BARD, a word denoting a poet by profession, who, to use the language of Ossian, “sung of the battles of heroes, or the heaving breasts of love.” .

Anciently bards were necessary persons at every festival and at every solemnity. Their songs, which, by recording the achievements of kings and heroes, animated the soul of the hearer, must have been the entertainment of every warlike nation. We have Hesiod’s authority, that in his time bards were as common as potters or joiners, and as liable to envy. Cicero reports, that anciently at Roman festivals the virtues and exploits of their great men were celebrated in song. The same custom prevailed in I ’ θ ru and Mexico as we learn from Garcilasso and other authors. But in no part of the world did the profession of bard appear with such lustre as in Gaul, in Britain, and in Ireland[7:4:379]. Wherever the Celtae or Gauls are mentioned by ancient writers, we seldom fail to hear of their druids and their bards, the institution of which two orders was the capital distinction of their manners and policy. The druids were their philosophers and priests, the bards their poets and recorders of heroic actions; and both these orders of men seem to have subsisted among them as chief members of the state from time immemorial. The Celtae possessed, from very remote ages, a regular system of discipline and manners, which appears to have had a deep and lasting influence. Ammianus Marcellinus expressly declares, that there flourished amongst them the study of the most laudable arts, introduced by the bards, whose office it was to sing in heroic verse the gallant actions of illustrious men; and by the druids, who lived together in colleges or societies, after the Pythagorean manner, philosophizing upon the highest subjects, and asserting the immortality of the human soul. Though Julius Caesar, in his account of Gaul, does not expressly mention the bards, yet it is plain that, under the title of druids, he comprehends that whole college or order, of which the bards, who, it is probable, were the disciples of the druids, undoubtedly made a part. It deserves remark, that, according to his account, the druidical institution first took its rise in Britain, and passed from thence into Gaul; so that they who aspired to be thorough masters of that learning were wont to resort to Britain. He adds, too, that such as were to be initiated among the druids were obliged to commit to memory a great number of verses, insomuch that some employed twenty years in this course of education; and that they did not think it lawful to record these poems in writing, but handed them down by tradition from race to race.

So strong was the attachment of the Celtic nations to their poetry and their bards, that amidst all the changes of their government and manners, even long after the order of the druids had been extinct, and the national religion altered, the bards continued to flourish, not as a set of strolling songsters, like the Greek aωδoι or rhapsodists in Homer’s time, but as an order of men highly respected in the state, and supported by a public establishment. According to the testimonies of Strabo and Diodorus, they existed before the age of Augustus Caesar; and we find them flourishing under that sovereign, and exercising the same functions as of old, in Ireland and in the north of Scotland, almost down to our own times. It is well known that, in both these countries, every regulus or chief had his own bard, who was considered an officer of rank and consequence in his little court.

The bards, as well as the druids, were exempted from taxes and military services, even in times of the greatest danger; and when they attended their patrons in the field to record and celebrate their great actions, they had a guard assigned them for their protection. At all festivals and public assemblies they were seated near the person of the king or chieftain, and sometimes even above the greatest nobility and chief officers of the court. Nor was the profession of the bards less lucrative than it was honourable. For, besides the valuable presents which they occasionally received from their patrons when they gave them uncommon pleasure by their performances, they had estates in land allotted for their support. Nay, s θ great was the veneration which the princes of these times entertained for the persons of their poets, and so highly were they charmed and delighted with their tuneful strains, that they sometimes pardoned even their capital crimes for a song.