Note 74 — Chapter V · THE LANGUAGE OF GALICIA

The Irish poets were much given to contests of wit, usually carried on in the following way: When two of them met, one repeated the first half of a very short poem, which was a challenge to the other to repeat it. Sometimes it was a quotation from some obscure, half-forgotten old poem, sometimes an effusion composed on the spot, in which case the second poet was expected to give, extemporaneously, a second half of the same length, prosody and rhyme, and making continuous sense.... In Ireland it was believed that a true poet never failed to respond correctly.... So generally cultivated, and so universally admired was this talent for impromptu reply, that in the ecclesiastical legends some of the Irish saints are credited with as much proficiency as the best of the poets. See P. W. Joyce, A Social History of Ancient Ireland, 1903.