Bard: Difference between revisions
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==Revival== |
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Bards make up one of the three grades of the [[Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids]], a [[Neo-Druidism|Neo-Druidic]] order based in [[England]]. |
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In 18th and 19th century Romanticism, ''The Bard'' became attached as a title to various poets, |
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* ''The Bard of Avon'' (or in England, simply ''The Bard'') is [[William Shakespeare]] |
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* ''The Bard of Ayrshire'' (or in Scotland, simply ''The Bard'') is [[Robert Burns]] |
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* ''The Bard of Olney'' is [[William Cowper]] |
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* ''The Bard of Rydal Mount'' is [[William Wordsworth]] |
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* ''The Bard of Twickenham'' is [[Alexander Pope]] |
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In modern Wales the ''[[Gorsedd]] of Bards'' ([[Welsh (language)|Welsh]]: ''Gorsedd y Beirdd'') is a society whose honorary membership is extended to those who have done great things for Wales. |
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In the [[20th Century]], the word lost much of its original connotation of [[Celtic revivalism]] or Romanticism, and could refer to any professional poet or singer, sometimes in a mildly [[irony|ironic]] tone. In the [[Soviet Union]], singers who were outside the establishment were called [[bard (Soviet Union)|bard]]s from the [[1960s]]. |
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The 1960s also saw the birth of the [[Society for Creative Anachronism]] (SCA), an international organization dedicated to researching and re-creating the arts and skills of pre-17th-century Europe. As the medieval bard was the repository of histories, stories, legends, songs of his/her people, SCAdian bards seek to recreate this profession in modern times by emulating those performance arts within the framework of the SCA. Many SCAdian bards do painstaking research and perform pieces in a historically accurate style, others take those songs/stories and [[parody]] them with comic intent, while others create original works in a medieval style. |
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==Examples of bards== |
==Examples of bards== |
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Revision as of 19:25, 10 October 2007
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- For other meanings of the word, see Bard (disambiguation).
A bard was one of a caste of poets and scholars of medieval and early modern Ireland, Scotland, Wales and Cornwall.
Etymology
The word is a loanword from Proto-Celtic *bardos, ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *gwerh2: "to raise the voice; praise". The first recorded example is in 1449 from the Scottish Gaelic language into Lowland Scots, denoting an itinerant musician, usually with a contemptuous connotation. A Scots ordinance of ca. 1500 orders that "All vagabundis, fulis, bardis, scudlaris, and siclike idill pepill, sall be brint on the cheek". The word subsequently entered the English language via Scottish English.
Secondly, in medieval Welsh and Gaelic society, a bard (Scottish Gaelic or Irish Gaelic bard, Welsh bardd) was a professional poet, employed to compose eulogies for his lord (see planxty). If the employer failed to pay the proper amount, the bard would then compose a satire. (c. f. fili, fáith). In other European societies, the same function was fulfilled by skalds, rhapsodes, minstrels, etc.
Bards 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. The ancient Celtic peoples recorded no written histories; however, Celtic peoples did maintain an often intricate spoken history committed to memory and transmitted by bards. Bards facilitated the memorization of such materials by the use of poetic meter and rhyme.
During the era of Romanticism, when knowledge of Celtic culture was overlaid by legends and fictions, the word was reintroduced into the West Germanic languages, this time directly into the English language, in the sense of "lyric poet", idealised by writers such as the Scottish romantic novelist Sir Walter Scott. The word was taken from Latin bardus, Greek bardos, in turn loanwords from the Gaulish language, describing a class of Celtic priest (c. f. druid, vates). From this romantic use came the epitheton The Bard applied to William Shakespeare and Robert Burns.
Examples of bards
Notable bards of Britain
- Taliesin, a 6th century Welsh bard who wrote the Book of Taliesin.
- Aneirin, a late 6th century Brythonic poet who wrote the Book of Aneirin.
- Dafydd ap Gwilym, a 14th century Welsh poet, generally regarded as the greatest Welsh poet of all time.
- Iolo Morganwg, an 18th century Welsh rogue and bard, famous for his forgeries and lies.
- Iolo Goch a 14th century Welsh poet and bard, famous for several surviving works, especially 'The Labourer'.
Fictional bards of Britain
- Kevin the bard from Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Mists of Avalon
- Several characters in the Bardic Voices Trilogy by Mercedes Lackey
- Fflewddur Fflam in the Prydain series, written by Lloyd Alexander
See also
in other cultures:
External links
- Irish Bardic Poetry Corpus of Electronic Texts, University College Cork.
