Áes dána (stand)
Áes dána [ ois' da: na ] ("people with skills", "people of art"), Scottish Gaelic Aois-dàna , is the term for a social class in old Irish society, a subgroup of soír , also sóer ( from so-aire = "good-free"), which also included the nobility and the druids . Among the soír were the doír (also dóer , the “badly free”).
The áes dána included the professions of poets and bards ( Filid ), seers ( Vates ), musicians, doctors, historians, blacksmiths, wagon makers and legal experts, as well as sometimes the non-noble free landowners ( aithech fortha ). The esteem of these professions can also be ascertained in Wales, where the son of an unfree person could only become a blacksmith, poet or priest with difficulty, since this would have been connected with an increase in rank.
The island Celtic expression * kerda- for the smithy was used in the course of time by the bronze; Goldsmithing and art forging extended to medicine, music and poetry; Wood and construction workers were referred to as saer . In an old Irish poem about the Túatha Dé Danann - who were sometimes also referred to as áes dána - you can read:
- déi int áes dána, andéi immorro int áes trebtha ("The craftsmen were gods, the peasants were non-gods")
The legal and social position of the áes dána was precisely regulated in the old legal texts; such as Bretha Crólige (“The decisions regarding bloodshed”) or Lóg n-enech (“Honorary Award”), where, among other things, the “value”, i.e. the fine to be paid in the event of death or injury, was specified.
A late detail from the time of the Christianization of Ireland points once again to the different value of the craft trades: In an Irish version of salvation history, the father of Jesus of Nazareth , the carpenter Joseph , is made a blacksmith in order to upgrade him socially.
literature
- Helmut Birkhan : Celts. Attempt at a complete representation of their culture. Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna 1997, ISBN 3-7001-2609-3 , S. 990 f.
- Wolfgang Meid : The Celts. Reclam, Stuttgart 2007, ISBN 978-3-15-017053-3 , S, 104 f.
Individual evidence
- ^ John Carey : A Tuath Dé , Miscellany, The Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies 39, Cardiff 1992, pp. 24 f.
- ↑ Helmut Birkhan: Celts. Attempt at a complete representation of their culture. P. 1011 f.