Encyclopedia
- For other meanings of the word, see Bard .
A
bard is a
poet or singer, in
religious or
feudal contexts.
Etymology
The word is a loanword from Proto-Celtic
*bardos, ultimately from Proto-Indo-European
*gwerh2:
"to raise the voice; praise". The the
West Germanic languages twice. The first recorded example is in 1449 from the
Scottish Gaelic language into
Lowland Scots, denoting an itinerant musician, usually with a contemptuous connotation. A Scots ordnance of ca. 1500 orders that
"All vagabundis, fulis, bardis, scudlaris, and siclike idill pepill, sall be brint on the cheek". The word subsequently entered the
English language via Scottish English.
Secondly, in medieval
Welsh and Gaelic society, a
bard was a professional poet, employed to compose eulogies for his lord . If the employer failed to pay the proper amount, the bard would then compose a
satire. . In other
European societies, the same function was fulfilled by skalds, rhapsodes, minstrels, etc.
Bards 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 ancient Celtic peoples recorded no written histories; however, Celtic peoples did maintain an often intricate spoken history committed to memory and transmitted by bards. Bards facilitated the memorization of such materials by the use of
poetic meter and rhyme.
In medieval Ireland it was common for there to exist "Bardic" schools. Though the primary function of these schools was Gaelic education, they also helped preserve the Gaelic tradition of learning by default until well into the 17th century before Ireland finally adapted to the notion of university scholarship.
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 . From this romantic use came the epitheton
The Bard applied to
William Shakespeare and
Robert Burns.
Uses
In modern Wales the
Gorsedd of Bards is a society whose honorary membership is extended to those who have done great things for Wales.
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.
Bards make up one of the three grades of the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids, a
Neo-Druidic order based in
England.
See also
External links
