14 Sruth n'am Ollamh                   14 Streams of an Ollamh
Firinni , Dire, Obair Lathanadh,          Honesty, Dignity, Daily work, Geneology
Sheanachie, Imbas Forosnai,              Imbas Forosnai and Dichetal
agus Dichetal, Anamain, agus            Anamain and Judgment
Flaith-Breith, Tenm Laegdha,             Tenm Laegdha and Ocean of song
agus oran n'am muir, Glan lamh,      Purity of hand and of Marriage
agus Posaidh, Glan bheul, agus         Purity of lips and of study
Ionnsachadh
Bardic instruction detailed in the Sanas Chormaic
Based on "Manners and customs of the ancient Irish" by -Eugene O'Curry
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How to Use This Curriculum
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The twelve-year course of study preserved by Eugene O'Curry from the Sanas Cormaic represents the foundational structure of this curriculum. Its original form is kept intact on the Bhardachd page as a primary source and point of reference. What follows here is that same structure mapped onto the texts and resources actually available to the modern student — drawing on the pages of this site, the primary sources accessible through the Web Links page, and the narrative and legal corpus of the Irish tradition.
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The curriculum runs three parallel tracks simultaneously throughout all twelve years, as the ancient schools themselves did. These are never separated: the Technical track (Ogham, grammar, prosody, the secret language of the poets), the Narrative track (the tales, from twenty in Year One to 350 in Year Twelve), and the Philosophical and Legal track (cosmology, theology, Brehon law, and the wisdom literature). Each enriches the others. A law text read alongside the story it governs means something the law text alone cannot say. A tale read alongside the Ogham of the tree at its heart opens a register of meaning invisible to the casual reader.
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The Web Links page functions as the library for this curriculum. The single most important resource there is the CELT Corpus at University College Cork, which gives direct access to most of the narrative corpus — the Lebor Gabála Érenn, the Ulster Cycle, the Táin, the Dindsenchas, and the Immrama — in both original Irish and translation. Mary Jones' Celtic Literature archive covers much of the same territory with a different selection, and between the two, the narrative track from Years One through Nine is fully resourced. The Brehon Law Library and the Senchus Mór links cover the legal track from Years Four through Ten. The Saltair na Rann links directly to the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies edition for Year Ten. The Auraicept na n-Éces — the Scholar's Primer, the tradition's own grammar of language and knowledge — belongs in Years Three and Four and is linked there directly.
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The pages of this site are not supplementary to the curriculum — they are the curriculum for significant portions of it. The Ogham pages with their multiple simultaneous registers (tree, colour, water, bird, kenning) are the Year One technical study already written. The Breitheamh section provides the legal track for Year Four in sequence: begin with the Audacht Morann as the moral foundation of law, move through the Corus Bescna, the Uraicecht Beag, and the Athgabhail, and finish with the Judicial Procedure. The full Ceremony section — the Daily Round, the seasonal rites, the occasional rites — constitutes the practical track of Year Seven. The Blog carries the theological argument of the tradition in the form of the Leabhar Darach, which enters the curriculum formally in Year Seven but rewards reading at any stage of the journey.
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The student beginning Year One should understand one thing above all others: the tradition says "to learn anything well, one must forget it several times." The curriculum is not a ladder to be climbed and left behind. It is a spiral. The same texts recur at different years because the student who reads Cath Maige Tuired in Year Three and the student who reads it again in Year Twelve are not the same person, and the text will not be the same text. Begin. Return. Begin again.
​The twelve years of the curriculum are laid out here in full, with links to the relevant pages on this site and to the external resources for each year's study (weblinks tab on the home page).
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The key insight O'Curry preserves is that the curriculum moves through three simultaneous tracks in every year: the technical (Ogham, grammar, prosody, secret language), the narrative (tales, increasing in number and complexity), and the philosophical/legal (the Bretha Nemed, the Law of Bardism, the three illuminations). They are never separated. You don't finish one before starting another — you carry all three forward together, each enriching the others.
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CÉIM A hAON — Year One The Alphabet of the World
Technical: The first 50 Oghams — not as letters but as living things. Each fid is a tree, a story, a kenning, a colour, a season, a truth. The Ogham Tract as the foundational grammar of perception.
