Above : Illustration Picture about Irish School on 1840

There were two classes of schools in Ireland, ecclesiastical and lay. The ecclesiastical or monastic schools were intended principally for the study of the Sacred Scriptures, theology, and the classics, while the lay schools were occupied with the teaching of the language, literature, laws, and antiquities of Ireland. Each of the two classes of schools had its separate and distinct mission, yet they worked together harmoniously, and many laymen received their education in the monas­teries. While the learned men were for the most part ecclesiastics, we find that laymen had an important role in education, and that nearly all the poets, physicians, lawyers, artists and his­torians were laymen. The lay schools succeeded to the schools which had been governed by the Druids before the introduction of Christianity to Ireland, and the Christian Ollaves or doctors who taught in them were the successors of the wise men who directed the training and education of the people of pagan Ireland.

The course of education was divided into seven stages, or as they were called the " seven degrees of wisdom," which corresponded with the term periods in a modern university. A student who had passed through the various degrees and at­tained to the highest grade was known as an ‘ Ollave or Doctor.’ In the Bardic schools the course extended over twelve years, and an Ollave poet had to possess a knowledge of seven kinds of verse, and to be able to compose extemporaneously in each. In addition he was required to know by heart three hundred and fifty legendary poems for recitation in public. He took rank at the head of the learned professions and was considered to be the equal of kings and bishops in social dignity and importance. The profession of the poet was highly esteemed and very popular, so much so that Keating tells that in the middle of the sixth century nearly a third of the men of Ireland be­longed to the poetic order. The Ollave Brehon, who corresponded to a Judge of the High Court in our own day, had also to pass through a long and severe course of study, and had to be conversant with the intricate and complicated rules of the Brehon Code, which regulated almost every rela­tion of human life in Ireland, and extended to many subjects with which modern systems of law do not concern themselves.