were servants to the heads of the lineages and kept track of important information for them: laws, genealogies, annals, literature, etc. After the destruction of Gaelic civilization in the 1600s as a result of the English colonialism, these more formal roles ceased to exist and the term came to be associated instead with traditional storytellers from the lower classes.{{cite web |url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/northernireland/schools/11_16/storyteller/pdf/gen_notes_all.pdf |title=Study Ireland:An Introduction to Storytelling, Myths and Legends |publisher=BBC Northern Ireland The made use of a range of storytelling conventions, styles of speech and gestures that were peculiar to the Irish folk tradition and characterized them as practitioners of their art. Although tales from literary sources found their way into the repertoires of the , a traditional characteristic of their art was the way in which a large corpus of tales was passed from one practitioner to another without ever being written down. passed information orally through storytelling from one generation to the next about Irish folklore, myth, history and legend, in medieval times. The distinctive role and craft of the is particularly associated with the
Gaeltacht (the Irish-speaking areas of Ireland), although storytellers recognizable as were also to be found in rural areas throughout English-speaking Ireland. In their storytelling, some displayed archaic
Hiberno-English idioms and vocabulary distinct from the style of ordinary conversation. ==Modern times==