seanchaí

A seanchaí (Irish: [ˈʃan̪ˠəxiː] or [ʃan̪ˠəˈxiː]; plural: Irish: seanchaithe [ˈʃan̪ˠəxəhɪ]) is a traditional Gaelic storyteller or historian, serving as an oral repository. In Scottish Gaelic the word is seanchaidh (pronounced [ˈʃɛn̪ˠɛxɪ]; plural: seanchaidhean). The word is often anglicised as shanachie ( SHAN-ə-khee, -⁠KHEE). The word seanchaí, which was spelled seanchaidhe (plural seanchaidhthe) before the Irish spelling reform of 1948, means a bearer of "old lore" (seanchas). In the Gaelic culture, long lyric poems which were recited by bards (filí; filidhe in the original pre-1948 spelling) in a tradition echoed by the seanchaithe.