d two and
the _doss_ four attendants. In the 6th century Dallan Forgaill, the
chief _fili_ of Ireland, claimed the right to be attended by thirty
_filid_, which was the number of the train allowed to the supreme king.
The reigning monarch, Aed MacAinmirech, weary of the pretensions of the
poets, attempted to banish them, which led to the famous assembly of
Druim Ceta, where Columba intervened and reduced the number to
twenty-four (the train of a provincial king). In the plan of the hall of
Tara, preserved in LL. and YBL., the _sui littre_ or doctor in theology
has the seat of honour opposite the king. The _ollam brithem_ or supreme
judge or lawyer ranks with the highest rank of nobility, whilst the
_ollam fili_ is on a footing with the nobleman of the second degree.

We have already stated that the stories which formed the stock-in-trade
of the poets were divided into primary and secondary stories. Of the
latter there were 100, but little is known of them. However, several
more or less complete lists of the primary stories have come down to us.
The oldest catalogue (contained in LL.) gives the titles of 187 of these
tales arranged under the following heads--destructions, cow-spoils,
courtships, battles, caves, navigations, violent deaths, expeditions,
elopements and conflagrations; together with the following, which also
reckon as prime-stories--irruptions, visions, loves, hostings and
migrations. Of these stories sixty-eight have been preserved in a more
or less complete form. The tales enumerated in these catalogues, which
in their substance doubtless go back to the 8th or even to the 7th
century, fall into four main categories: (1) the mythological cycle, (2)
the Cuchulinn cycle, (3) the Finn cycle, (4) pieces relating to events
of the 5th, 6th and 7th centuries. Meyer has estimated that of the 550
titles of epic tales in D'Arbois's _Catalogue_ about 400 are known to
us, though many of them only occur in a very fragmentary state; and
about 100 others have since been discovered which were not known in
1883.

The course of training undergone by the _fili_ was a very lengthy one.
It is commonly stated to have extended over twelve years, at the end of
which time the student was thoroughly versed in all the legendary,
legal, historical and topographical lore of his native country, in the
use of the innumerable and excessively complicated Irish metres, in Ogam
writing and Irish grammar. The instruction in the schools of p