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Narrative: 20 tales — begin with the Mythological Cycle foundation stories from the Lebor Gabála Érenn, specifically the first three invasions (Cessair, Partholón, Nemed). The student learns that the world was made by arrival, displacement, and loss before it was ever made by triumph.
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Philosophy: Elementary grammar of the tradition — the Three Circles (Abred, Gwynvyd, Ceugant), the Bardic Enigma, the five triads from the home page as a memory exercise. The student learns the shape of the cosmos before they learn its contents.
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CÉIM A DÓ — Year Two The Grammar of Being
Technical: 50 more Oghams — the forfeda, the kenning-lists, the tree calendar in its full seasonal form.
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Narrative: 30 tales — the remaining Lebor Gabála invasions: Fir Bolg, the first Tuatha Dé Danann arrival, the First Battle of Mag Tuired. The student now has a complete cosmogonic history. The world has gods, and the gods came from somewhere.
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Philosophy: Six easy lessons from the tradition — the Audacht Morann (the testament of Morann to the king) as the first encounter with the idea that wisdom governs power, not the other way around. Also the theological triads from the site.
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CÉIM A TRÍ — Year Three The Grammar of Story
Technical: 50 more Oghams completing the system. Grammar deepened — the student can now read the tradition's own metalanguage.
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Narrative: 40 tales — the Second Battle of Mag Tuired (Cath Maige Tuired) in full. This is the great mythological drama: the Tuatha Dé against the Fomorians, Lugh's arrival, the naming of each divine function, the Cauldron of the Dagda, the sword of Nuadu. This is where the student first meets the gods as fully realized personalities, not just names.
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Philosophy: The Cauldron of Poesy text — the three cauldrons of inspiration within the body, how they tip and fill and empty. The student learns that the instrument of their art is themselves.
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CÉIM A CEATHAIR — Year Four The Grammar of Law
Technical: The Bretha Nemed Toísech and Déidenach — the law of the privileged classes, which means the law governing poets, physicians, and craftspeople. The student learns that their calling has legal standing — it is not ornament but structure.
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Narrative: 50 tales — the Dindsenchas begins here. Selected entries: Boyne, Tara, Emain Macha, Mag Tuired, Brug na Bóinne, Lough Derg. The student learns that every place name is a compressed story, and the land itself is a text.
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Philosophy: The Uraicecht na Ríar (the poetic grades poem) — the student sees the full map of what they are becoming. The seven Bardic grades, what is required of each, what privilege each carries.
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CÉIM A CÚIG — Year Five The Grammar of the Human
Technical: Grammar revisited and deepened — syntax, the poetic metres introduced for the first time. Deibhidhe and rannaigeacht as first forms.
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Narrative: 60 tales — the Ulster Cycle begins. In order: the birth tales and boyhood deeds first (Compert Con Culainn, Macgnímrada Con Culainn), then Fled Bricrenn (Bricriu's Feast) as the great comedy of honour and its absurdity. The student meets Cú Chulainn not as a hero but as a problem to be understood.
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Philosophy: The Triads of the Bards of the Feni and the Triads of Bardism and Usage from the site — memorized in full this year. Wisdom in compressed form, carried in the body.
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CÉIM A SÉ — Year Six The Secret Language
Technical: The secret language of the poets — Bérla na Filed, the cryptic registers, the kenning tradition. This is the year the student learns that language has an inner face visible only to those trained to see it.
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Narrative: 70-80 tales — the Ulster Cycle continues. Táin Bó Cúailnge in full, both recensions. This is the great central text — the raid for the Brown Bull, Cú Chulainn's single combat at the ford, Medb's sovereignty and its costs, Fergus in exile, the death of Ferdia. The student now encounters the tradition's most complex moral landscape.
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Philosophy: The Din Techtugad (the law of rightful occupation of land) — the legal counterpart to the Táin's thematic preoccupation with cattle, territory, and sovereignty. Law and story illuminate each other directly this year.
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CÉIM A SEACHT — Year Seven The Grammar of Practice
Technical: The Brosnacha — the miscellany year. All the things that don't fit neatly: gnomic wisdom, seasonal lore, aphoristic teaching, the material from the Sanas Cormaic (Cormac's Glossary) as a treasury of the tradition's self-understanding.
