Here is a little excerpt from Celtic Myths and Legends (p. 119)that I thought was interesting about the history of Celtic poets.
To be the subject of a curse from a poet is a terrible thing. In ancient times, the poet had high status at the king's court and could argue with the High King himself. Everyone sought the poet's praise and dreaded his satire. In the Annals of Ulster it is recorded that, in the year ad 1024, the chief poet of Ireland, Cuan Ua Lothchain, was unlawfully killed in Theba. As he lay dying, he uttered the poet's curse, the firt filed they called it, and the bodies of his murderers were said to have rotted within the hours. To challenge a poet or displease him or her - for there were banfili, women poets, equal with men in Ireland in those days - would be like playing dice with fate.
The poet's curse was not something to be chanced lightly. The Annals of Connacht record that, in the year ad 1414, John Stanley, the English viceroy, sent to rule in Ireland, died from a poet's curse.
When Tomas O Criomththain (1856-1937) wrote his best-selling autobiography An tOilednach (The Islandman) he wrote that he would abandon his day's work to go to listen to the island poet, for fear of being satirised and cursed by him.
The fear of the poet's curse caused High Kings and kings to promise the poet anything that was demanded of them to avoid the curse.
