Bard

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. The word and the calling survived in medieval Ireland, Wales, Scotland and Brittany, where praise and satire of rulers remained central to the poet's office. The word bard had also been extended, inaccurately, to the poets and singers of the Germanic world, and it now serves loosely for poets in general, most familiarly as "the Bard" for William Shakespeare.