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Narrative: The Law of Bardism studied through its stories — the tales of poets using their power: satire that raises blemishes, praise that heals, the poets who could rhyme rats to death. The tradition's understanding of what words actually do in the world.
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Philosophy: The Céli-Dé material enters here for the first time — the Rule of Colmcille, the Bardic Confession of Faith from the blog. The student encounters the Christian-Gaelic synthesis not as a contradiction but as a continuation.
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CÉIM A HOCHT — Year Eight The Three Illuminations
Technical: Prosody in full — all the classical metres, their occasions, their requirements. Glosses and the meaning of obscure words — the student learns to read the tradition's own marginalia.
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Narrative: The Dindsenchas continues — the prose version now alongside the metric, the two forms of the same knowledge showing how form changes meaning. Also the Fenian Cycle begins: the boyhood of Fionn, the Salmon of Knowledge, Fionn and the Fianna as a community of disciplined wanderers — a mirror for the student's own path.
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Philosophy: The three illuminations themselves — Teinm Laegdha (illumination through song), Imbas Forosnai (light of foresight through the palms), Dichetal do Chennibh (extempore incantation from the fingertips). These are not examined academically — they are practised. This is the year the student begins to learn the difference between knowledge and knowing.
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CÉIM A NAOI — Year Nine The Ocean of Story
Technical: The great compositions begin — Sennet, Luasca, Nena, Eochraid (the Keys), Sruith (the Streams). The student is now composing in the tradition's most demanding forms. The 175 tales begin to be assembled.
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Narrative: The Immrama — Immram Brain Maic Febail (both the pagan and Christianized layers), Immram Curaig Máele Dúin, Immram Snédgusa. The student has been on a journey for nine years; now they study what journeys mean, what calls you away,
what brings you home, what you find that cannot be named. The Navigatio Brendani for its account of sacred wandering in a new-world context.
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Philosophy: The Athgabál (distraint) and the Corus Bescna (regulation of customary law) — the legal procedures for restoring right relationship when it has been broken. The student learns that justice is not punishment but healing of the social fabric.
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CÉIM A DEICH — Year Ten The Grammar of Sovereignty
Technical: Continuation of the great compositions. The 175 tales deepened — revisiting earlier material with new eyes.
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Narrative: The sovereignty tales — Niall of the Nine Hostages and the loathly lady, the wooing tales, the Togail Bruidne Dá Derga (the destruction of Da Derga's hostel) as the great study of what happens when a king violates his geasa. The student now understands that sovereignty is not power — it is right relationship with the land, the people, and the gods.
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Philosophy: The Saltair na Rann — the great vernacular biblical and cosmological poem — as a study in how the tradition synthesized inherited cosmology with new revelation without destroying either. The Nine Streams of Affirmation from the blog fits here as a living example of the same process happening now.
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CÉIM A hAON DÉAG — Year Eleven The 100 Anamuin
Technical: 100 Anamuin — these are the soul-compositions, the deepest lyric forms, poems that are prayers that are spells that are laws. The student is now composing with the full instrument.
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Narrative: The Fenian Cycle concludes — Acallam na Senórach (the Colloquy of the Ancients) as the great meditation on memory, loss, and the transmission of tradition itself. Two old warriors walking through a changed Ireland, naming every place, grieving everything, and in the grieving, preserving it. This is the story of what the student is doing, and has been doing, for eleven years.
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Philosophy: The Uraicecht Beag (the small primer) and the Bretha Nemed material revisited — now the student reads the law not as a student but as someone who may one day be called to apply it.
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CÉIM A DÓ DHÉAG — Year Twelve The 120 Orations and the Full Inheritance
Technical: 120 Cetals — orations, the highest public speech-acts of the tradition. The four arts of poetry mastered and demonstrated. The complete 350 tales held in memory.
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Narrative: The Dindshenchas completed — every major place in the tradition named, storied, and known. The student can now walk through any landscape and read it as text. The Táin revisited as a final examination — not as story but as cosmological drama understood from the inside.
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Philosophy: The Nemeton Path thesis from the blog — participatory ontology, oral transmission, oracular epistemology — as the student's own synthesis. In the old tradition, the Ollam's graduation was a public performance. The student composed an original work, delivered it before the assembly, and was judged. That tradition should be honoured here.
