a poet among the ancient Gauls and Britons, who celebrated the praises of heroes, with a view to inculcate virtue, and sometimes to terminate a difference between two armies at the point of engagement. It is disputed wherein the bards differed from the druids: Some pretend that these were the priests and philosophers of the nation, and that those were only the poets and historians; but it is more probable that druid was a general word, comprehending the priests, the judges, the instructors of youth, and the bards or poets.