31-456: A bard is a minstrel in medieval Scottish, Irish, and Welsh societies; and later re-used by romantic writers. For its wider definition including similar roles in other societies, see List of oral repositories . Bard , BARD , Bård or similar terms may also refer to: Bard In Celtic cultures, a bard is an oral repository and professional story teller , verse-maker, music composer, oral historian and genealogist , employed by
62-505: A derogatory term for an itinerant musician; nonetheless it was later romanticised by Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832). The English term bard is a loan word from the Celtic languages : Gaulish : bardo- ('bard, poet'), Middle Irish : bard and Scottish Gaelic : bàrd ('bard, poet'), Middle Welsh : bardd ('singer, poet'), Middle Breton : barz ('minstrel'), Old Cornish : barth ('jester'). The ancient Gaulish * bardos
93-551: A patron (such as a monarch or chieftain) to commemorate one or more of the patron's ancestors and to praise the patron's own activities. With the decline of a living bardic tradition in the modern period , the term has loosened to mean a generic minstrel or author (especially a famous one). For example, William Shakespeare and Rabindranath Tagore are respectively known as "the Bard of Avon" (often simply "the Bard") and "the Bard of Bengal". In 16th-century Scotland, it turned into
124-668: A performer who amused his lord with music and song. Following a series of invasions, wars, conquests, etc., two categories of composers developed. Poets like Chaucer and John Gower appeared in one category, wherein music was not a part. Minstrels, on the other hand, gathered at feasts and festivals in great numbers with harps, fiddles , bagpipes , flutes, flageolets , citterns and kettledrums . Additionally, minstrels were known for their involvement in political commentary and engaged in propaganda. They often reported news with bias to sway opinion and revised works to encourage action in favor of equality. The Heege Manuscript , transcribed in
155-710: Is a local poet who composes works in a traditional style relating to that community. Notable village bards include Dòmhnall Ruadh Chorùna and Dòmhnall Ruadh Phàislig [ gd ] . A number of bards in Welsh mythology have been preserved in medieval Welsh literature such as the Red Book of Hergest , the White Book of Rhydderch , the Book of Aneirin and the Book of Taliesin . The bards Aneirin and Taliesin may be legendary reflections of historical bards active in
186-645: Is attested as bardus ( sing. ) in Latin and as bárdoi ( plur. ) in Ancient Greek. It also appears as a stem in bardo-cucullus ('bard's hood'), bardo-magus ('field of the bard'), barditus (a song to fire soldiers), and in bardala (' crested lark ', a singing bird). All of these terms come from the Proto-Celtic noun *bardos ('poet-singer, minstrel'), itself derived, with regular Celtic sound shift * gʷ > * b , from
217-575: Is found in the Book of Invasions , in a story about the Irish colony of Tuatha Dé Danann (Tribe of Goddess Danu), also called Danonians. They became the aos sí (folk of the mound), comparable to Norse alfr and British fairy . During the tenth year of the reign of the last Belgic monarch, the people of the colony of Tuatha Dé Danann, as the Irish called it, invaded and settled in Ireland. They were divided into three tribes—the tribe of Tuatha who were
248-586: The Gorsedd by Iolo Morganwg in 1792. Wales in the twentieth century is a leading Celtic upholder of the bardic tradition. The annual National Eisteddfod of Wales ( Eisteddfod Genedlaethol Cymru ) (which was first held in 1880) is held in which bards are chaired (see Category:Chaired bards ) and crowned (see Category:Crowned bards ). The Urdd National Eisteddfod is also held annually. And many schools hold their own annual eisteddfodau which emulate bardic traditions. Several published research studies into
279-476: The Norman Conquest , the professional poet was known as a scop ("shaper" or "maker"), who composed his own poems, and sang them to the accompaniment of a harp . In a rank much beneath the scop were the gleemen , who had no settled abode, but roamed about from place to place, earning what they could from their performances. Late in the 13th century, the term minstrel began to be used to designate
