Bard
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In Celtic cultures, a bard is a professional story teller, verse-maker, music composer, oral historian and genealogist, employed by 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
Etymology
The English term bard is a
All of these terms come from the
History
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 the harp) verses celebrating the achievements of chiefs and warriors, and who committed to verse historical and traditional facts, religious precepts, laws, genealogies, etc."[1]
In medieval
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
Regions
Ireland
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In medieval Ireland, bards were one of two distinct groups of poets, the other being the
Irish bards formed a professional hereditary
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.[11]
The early history of the bards can be known only indirectly through mythological stories. The first mention of the bardic profession in Ireland is found in the
Scotland
The best-known group of bards in Scotland were the members of the MacMhuirich family, who flourished from the 15th to the 18th centuries. The family was centred in the
In
Wales
A number of bards in
A large number of Welsh bards were
The royal form of bardic tradition ceased in the 13th century, when the 1282
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.[16]
Several published research studies into the Welsh bardic tradition have been published. They include Williams (1850),[17] Parry-Williams (1947),[18] Morgan (1983)[19] and Jones (1986).[20] Doubtless research studies have also been published in the current century.
Literature
From its frequent use in romanticism, 'The Bard' became attached as a title to various poets
- 'The Bard of Armagh' is Martin Hearty
- 'The Bard of Avon,' 'The Immortal Bard' or (in England) simply 'The Bard' is William Shakespeare
- 'The Bard of Ayrshire' (or in Scotland, simply 'The Bard') is Robert Burns
- 'The Bard of Bengal' is Rabindranath Tagore
- 'The Bard of Olney' is William Cowper
- 'The Bard of Rydal Mount' is William Wordsworth
- 'The Bard of Salford' is John Cooper Clarke
- 'The Bard of Twickenham' is Alexander Pope
- Australian bush poets such as Henry Lawson and Banjo Patersonare referred to as 'bush bards'
- Bob Dylan, Jim MacCool and the band Blind Guardian have also been termed 'bards'
Popular culture
From its Romanticist usage, the notion of the bard as a minstrel with qualities of a priest, magician or seer also entered 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 the lyrics in a medieval style, is known as bardcore.
In 2023
See also
- Aois-dàna
- Bard (Dungeons & Dragons)
- Bard (League of Legends)
- Bard (Soviet Union)
- Bhāts
- Cacofonix
- Charan (India)
- Contention of the bards
- Druid
- Fili
- Gorsedd
- Gorseth Kernow(Cornwall)
- Griot
- Minstrel
- Poet as legislator
- Rhapsodist
- Skald
- The Bards of Wales
- The Bard's Tale (1985 video game)
- Vates
- Welsh bardic music
References
Citations
- ^ a b c Oxford Dictionary of English, s.v. bard, n.1.
- ^ "Work of Rabindranath Tagore celebrated in London". BBC News. Retrieved 15 July 2015.
- ^ a b c d Delamarre 2003, p. 67.
- ^ a b c Matasović 2009, p. 56.
- ^ West 2007, p. 27.
- ^ West 2007, p. 30.
- ^ "On Bards, And Bardic Circles". www.pbm.com. Retrieved 8 July 2017.
- ^ Breatnach, Liam. Uraicecht na Ríar, ca. p. 98
- ^ Bergin, Osborn. Irish Bardic Poetry. Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies. pp. 3–5. Retrieved 8 December 2015.
- ^ Butler, Craig. "Druids, Filid & Bards: Custodians of Celtic Tradition". Irish Empire. Retrieved 8 July 2017.
- ^ "Divided Gaels: Gaelic cultural identities in Scotland and Ireland c. 1200–c. 1650". History Ireland. 22 February 2013. Retrieved 8 July 2017.
- ^ ISBN 1-85109-445-8
- ^ Thomson, Derick S. (1968), "Gaelic Learned Orders and Literati in Medieval Scotland", Scottish Studies, 12 (1), The Journal of the School of Scottish Studies University of Edinburgh: 65
- ISBN 9781851094400.
- ISBN 978-0-563-48714-2.
- ^ An example is the eisteddfod that was held at St Julian's School, Newport on 19 March, 2013. See
"Archived copy". Archived from the original on 10 November 2013. Retrieved 20 June 2013.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link) CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link). Accessed 20 June 2013 - ^ Williams, John (1850). "Druid stones". Archæologia Cambrensis. New Series 1 (1): 1-9.
- ^ Parry-Williams, T.H. (1947). "The Bardic Tradition". The Welsh Review. iv (4).
- ^ Morgan, Prys (1983). "From a death to a view::The hunt for the Welsh past in the Romantic period". In Hobsbawm, Eric; Ranger, Terence (eds.). The invention of tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- ^ Jones, Bedwyr L (1986). "The Welsh Bardic Tradition". In Evans, Ellis D.; Griffith, John G. (eds.). Proceedings of the Seventh International Congress of Celtic Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- ^ "Google releases Bard AI chatbot amid competition with chatGPT". Forbes.com. Retrieved 24 April 2023.
Bibliography
- ISBN 9782877723695.
- ISBN 9789004173361.
- ISBN 978-0-19-928075-9.
Further reading
- Walker, Joseph C., Historical Memoirs of the Irish Bards. New York: Garland, 1971.
External links
- Irish Bardic Poetry Corpus of Electronic Texts, University College Cork.
- Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). . Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.