Bard

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).

[1] In the Bengal region of the Indian subcontinent, the title Gayen or Gain used as a surname by members of the Bengali Kayastha caste was given to bards in medieval times.

It also appears as a stem in the compound words 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).

[5] All of these terms come from the Proto-Celtic noun *bardos ('poet-singer, minstrel'), itself derived, with regular Celtic sound shift *gʷ > *b, from the Proto-Indo-European compound *gʷrH-dʰh₁-o-s, which literally means 'praise-maker'.

[8] 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.

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.

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.

The first mention of the bardic profession in Ireland 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.

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.

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.

His duties, when the bodyguard were sharing out booty, included the singing of the sovereignty of Britain—possibly why the genealogies of the British high kings survived into the written historical record.

[17] The royal form of bardic tradition ceased in the 13th century, when the 1282 Edwardian conquest permanently ended the rule of the Welsh princes.

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.