Bard - Definition and Overview

A bard is a poet and singer, with the particular meaning differing for various countries and epochs.

• In Celtic society, a bard (fili) was a professional poet, paid by a monarch to praise the sovereign's activities. If the monarch failed to pay the proper amount, the bard would then compose a satire. In modern Wales the Gorsedd of Bards is a society whose honorary membership is those who have done great things for Wales.

• In other European societies, bards performed for the people as well as the nobility, travelling from town to town and performing poems and ballads. Many bards did not write original songs, but rather sang traditional folk songs, often adding additional verses or composing new music for them.
  • The Elder Edda, a 13th century compilation of Norse mythology, was composed mostly by Norwegian and Icelandic bards called skalds.
  • Many scholars have hypothesized that the Homeric poems (including the Iliad and the Odyssey) were composed in archaic Greece by one or more bards over an extended period. See The Homeric Question and rhapsode.

• In the Soviet Union, singers that were outside the establishment were called bards. They became popular since the 1960s.

Particular bards

• When capitalized, as in "The Bard", it usually refers to William Shakespeare.
• Bard the Bowman is a character in J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit.
• In Dungeons & Dragons, bard is character class representing a magic-using minstrel who combines aspects of warrior, rogue, and wizard into one.

Bard College is a liberal arts school in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York.