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,
The Immortal Bard The Immortal Bard "The Immortal Bard" is a science fiction short story by Isaac Asimov. It was first published in the May 1954 issue of "Universe Science Fiction", and has since been republished in several collections and anthologies, including "Earth Is Room Enough" (1957) and "The Best Science Fiction of Isaac Asimov" (1986). (In "Earth Is Room Enough" (Panther Books Ltd. reprint 1973 edition) the title of the story is "An Immortal Bard" in the Contents list but "The Immortal Bard" on the destination page. There is a similar, but reversed variation in title with The Author's Ordeal.) Like many