BARD, a word applied to the ancient Celtic poets. The name itself is not used by Caesar in his account of the manners and cus toms of Gaul and Britain, but he appears to ascribe the functions of the bards to a section of the Druids. Later Latin authors, such as Lucan (Phar. i. 449) , used the term Bardi as the recognized title of the national poets or minstrels among the peoples of Gaul and Britain. In Gaul, however, the institution soon disappeared. The known relics belong almost entirely to Wales and Ireland. In Wales the bards formed an organized society, with hereditary rights and privileges. The whole society of bards was regulated by laws, said to have been first distinctly formulated by Hywell Dha, and to have been revised by Gruffydd ap Conan. At intervals great festivals were held, at which bards from the various districts met and contended in song. the umpires being generally the princes and nobles. Even after the conquest of Wales, these congresses or Eisteddfodau continued to be summoned by royal commission, but from the reign of Elizabeth, the custom fell into abeyance. They have not been since summoned by royal authority, but were re vived about 1822, and are held regularly at the present time. In modern Welsh, a bard is a poet whose vocation has been recog nized at an Eisteddfod. In Ireland also the bards were a distinct class with peculiar and hereditary privileges. They appear to have teen divided into three sections : the first celebrated victories and sang hymns of praise; the second chanted the laws of the nation; the third gave poetic genealogies and family histories.
See Ed. Jones, Relics of the Welsh Bards (1784) ; Walker, Memoirs of the Irish Bards (1786) ; Owen Jones, Myvyrian Archaeology of Wales (3 vols., ; W. F. Skene, Four Ancient Books of Wales (2 vols., 1868) ; P. W. Joyce, Social History of Ancient Ireland (2nd ed. horses covered with defensive armour as in mediaeval times (Fr. Barde) : "occasionally the horses were covered all over with mail, or linen stuffed and quilted like the gambeson and adorned with rich embroidery" (Grose, Military Antiquities). In Spain the term refers to pack-animals.