Bard/Definition

In medieval Britain and Ireland and Wales, a professional poet paid by a powerful patron such as a monarch or nobleman or bishop, to praise the person's ancestors and the patron as well. In Greek mythology, a bard was a poet skilled in epic poetry. For example, the Greek poet Homer was described as a bard by the scholar of Classics, Elizabeth Vandiver, who suggested that Homer sung the detailed epic poems such as the Iliad and Odyssey, although there is no definitive evidence that Homer was a single person, or an agglomeration of different poets from an oral tradition.