310-638: The Proto-Indo-European compound *gʷrH-dʰh₁-o-s , which literally means 'praise-maker'. It is cognate with Sanskrit : gṛṇā́ti ('calls, praise'), Latin : grātus ('grateful, pleasant, delightful'), Lithuanian : gìrti ('praise'), and Armenian : kardam ('raise voice'). In the words of the Oxford English Dictionary , the bards were an "ancient Celtic order of minstrel-poets, whose primary function appears to have been to compose and sing (usually to
341-609: The fantasy genre in the 1960s to 1980s, for example as the ' Bard ' class in Dungeons & Dragons and Pathfinder , Bard by Keith Taylor (1981), Bard: The Odyssey of the Irish by Morgan Llywelyn (1984), in video games in fantasy settings such as The Bard's Tale (1985), and in modern literature and TV like The Witcher books by Andrzej Sapkowski (1986–2013) show by Lauren Schmidt Hissrich (2019). As of 2020, an online trend to cover modern songs using medieval style musical instruments and composition, including rewriting
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#1732775956640372-547: The 6th and 7th centuries. Very little historical information about Dark Age Welsh court tradition survives, but the Middle Welsh material came to be the nucleus of the Matter of Britain and Arthurian legend as they developed from the 13th century. The (Welsh) Laws of Hywel Dda, originally compiled around 900, identify a bard as a member of a king's household. His duties, when the bodyguard were sharing out booty , included
403-556: The English Midlands around 1480 by Richard Heege, may offer a sample of the humor favored by some medieval minstrels at festivals. The music of the troubadours and trouvères was performed by minstrels called joglars (Occitan) or jongleurs (French). As early as 1321, the minstrels of Paris were formed into a guild . A guild of royal minstrels was organized in England in 1469. Minstrels were required to either join
434-484: The Welsh bardic tradition have been published. They include Williams (1850), Parry-Williams (1947), Morgan (1983) and Jones (1986). Doubtless research studies have also been published in the current century. From its frequent use in romanticism, 'The Bard' became attached as a title to various poets From its Romanticist usage, the notion of the bard as a minstrel with qualities of a priest, magician or seer also entered
465-413: The bard would then compose a satire (c.f. fili , fáith ). In other Indo-European societies, the same function was fulfilled by skalds , rhapsodes , minstrels and scops , among others. A hereditary caste of professional poets in Proto-Indo-European society has been reconstructed by comparison of the position of poets in medieval Ireland and in ancient India in particular. Bards (who are not
496-480: The distinction between filid (pl. of fili ) and bards was a creation of Christian Ireland, and that the filid were more associated with the church. By the Early Modern Period, these names came to be used interchangeably. 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
527-571: The early 20th century, and which has some continuity in the form of today's buskers or street musicians. Initially, minstrels were simply treats at court, and entertained the lord and courtiers with chansons de geste or their local equivalent. The term minstrel derives from Old French ménestrel (also menesterel, menestral ), which is a derivative from Italian ministrello (later menestrello ), from Middle Latin ministralis "retainer", an adjective form of Latin minister , "attendant" from minus , "lesser". In Anglo-Saxon England before
558-589: The face of its target. The bardic system lasted until the mid-17th century in Ireland and the early 18th century in Scotland. In Ireland, their fortunes had always been linked to the Gaelic aristocracy, which declined along with them during the Tudor Reconquest . The early history of the bards can be known only indirectly through mythological stories. The first mention of the bardic profession in Ireland
589-519: The family was chiefly employed by the chiefs of the MacDonalds of Clanranald . Members of the family were also recorded as musicians in the early 16th century, and as clergymen possibly as early as the early 15th century. The last of the family to practise classical Gaelic poetry was Domhnall MacMhuirich, who lived on South Uist in the 18th century. In Gaelic-speaking areas , a village bard or village poet ( Scottish Gaelic : bàrd-baile )
620-471: The guild or abstain from practising their craft. Some minstrels were retained by lords as jesters who, in some cases, also practised the art of juggling . Some were women or women who followed minstrels in their travels. Minstrels throughout Europe also employed trained animals, such as bears. Minstrels in Europe died out slowly, having gone nearly extinct by about 1700, although isolated individuals working in
