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bard

Professional poet in medieval Gaelic and British culture

Instance of: historical profession
Subclass of: singer-songwriter
, poet

Overview

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia · Read full article · Text CC BY-SA 4.0

A bard was a poet and singer who composed and performed verse in the service of a patron, a calling attested among the ancient Celts and continued in the medieval Celtic-speaking world. The ancient bard is known from Greek and Roman authors writing about Gaul between the 1st century BC and the 4th century AD, who count the bards, with the druids and the vates, among the learned orders of Gaulish society. They describe them singing the praises of chieftains, and the satire of their rivals, to an instrument resembling the lyre. The name goes back to the Proto-Celtic noun *bardos (transl. praise-maker), the source of Old Irish bard, Welsh bardd, and the related forms in the other Celtic languages.

Overview

All data

41 statements · 12% with external sources · numbers in brackets are citations

Female form of label: bardesse
bardino
bardino
Barde
bardinja
bardė
Male form of label: bardulo
bardas
Different from: Bard
Bard the Bowman

On other databases

27 identifiers linking bard across the web's reference databases

Data quality

statements

12%

externally sourced

Source last edited July 25, 2026. AIDB refreshes this page daily.

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AIDB. (2026). bard (Q215144). Retrieved from https://aidb.si/e/bard-Q215144