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YEAR ONE — Beith: Beginnings The Alphabet of the World
The student arrives. They know nothing, or think they know nothing, which is the same. The first teaching is the first letter — Beith, the Birch. Peasant beginnings. Vitality. Disturbance. The tree that colonises cleared ground first. The student is Beith.
Texts already on site: All 20 Ogham pages with their multiple registers — this is the 50 Oghams of Year One, organized as a living system rather than a list. The Ogham Tract as the metalanguage governing how the system works.
Texts to add: The first 20 stories from the Lebor Gabála — the three pre-Milesian invasions (Cessair, Partholón, Nemed). These are stories of arrival, loss, and clearing ground — which is exactly Beith's teaching. The student learns that the world began with displacement and that this is not tragedy but preparation.
Practical: The student begins the Daily Round from the Ceremony pages. Not as optional practice — as the skeleton of the year. Morning, noon, evening. Every day. The round is the first and most foundational curriculum item and it should be stated explicitly as such.
Cosmology: The Three Circles — Abred, Gwynvyd, Ceugant — and the home page triads memorized whole. The student learns the shape of the universe before they learn its stories.
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YEAR TWO — Luis: Rowan The Grammar of Protection and Discernment
The Rowan stands at thresholds and protects against enchantment — against being carried away by things that seem true but aren't. Year Two teaches the student to think about what they're learning, not merely receive it.
Texts on site: The Barddas Nuaidh section — the 10 Commandments of the Bards, the Name of God/Bardic Secret, the Excellence of Ancient Word. These are the first philosophical lessons, introduced now because the student has spent a year absorbing and needs the first framework for understanding.
Texts to add: The remaining Ogham registers completed and deepened. The six easy philosophy lessons from O'Curry are the Audacht Morann — Morann's testament to the young king about the nature of just rule. Thirty tales from the Lebor Gabála continuing — the Fir Bolg and the first Tuatha Dé Danann arrival. The student now has gods to name.
Key addition for the site: A page that doesn't yet exist — an introduction to the Senchas Már as a concept: the idea that law and story and cosmology were composed together by a council of Druids and Bishops, that the tradition was syncretic from its very beginning. This is the thesis of the Leabhar Darach made explicit as curriculum.
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YEAR THREE — Fearn: Alder The Grammar of Foundation
The Alder grows where its roots can reach water. It bridges worlds — its wood resists rot in wet places, it holds the bank against the river's erosion. Year Three teaches what endures and why.
Texts on site: The Cauldron of Poesy — this is the central Year Three text. The three cauldrons of warming, vocation, and wisdom within the body, how they tip and fill, what tips them. The student learns that the instrument of their art is themselves.
Texts to add: Forty stories — the Second Battle of Mag Tuired (Cath Maige Tuired) in full. This is the year's great narrative: Lugh arriving, naming his function before the gatekeeper, the Dagda's cauldron that leaves no one unsatisfied, the sword of Nuadu that cannot be refused. The theology of the Tuatha Dé becomes visible — they are not gods so much as functions of a divine whole.
Grammar: The student begins formal Gaelic — enough to read the kenning-registers of the Ogham in their original tongue. The Bérla Féini (legal language) as a first encounter with the tradition's internal register.
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YEAR FOUR — Sail: Willow The Grammar of Law
The Willow grows at the water's edge, flexible, yielding, but its roots go very deep and hold fast. Year Four is law — not as rigidity but as the deep roots that allow bending without breaking.
Texts on site: The entire Breitheamh section — Athgabhail, Corus Bescna, Uraicecht Beag, the Audacht Morann, the Judicial Procedure page. These are now read not as reference material but as curriculum, in this order: Audacht Morann first (the moral basis of law), then Corus Bescna (the customary regulation of society), then the Uraicecht Beag (the small primer of grades and status), then Athgabhail (the procedural law of distraint — what you do when right relationship breaks down), then Judicial Procedure (how the system actually functions).
Texts to add from corpus: The Bretha Nemed Toísech — the law of the privileged classes, establishing that poets, physicians, and craftspeople have legal standing that kings themselves cannot override. This is the year the student understands that their vocation is not ornamental — it is structural. Society requires them.