651-400: The harp) verses celebrating the achievements of chiefs and warriors, and who committed to verse historical and traditional facts, religious precepts, laws, genealogies, etc." In medieval Gaelic and Welsh society, a bard ( Scottish and Irish Gaelic) or bardd ( Welsh ) was a professional poet, employed to compose elegies for his lord . If the employer failed to pay the proper amount,
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#1732775956640682-633: The lyrics in a medieval style, is known as bardcore . In 2023 Google released its AI chatbot Bard . Minstrel A minstrel was an entertainer, initially in medieval Europe . The term originally described any type of entertainer such as a musician, juggler , acrobat , singer or fool ; later, from the sixteenth century, it came to mean a specialist entertainer who sang songs and played musical instruments. Minstrels performed songs which told stories of distant places or of existing or imaginary historical events. Although minstrels created their own tales, often they would memorize and embellish
713-676: The members of the MacMhuirich family, who flourished from the 15th to the 18th centuries. The family was centred in the Hebrides , and claimed descent from a 13th-century Irish bard who, according to legend, was exiled to Scotland. The family was at first chiefly employed by the Lords of the Isles as poets, lawyers, and physicians. With the fall of the Lordship of the Isles in the 15th century,
744-464: The memorization of such materials by the use of metre , rhyme and other formulaic poetic devices. 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 status, Uraicecht Becc , bards were a lesser class of poets, not eligible for higher poetic roles as described above. However, it has also been argued that
775-632: The nobility, the tribe of De who were the priests (those devoted to serving God or De) and the tribe of Danann, who were the bards. This account of the Tuatha Dé Danann must be considered legendary; however the story was an integral part of the oral history of Irish bards themselves. One of the most notable bards in Irish mythology was Amergin Glúingel , a bard, druid and judge for the Milesians . The best-known group of bards in Scotland were
806-544: The poem The Bards of Wales by the Hungarian poet János Arany in 1857, as a way of encoded resistance to the suppressive politics of his own time. However, the poetic and musical traditions were continued throughout the Middle Ages, e.g., by noted 14th-century poets Dafydd ap Gwilym and Iolo Goch . Also the tradition of regularly assembling bards at an eisteddfod never lapsed and was strengthened by formation of
837-420: 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 people recorded no written histories; however, Celtic peoples did maintain an intricate oral history committed to memory and transmitted by bards and filid. Bards facilitated
868-473: The singing of the sovereignty of Britain—possibly why the genealogies of the British high kings survived into the written historical record. A large number of Welsh bards were blind people . The royal form of bardic tradition ceased in the 13th century, when the 1282 Edwardian conquest permanently ended the rule of the Welsh princes. The legendary suicide of The Last Bard (c. 1283), was commemorated in
899-443: 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
930-695: The tradition existed even into the early 19th century. Minstrelsy became a central concern in English literature in the Romantic period and has remained so intermittently. In poetry, The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805) by Sir Walter Scott , Lalla Rookh (1817) by Thomas Moore , and The Village Minstrel (1821) by John Clare were three of many. Novels centring on minstrelsy have included Helen Craik 's Henry of Northumberland (1800), Sydney Owenson 's The Novice of St Dominick's (a girl using
961-422: The works of others. Frequently they were retained by royalty and high society. As the courts became more sophisticated, minstrels were eventually replaced at court by the troubadours , and many became wandering minstrels, performing in the streets; a decline in their popularity began in the late 15th century. Minstrels fed into later traditions of travelling entertainers, which continued to be moderately strong into