Guide to Literary Terms | Bard

Bard - one of an ancient Celtic order of versifiers, especially one who was highly trained as a composer, singer, and harpist who recited heroic and adventurous poems. This type of versifier was the oral historian, political critic, eulogizer, and entertainer of his society. Poems passed from bard to bard orally with each bard adding some personal embroidery. Their memorization was aided by certain formulas such as fixed phrases and repeated verses or groups of verses. The most prominent bards lived in medieval and post-medieval Wales and Ireland, many as residents in wealthy homes, others as itinerants. In Wales, bards were often nobles and formed guilds to set standards for writing and reciting. They were repeatedly outlawed by the English as politically inciting, causing their gradual extinction. The word is still used to describe a recognized singer at the Welsh musical festival, Eisteddfod.

The word was taken from the Gaelic and Irish bard or bardh, approximately meaning “poet,” but specifically meaning the type of poet described above.

Now the word is a synonym for poet as in “Shakespeare, the Bard of Avon.”