Bard are known as "the Bard of Avon" (often simply "the Bard") and "the Bard of Bengal" respectively. The word is a Celtic loan word from Scottish Gaelic "bàrd", Irish "bard", Welsh "bardd". In 16th-century Scotland, it was a derogatory term for an itinerant musician; nonetheless it was later romanticised by Sir Walter Scott. In medieval Gaelic and Welsh society, a "bard" (Scottish and Irish Gaelic) or "bardd" (Welsh) 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").
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