Bard Bard In medieval Gaelic and British culture, a bard was a professional story teller, verse-maker, music composer, oral historian and genealogist, employed by a patron (such as a monarch or noble), to commemorate one or more of the patron's ancestors and to praise the patron's own activities. Originally a specific, lower class of poet, contrasting with the higher rank known as "fili" in Ireland and Highland Scotland, with the decline of living bardic tradition in the modern period the term "bard" acquired generic meanings of an author or minstrel, especially a famous one. For example, William Shakespeare, and Rabindranath Tagore,
Geraint the Blue Bard Geraint the Blue Bard Geraint the Blue Bard () is a reputed 9th century Welsh bard and harpist, although modern scholars are dismissive of his existence. He has been definitively shown by Welsh scholar G. J. Williams to be the invention of Iolo Morganwg, a talented author and antiquarian now infamous for his numerous literary forgeries. Iolo called him Geraint Fardd Glas or Y Bardd Glas o'r Gadair ("the Blue Bard of the (Bardic) Chair") and associated him with his version of the early history of Morgannwg (Glamorgan). Iolo makes the figure of Geraint, otherwise unattested in Welsh manuscript sources