The Aois-dàna (Scottish Gaelic), or áes dána (Old Irish), literally meaning "people of the arts"; often translated as bards 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. There are fewer survivals of it in Scotland, at least from the 16th Century. With the social changes that followed the introduction of the feudal system to Scotland, during which the court language changed from Gaelic to Norman-French and later to Scots the classical tradition began to disappear, but the status of the panegyrist bard improved, although not in an identical manner in every location. The Scots Gaelic term for a poet is bard to the present day, and by the 17th century, Scottish bardic poetry was dominated not by the stric measures of classical Gaelic but by vernacular Scots Gaelic. The Aois-dàna were held in high esteem throughout the Scottish Highlands. As late as the end of the 17th century, they sat in the sreath or circle among the nobles and chiefs of families. They took the preference of the ollamh or doctor in medicine. After the extinction of the druids, they were brought in to preserve the genealogy of families, and to repeat genealogical traditions at the succession of every chieftain. Among the ancient Brythons there were, according to Jones an order of bard called the Arwyddwardd, i.e. the ensign bard or herald at arms.

Unlike their classical counterparts, the vernacular poets were mostly illiterate until the 18th Century, although some earlier bards who recited for poets may have been partially literate. The essential structure of this Gaelic verse poetry derives from panegyric, although its subject matter is very varied. Since th 20th century revival of Scots Gaelic literature, contemporary literary poets may be distinguished from the semi-literate or illiterate 'bards' of the Gaelic-speaking areas of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland.

Argyll is a region of great significance in the development of Gaelic literature since the early middle ages and the time of the Lordship of the Isles (c.1200-1493). The Iona monastery was a highly literate community, engaged in the making and copying of manuscripts, recording in Latin events of local and national significance, and maintaining close links with other Columban houses in Ireland.

Iona was located within the early Gaelic kingdom of Dál Riata, whose heartlands were broadly coterminous with the later county of Argyll, and whose principal fortress, Dunadd, lies in the present day Mid-Argyll including the so-called Dark Ages to the end of the Lordship of the Isles and the rise of the Campbells, who were also patrons of the Gaelic arts in terms of the ‘old’ county of Argyll, extending on the mainland from the Mull of Kintyre to Kinlochleven on the east of the Great Glen and to Fort William on the west side, and embracing the Inner Hebrides as far north as Tiree and Coll. The Clann Duibhne or Campbells (Caimbeul), the most powerful clan in Argyle and one of the most powerful in Scotland, descend from the issue of the thirteenth century marriage between Sir Gillespie Campbell and the heiress of Duncan Mac Duibhne of Lochawe. The Campbells inherit the leadership of the Clann Duibhne of Tyrone, were by origin Strathclyde Britons from around Dunbarton, where they were still important to the end of the thirteenth century. The senior line of the Campbells, descended from Sir Gillespic’s older brother Duncan, were the MacArthurs (Clann Artair) of Loch Fyne and Lochawe. The Iona monastery was a highly literate community, engaged in the making and copying of manuscripts, recording in Latin events of local and national significance, and maintaining close links with other Columban houses in Ireland.

The latter continue to bring traditional attitudes to bear upon topical events at local or national level, with praise, rebuke, humour, etc; they also compose more personal poetry such as love-poetry or elegy, and there is a continuing output of religious verse. What finds expression ‘in Argyll’ may be part of a thought-process which comes from the other side of the world. This is particularly significant in the Argyll context, since the county was so close to the Lowlands, and was exposed to ‘new’ modes of thought (e.g. the Reformation) earlier than other parts of the Highlands. Only one incident of the Great Glen is recorded as happening during these missionary years. He crossed to lona to meet Columba, and according to the story, asked that saint to act as his 'anamchara' or 'soul- friend', which took the place of the Roman Church's 'confessor'.Eilean Donan

The two greatest Celtic Bards that ever lived, being, Amergin was the Chief Bard of the Mileseans and aided them in overcoming the Magicks of the Tuatha de Dannans to become the heirs to the land of Ireland. Taliesin was the great Bard of the Welsh, whose poetry and songs, Including the Cad Goddieu, tell us most of what we know about Druidry in Wales. He gained his knowledge from the Cauldron of Cerridwen. They are both patrons of Bards, music, Magick and poetry. direction: South or South-East.

People from Argyllshire travelled backwards and forwards to the Lowlands with relative ease. As a consequence, the fashions of the Lowland south entered Argyll more quickly than they entered other parts of the Highlands; witness, for example, the ready reception of Protestantism in the region shortly after the Scottish Reformation. Printing accompanied Protestantism, allowing Gaelic tradition to take printed form faster in Argyll than in any other part of the Highlands and Islands. In the prose-producing areas of Argyll, we have touched on Carnassarie and Morvern and Glen Lonan on the mainland; and among the islands-Tiree, Coll, Jura and Colonsay, but we must also pay tribute to Islay.

