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- For other meanings of the word, see Bard (disambiguation).
In Celtic society, a bard was a professional poet, paid by a monarch to praise the sovereign's activities.
The term acquired generic meanings of an epic author/singer/narrator (comparable with the terms in other cultures: minstrel, skald, rhapsode, udgatar, griot, ashik, ozan, dengbej) or any poets, especially famous ones. For example, William Shakespeare is known as The Bard.1
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Etymology
The word is a loanword from descendant languages of Proto-Celtic *bardos, ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *gwrh2-dh1-ó-, from the root *gwerh2 "to raise the voice; praise". The first recorded example in English is in 1449 from the Scottish Gaelic language into Lowland Scots, denoting an itinerant musician, usually with a contemptuous connotation. The word subsequently entered the English language via Scottish English.
Secondly, in medieval Gaelic and Welsh society, a bard (Scottish and Irish Gaelic) or bardd (Welsh) was a professional poet, employed to compose eulogies for his lord (see planxty). If the employer failed to pay the proper amount, the bard would then compose a satire. (c. f. fili, fáith). In other European societies, the same function was fulfilled by skalds, rhapsodes, minstrels and scops, among others.
Bards (who are not the same as the Irish 'Filidh' or 'Fili') were those who sang the songs recalling the tribal warriors' deeds of bravery as well as the genealogies and family histories of the ruling strata among Celtic societies. The pre-Christian Celtic peoples recorded no written histories; however, Celtic peoples did maintain an intricate oral history committed to memory and transmitted by bards and filid. Bards facilitated the memorization of such materials by the use of poetic meter and rhyme.
During the era of Romanticism, when knowledge of Celtic culture was overlaid by legends and fictions, the word was reintroduced into the West Germanic languages, this time directly into the English language, in the sense of 'lyric poet', idealised by writers such as the Scottish romantic novelist Sir Walter Scott. The word was taken from Latin bardus, Greek bardos, in turn loanwords from the Gaulish language, describing a class of Celtic priest (see druid, vates). From this romantic use came the epitheton The Bard applied to William Shakespeare and Robert Burns.
Irish bards
- See also: Bardic poetry
Irish bards formed a professional hereditary caste of highly trained, learned poets. The bards were steeped in the history and traditions of clan and country, as well as in the technical requirements of a verse technique that was syllabic and used assonance, half rhyme and alliteration, among other conventions. As officials of the court of king or chieftain, they performed a number of official roles. They were chroniclers and satirists whose job it was to praise their employers and damn those who crossed them. It was believed that a well-aimed bardic satire, glam dicenn, could raise boils on the face of its target.
However, it should also be noted that in medieval Ireland Bards were one of two distinct groups of poets, the other being the fili. According to the Early Irish law text on poets, Uraicecht Becc, bards were a lesser class of poets. Allegedly they did not have either sufficient training or lineage qualifications. As should they were said to not be eligible for higher poetic roles as described above. However, it has also been argued that the distinction between filid (pl. of fili) and bards was a creation of Christian Ireland, and that the filid are were more associated with the church.2 However, in Gaelic portions of Ireland after the Norman Conquest the Bards became the main carriers of poetic tradition.
The bardic schools were extinct by the mid 17th century in Ireland and by the early 18th century in Scotland.
Revival
In 18th and 19th century Romanticism, 'The Bard' became attached as a title to various poets,
- 'The Bard of Avon' (or in England, simply 'The Bard') is William Shakespeare
- 'The Bard of Ayrshire' (or in Scotland, simply 'The Bard') is Robert Burns
- 'The Bard of Olney' is William Cowper
- 'The Bard of Rydal Mount' is William Wordsworth
- 'The Bard of Twickenham' is Alexander Pope
In modern Wales the Gorsedd of Bards (Welsh: Gorsedd y Beirdd) is a society whose honorary membership is extended to those who have done great things for Wales.
Bards make up one of the three grades of the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids, a Neo-druidic order based in England.
In the 20th century, the word lost much of its original connotation of Celtic revivalism or Romanticism, and could refer to any professional poet or singer, sometimes in a mildly ironic tone. In the Soviet Union, singers who were outside the establishment were called bards from the 1960s.
The 1960s also saw the birth of the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA), an international organization dedicated to researching and re-creating the arts and skills of pre-17th-century Europe. As the medieval bard was the repository of histories, stories, legends, songs of his/her people, SCAdian bards seek to recreate this profession in modern times by emulating those performance arts within the framework of the SCA.
Examples of bards
Notable bards of Britain
- Taliesin, a 6th century Welsh bard who wrote the Book of Taliesin.
- Aneirin, a late 6th century Brythonic poet who wrote the Book of Aneirin.
- Dafydd ap Gwilym, a 14th century Welsh poet, generally regarded as the greatest Welsh poet of all time.
- Iolo Morganwg, an 18th century Welsh rogue and bard, famous for his forgeries and lies.
- Iolo Goch a 14th century Welsh poet and bard, famous for several surviving works, especially 'The Labourer'.
Fictional bards of Britain
- Kevin the bard from Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Mists of Avalon
- Several characters in the Bardic Voices Trilogy by Mercedes Lackey
- Fflewddur Fflam in the Prydain series, written by Lloyd Alexander
- Beedle the Bard from JK Rowling's Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
- Simply "The Bard", or Dragon Tongue, from The Sea of Trolls series.
See also
- Contention of the bards
- Aois-dàna
- Druid
- Vates
- Fili
- Gorsedd
- Gorseth Kernow (Cornwall)
- Bard (Dungeons & Dragons)
- Bard (Soviet Union)
References
External links
- Irish Bardic Poetry Corpus of Electronic Texts, University College Cork.
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