Bard oral history committed to memory and transmitted by bards and filid. Bards facilitated the memorisation of such materials by the use of metre, rhyme and other formulaic poetic devices. One of the most notable bards in Irish Mythological was Amergin Glúingel, he was bard, druid and judge for the Milesians. In medieval Ireland, bards were one of two distinct groups of poets, the other being the "fili". According to the Early Irish law text on status, "Uraicecht Becc", bards were a lesser class of poets, not eligible for higher poetic roles as described above. However, it has also been argued
The Bard (poem) called "The Bard" and "The Progress of Poesy" the best odes in the language; David Garrick thought them the best in any language; Thomas James Mathias compared "The Bard" favourably to Pindar, Horace, Dante and Petrarch; and by 1807 even Percival Stockdale had changed his mind, and could write of its "poetical excellence". One exception to this trend was Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who in 1799 wrote that ""The Bard" once intoxicated me, & now I read it without pleasure", and more than thirty years later could still remark that he found it "frigid and artificial". On the whole, however, as