Fifty tales: The Dindsenchas begins — major entries first. Boyne, Tara, Emain Macha, Brug na Bóinne, Mag Tuired. The student learns that place names are compressed law cases — every placename is the record of something that happened and its consequence.
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YEAR FIVE — Nion: Ash The Grammar of Connexion
The Ash is the World Tree in many traditions — its roots reach below, its branches above, its trunk in the middle world. Year Five teaches connexion: between levels, between traditions, between what was and what is.
Texts on site: The full Céli-Dé theological material — the Rule of Colmcille, the Prayer of St. Francis, the Sloineadh Brighid (Brigid's genealogy as a linking of Christian and pre-Christian tradition), the Bardic Confession of Faith from the blog. The student now encounters the explicit synthesis — not as compromise but as completion.
Texts to add: Sixty tales — the Ulster Cycle begins with the birth tales and the Macgnímrada (boyhood deeds of Cú Chulainn). The student meets the tradition's greatest hero not as a finished figure but as a child, making choices, forming character. This is also the year of Fled Bricrenn — Bricriu's Feast — the great comedy of honour and its absurdity. The student needs to laugh at the tradition before they revere it.
Triads: All triads on the site memorized this year in full — Theological Triads, Triads of Bardism, Triads of the Bards of the Feni, Trecheng Breth Feni. These are the tradition's own summary of itself, compressed to the form that memory carries best.
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YEAR SIX — Huath: Hawthorn The Secret Language
The Hawthorn guards thresholds. Its beauty is thorned. It blooms at Beltane, which is itself a threshold. Year Six is where the student crosses into the interior of the tradition — the language beneath the language.
Texts on site: The Gaelic Poetics page. The 18 Laws of Magick. These are the working tools of the practitioner as opposed to the scholar.
Texts to add: The Táin Bó Cúailnge — both recensions, the older fragmented version and the Book of Leinster version. This is the year's great central text, taking most of the year's study. Not as epic but as moral laboratory: what happens when sovereignty is violated (Medb), what happens when honour demands the impossible (Cú Chulainn), what happens when exile produces a man who fights against his own kin (Fergus), what happens when a friendship is destroyed by a political necessity (Ferdia at the ford).
Seventy to eighty tales total. The Bérla na Filed — the secret language of the poets — introduced practically this year. This is where the student begins to understand that not everything in the tradition is said plainly.
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YEAR SEVEN — Duir: Oak The Grammar of Practice
The Oak is the centre. The Druid's tree. The Nemeton is an oak grove. Year Seven is where theory becomes practice — the student stops learning about the tradition and begins living it as their daily reality.
Texts on site: The full Ceremony section — all of it, studied this year not as reference but as practice. The Daily Round deepened. The seasonal rites (Feis/Events) understood not just as observances but as the tradition's cosmological calendar made embodied. The student participates in every rite they can reach, and studies the ones they cannot.
Texts to add: The Law of Bardism (Uraicecht na Ríar) — the poetic grades poem, read now in full. The student sees the complete map of what they are becoming and what remains. The Brosnacha material — the miscellany — the Sanas Cormaic (Cormac's Glossary) as the tradition's own self-annotation.
The Leabhar Darach itself enters the curriculum here — the full historical and theological argument of the document. The student has been living in the tradition for six years; now they read its self-justification and test it against their own experience.
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YEAR EIGHT — Tinne: Holly The Three Illuminations
The Holly endures winter. Its red berries are food for birds when nothing else remains. It keeps its colour when all around is grey. Year Eight teaches the student to know in the dark — the three illuminations that do not require external light.
Texts on site: The Bhardachd (Bardism) page and the Draoicht (Druidism) page — now studied as the formal descriptions of what the student has been practising. The distinction between Bard and Druid becomes concrete rather than theoretical.
Texts to add: Teinm Laegdha, Imbas Forosnai, Dichetal do Chennibh — not as history but as practice protocols. These exist in enough detail in the Cath Maige Tuired and in the Sanas Cormaic and in secondary sources (Chadwick's paper is already linked on the Ollamhachd page) to reconstruct working versions. The student begins to practise extempore composition — the Dichetal do Chennibh — as a weekly discipline.
