Editing Bard (section)

==History==
[[File:The Bard.jpg|thumb|''[[The Bard (painting)|The Bard]]'' ({{circa|1817}}), by [[John Martin (painter)|John Martin]]]]
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."<ref name="Oxford Dictionary of English" />

In medieval [[Gaels|Gaelic]] and [[Wales|Welsh]] society, a ''bard'' ([[Scottish Gaelic|Scottish]] and Irish Gaelic) or ''bardd'' ([[Welsh language|Welsh]]) was a professional poet, employed to compose [[Elegy|elegies]] for his [[lord]]. If the employer failed to pay the proper amount, the bard would then compose a [[satire]] (cf. ''[[fili]]'', ''[[fáith]]''). In other Indo-European societies, the same function was fulfilled by [[skald]]s, [[rhapsode]]s, [[minstrel]]s and ''[[scop]]s'', among others. A hereditary caste of professional poets in [[Proto-Indo-European society]] has been reconstructed by comparison of the position of poets in medieval Ireland and in ancient India in particular.{{Sfn|West|2007|p=30}}

Bards (who are not the same as the Irish {{lang|ga|filidh}} or {{lang|ga|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 [[Celt]]ic societies. The pre-Christian Celtic people recorded no written histories; however, Celtic peoples did maintain an intricate oral history committed to memory and transmitted by bards and filid. Bards facilitated the memorization of such materials by the use of [[Metre (poetry)|metre]], [[Rhyme#Function of rhyming words|rhyme]] and other formulaic poetic devices.{{Citation needed|date=November 2021}}