Based on an earlier Celtic term meaning “praise,” it contemptuously referred to a traveling musician. This evolved in different cultures. By the Middle Ages, in Ireland and Wales, it meant a poet or musician hired to create songs that praised the lord who hired them. They also composed and sang songs praising warriors. Later, the term bard came to mean a romantic poet. In the 1700 and 1800 there was a Celtic Revival that associated bards with the Druids. In this context a bard was a musician, a poet, and a story teller as part of the Druidic priesthood.