Prosody: All the classical metres introduced. The student begins composing in Deibhidhe, Rannaigecht, Séadna — the forms of the tradition — not as academic exercise but as devotional practice.
The Dindsenchas deepened: Both metric and prose versions of the major entries studied together, the student learning how form changes meaning.
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YEAR NINE — Coll: Hazel The Ocean of Story
The Hazel hangs over the Well of Wisdom. Its nuts fall into the water, the salmon eat them, and whoever eats the salmon receives all knowledge. Year Nine is where the great journey literature enters — the Immrama — because the student is now nine years in and is themselves on a wonder-voyage.
Texts on site: The Cycle Legends page as the hub for this year's narrative study.
Texts to add: Immram Brain Maic Febail — both the pagan framing and the Christianized version — studied together to show how the same journey carries different theologies without contradiction. Immram Curaig Máele Dúin — the great catalogue of wonders, each island a different teaching. Immram Snédgusa. The Navigatio Brendani — the Gaelic tradition's great sea-journey into the new world, deeply relevant to the Canadian context.
The 175 tales begun: The student now assembles a personal repertoire from everything learned in the first eight years and begins formal storytelling practice — not just knowing the stories but telling them.
The Athgabál and legal poems revisited this year with the eye of someone who might one day be called to apply them.
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YEAR TEN — Queirt: Apple The Grammar of Sovereignty
The Apple is the fruit of Tír na nÓg, the island of the ever-young. It is what Manannán mac Lir carries, what grants passage to the otherworld. Year Ten teaches sovereignty — not as power but as right relationship with everything.
Texts to add: The sovereignty tales — Niall of the Nine Hostages, the Togail Bruidne Dá Derga as the great study in what happens when a king violates his geasa. The wooing tales — how sovereignty passes through the feminine, the loathly lady who becomes beautiful when recognised.
The Saltair na Rann: The great vernacular cosmological poem entered this year — the tradition's synthesis of biblical and indigenous cosmology in verse. Studied alongside the Nine Streams of Affirmation from the blog as ancient and modern versions of the same theological work.
The student begins composing their own Sennet, Luasca, and Eochraid — the advanced forms that demonstrate mastery. The 175 tales continued.
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YEAR ELEVEN — Muin: Vine The 100 Anamuin
The Vine is the plant of transformation — what is crushed becomes something that opens vision. Year Eleven is the most interior year, the one that is hardest to describe from outside. The student is composing the Anamuin — the soul-compositions — and studying the tradition's own meditation on memory and loss.
Texts to add: Acallam na Senórach — the Colloquy of the Ancients — as the year's great central text. Two old warriors of the Fianna walking through a changed Ireland, naming every place, grieving everything they have lost, and in the grieving preserving it. This is the story of what the student is doing and has been doing. The student who has been building their repertoire for eleven years reads this text and recognises themselves in it.
The Fenian Cycle completed: The boyhood of Fionn, the Salmon of Wisdom, the Fianna as the tradition's image of a disciplined community of wanderers. All the major tales in the student's repertoire.
Practical: The student is now regularly composing ceremonial and occasional poetry in the tradition's metres, performing at community gatherings, and beginning to teach what they have learned to those in earlier years.
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YEAR TWELVE — Duir again: The Return to the Oak The 120 Orations and the Full Inheritance
The student returns to the Oak — but they are not the same person who arrived. The Nemeton is the same place. They are not.
Texts: The Dindsenchas completed — every major entry. The complete Táin revisited not as story but as cosmological drama understood from inside, by someone who now knows all the characters across multiple texts and can read it as a unified vision. The Din Techtugad (rightful occupation of land) as the final legal text — the student can now read the law not as a student but as a practitioner.
The 350 tales assembled: The full repertoire, combining the 175 of the Annruth grade with the 175 of the Ollam grade. The student holds the tradition in their body.
The Leabhar Darach revisited: Read now as a peer, not a student. The student has something to say in response. Their graduation is a public composition and performance — an original work that synthesises everything they have learned and demonstrates that the tradition is not merely preserved in them but alive.
The three final questions put to the student before the Gorsedd: What is the Bardic Enigma? What is the name of God? What is your name?