
that the same literary feeling which made Irish writers of
comparatively late tales keep the bronze weapons and chariots of an
earlier date in their accounts of ancient wars, while they described
arms of the period when speaking of battles of their own time, affected
them in this instance also; and that they had enough restraint to
refrain from introducing classical and Christian ideas when speaking of
times in which they knew these ideas would have been unfamiliar.