For Gaelic prose writing must be Carnassarie Castle in Mid-Argyll. The very first Gaelic printed book to appear in Ireland or Scotland was published in Edinburgh in 1567, but it was produced in this imposing castle which stands just above the main road through Mid-Argyll, not far from Kilmartin. The occupant of the castle in the 1560s was a powerful and influential clergyman called John Carswell, who enjoyed the patronage of the 5th Earl of Argyll. Into the castle, you will see on the lintel of the main door the words Dia le ua nDuibhne (‘God [be] with Ua Duibhne‘, Ua Duibhne being the Campbell Earl of Argyll). With the warm support of the Earl, John Carswell became a Protestant at the time of the Reformation, and translated into Gaelic a fundamentally important book of the Scottish Reformation, namely John Knox’s Book of Common Order. The Book of Common Order was a directory for the conduct of worship in the Reformed churches. Carswell’s translation, called Fiorm na nUrrnuidheadh, was of great importance for the implantation of Reformed doctrine in this part of the Highlands; it would have been used by Gaelic-speaking ministers like Carswell himself who were formerly priests in the pre-Reformation church.

The compilers of the Book of the Dean of Lismore (1512-42), a manuscript which takes its name from the title and office of James MacGregor, one of its scribes, were operating in Fortingall on the Eastern edge of the Highlands, and employing a spelling system for Gaelic which was based on the systems of Middle and Early Modern Scots. If these scribes had beaten Carswell to the printing press, the spelling of Gaelic might have been very different; it might have resembled that of modern Manx.

Starting in the north, we would look across to Dalilea in Island Finnan, the early stamping ground of the formidable poet, Alexander MacDonald (c.1698-c.1770), otherwise known as Alasdair mac Mhaighstir Alasdair, who served his reluctant time as a schoolmaster in Ardnamurchan, before becoming Prince Charles’s Gaelic poet-laureate, and lampooning the Campbells with his barbed wit. Later, after the ‘Forty-five, MacDonald was active in Inverness-shire, becoming baillie of Canna. MacDonald is widely regarded as the greatest of the eighteenth-century Gaelic poets, certainly in terms of intellectual fire. His volume of poems, Ais-eiridh na Seana Chànoin Albannaich, was the first volume of verse by a Gaelic vernacular poet to be put in print. It appeared in 1751, but because of its Jacobite sentiments, it was burnt by the public hangman in Edinburgh. Only a few copies of the original printing of the book have survived. MacDonald’s poetry had a profound influence on his contemporaries in Argyll, notably (it would seem) Argyll’s best known poet, Duncan MacIntyre.

Coming down towards Tyndrum (a village on the western edge of Perthshire), on the road southwards from Glencoe, we would skirt the lower edges of a mountain which has ‘the honour above every mountain’, namely Beinn Dobhrain, which was celebrated by the Gaelic poet Duncan MacIntyre, better known as Donnchadh Ban Mac an t-Saoir (1724-1812). MacIntyre is the Gaelic nature bard par excellence; he celebrates the wonderful productivity which can be achieved when humanity and nature are in a co-operative harmony. His poem, ‘Moladh Beinn Dòbhrain’ (‘In Praise of Ben Doran’), is perhaps the finest poetic description ever made of the wildlife of any region in the British Isles. Duncan MacIntyre was, of course, unable to read or write, but many of his poems were written down by a native of Glenorchy, the Rev. Donald MacNicol, parish minister of Lismore. His verse was published in 1768.

Gaelic poets and songsters of lesser stature than Donnchadh Ban were active throughout Argyll. We could call at many places, and find an almost inexhaustible number of poets in all of them, particularly of the local ‘township bard’ type, commemorating events and personalities within their own districts. Representatives of the nineteenth-century poetic tradition on the mainland include Dr John MacLachlan, Rahoy; Calum Campbell MacPhail, Dalmally; Iain Campbell, Ledaig; Evan McColl, Lochfyneside; and Dugald Gordon MacDougall, a native of Dunach in Kilbride parish. MacLachlan and MacPhail, in particular, observed, and commented on, the patterns of social change as their areas were transformed by ‘improvement’ and clearing.

Poetry and song flourished strongly in the islands from the Middle Ages to the present century. The Lords of the Isles acted as patrons to the poets until the end of the Lordship in 1492, and thereafter the patronage of lesser kindreds, who filled the vacuum left by the Lords’ demise, grew in significance. Particularly noteworthy is the role of the MacLeans, including the MacLeans of Duart and the MacLeans of Coll, in maintaining poets of considerable stature. Island lairds too were often skilled in song. The ‘township bard’ is well attested in most island communities, especially in the context of crofting, after 1800.

Tiree was particularly rich in poets of this kind. Some island poets achieved major recognition within the wider Gaelic area. Islay, for example, was the home of one of the best of the nineteenth-century Gaelic bards - William Livingstone (1808-70), who composed memorable verse on the clearances in Islay. Two editions of his poems were published.

Duncan MacDougall, a native of Brolas in Mull who had close connections with the Ross of Mull, became the founding father of Tiree Baptist Church (1838), and put his hymns into print in 1841. His sister, Mary, was the composer of a Gaelic hymn, ‘Leanabh an Aigh’, which is famous today as the carol ‘Child in the Manger’. Mary also composed secular verse. The proportion of ministers who were natives of the region and contributed constructively to the development of Gaelic literature per se is thus probably higher in Argyll than in any other district of the Highlands.