Among the Celts, a composer of praise poetry (and, on occasion, its counterpart of dispraise or satire). The word is almost certainly of Indo-European origin but has no obvious cognates outside the group of Celtic languages: from a common Celtic bardos are derived the Gaelic, Manx and Irish bard, Welsh bardd, Cornish barth and Breton barz. The basic meaning appears to be ‘praise singer’, even if the professional and social status of such figures varied from age to age and from culture to culture. In Scots Gaelic ‘bard’ became the generic term for poet. (The development of ‘bard’ in English to indicate a poet of lofty imagination, inspired by mysterious powers, is largely a product of Romanticism.)
For an extended use of the term to refer to epic singers of non-Celtic peoples see Aoidos; Epics; Mongol music, §§1(iii–iv), 4(ii), 6(v); and Central Asia, §2.
2. Medieval and post-medieval Wales and Cornwall.
3. Medieval and post-medieval Ireland and Scotland.
4. Music and performing practice.
PETER CROSSLEY–HOLLAND (1–2), JOHN MACINNES (3), JAMES PORTER (4)
Knowledge of the functions of the bards of ancient Gaul derives from passages in Greek and Roman authors. Some of their most valuable evidence depends on material, now lost, by Posidonius of Apamea (c135–c51 bce). Strabo’s version may be taken as representative: ‘The bards [bardoi] are singers and poets, the vates [ouateis] interpreters of sacrifice and natural philosophers, while the druids [druïdai] in addition to the science of nature study moral philosophy’ (Geography, iv.4.4). The distinction between these castes may derive from Posidonius, and the idea of a caste system agrees with later Celtic evidence (see below, §§2–3); there is no reason to doubt that the bards were poets whose function included the singing of panegyrics. Tierney has shown, however, that Posidonius’s ascription to these groups of philosophical studies cannot be taken at its face value. The ancient authorities – several of them apparently dependent on Posidonius – include, besides Strabo quoted above, Diodorus Siculus (v.31), who mentioned the bards’ use of ‘instruments similar to lyres’, Athenaeus (246c–d), Lucan (Civil War, i.442–9) and Caesar (Gallic War, vi.13).
Some centuries before the Christian era, the Celts had become dominant in the British Isles: the Goidelic Celts in Ireland, who later colonized Scotland and the Isle of Man, and the Brythonic Celts in England and Wales, who colonized Brittany during the 5th and 6th centuries ce. No contemporary records survive, but the bards of the British Isles before the introduction of Christianity may have been essentially similar to those of the European Continent, and, at the rise of Christianity, may have preserved some of the lore of the druids.
The greater part of what is now England lost some of its Celtic character at the Roman occupation (43–410 ce), although this character persisted in Cornwall until modern times and in Strathclyde (i.e. parts of north-eastern England and southern Scotland) until the 6th century. The bards of antiquity may have used the crwth, a relative of the lyre, said by Venantius Fortunatus (c530/40–c600) to be played in Britain (F. Leo, ed.: Venanti Honori Clementiani Fortunati presbyteri italici opera poetica, MGH, Auctorum antiquissimorum, iv/1, 1881/R, 64).
Throughout the British Isles local kings, princes and chieftains maintained bards, bestowing gifts upon them for their services. The bards played the harp and sang elegies and eulogies on famous men, composed proverbs and recited sagas. Monasteries also sometimes maintained bards as historians and genealogists, as at Aberconway and Strata Florida in Wales.
The high esteem in which the class was held is evident in the early legal codes of both Ireland and Wales. The Laws of Hywel Dda (Howel the Good), surviving in Welsh manuscripts from the 12th century but representing in essence a 10th-century codification of customs rather more ancient, distinguish two classes of bard: the bardd teulu, who was a permanent official of the king’s household, and the pencerdd (‘chief of song’), or head of the bardic fraternity in the district (this term still survives; for details of original sources, see Gwynn Jones, 1913–14). These classes of resident and itinerant bards, also found in Ireland and Scotland, are reminiscent of classes found generally among Indo-European ethnic groups, for example, in Anglo-Saxon England, although they cannot be precisely equated with the Scop and gleeman respectively. These latter, like the Scandinavian skald and other poet-musicians of early nations, have sometimes been termed ‘bards’ in English literature.
During the 12th and 13th centuries in Wales bards no longer came to be appointed to the king’s household, and their position changed greatly after the ending of native rule. They increased in number, and just as in France some of the nobility became troubadours and trouvères, so some Welsh princes became bards. (The poetic forms of the troubadours and trouvères, moreover, influenced those of 14th-century Welsh bards.)
The bards were highly organized into various grades and were required to serve a long apprenticeship and to acquire much skill and learning before they were allowed to serve professionally. This is revealed by a Welsh bardic statute, originating in its present form in the 15th century but representing the progressive customs of three centuries or more (for the earliest surviving version, see Parry, 1929). The Laws of Hywel Dda reveal that the bardic instrument was the harp; to this the statute mentioned above adds the Crwth.
The bards had always encouraged their peoples in the face of hardship, but under the growing influence of the English monarchs their incitements to liberty came to be regarded as incitements to rebellion. In consequence, numerous laws were enacted to put them down. The alleged massacre of Welsh bards by Edward I (whose conquest of Wales virtually brought native rule to an end in 1282) is only a fable; but later laws represented the bards as degenerate (e.g. a statute of Henry IV dated 1402), and a royal proclamation known as the Commission of the Caerwys Eisteddfod, issued by Elizabeth I, complained of ‘vagraunt and idle persons naming theim selfes mynstrelles Rithmers and Barthes’ who were seditious and went into competition with the skilled bards (see J.G. Evans: Report on Manuscripts in the Welsh Language, i/1: The Welsh Manuscripts of Lord Mostyn, at Mostyn Hall, co. Flint, HMC, no.48, 1898, pp.291–2). In Cornwall, ‘bard’ came to mean ‘mimic’ and ‘buffoon’; and in other Celtic areas the loan-word ‘bard’ in English writings often carried a pejorative meaning. Nevertheless, in all the Celtic countries the household bard continued in function – and often in name – until quite recent times: harpists were still active in some large houses up to the 19th century.
The poet-musician of early times had, however, virtually vanished. Although poetry and music long remained undivided, a partial separation between them occurred at an early period (varying from country to country) and even in the Middle Ages musical and poetical bards were to some extent recognized as separate classes. Latterly, the term ‘bard’, especially in compound words, occasionally denoted a musician as distinct from a poet, as in the Welsh and Cornish bardd (barth) hirgorn, or trumpet major, found as early as the 18th century. More usually, however, the term has meant a poet alone, not only in the Celtic areas but also in England.
Today the term ‘bard’ in Wales means the victor at an eisteddfod, whether in poetry or music. Although the bardic rites and customs of the modern Welsh eisteddfod and of the Cornish gorseth, established in 1928 with the cultural revival, cannot claim historical continuity with those of the medieval bards, an antiquarian precedent for these customs is not lacking.
Examples of bardic poetry survive, often in critical editions; but the question of bardic music is problematical (see §4 below). The Robert ap Huw Manuscript (GB-Lbl Add.14905), which was claimed even in the 20th century to contain ‘bardic’ harp music from about 1100, is an early 17th-century document, part of which appears to be copied from a manuscript of William Penllyn (fl 1550–70). The origins of the music can be traced back to named musicians of the 15th century and earlier; the compositional principles are based on the 24 measures of cerdd dant (‘the craft of the string’), ostensibly formulated in about 1100 according to the document known as the Cadwedigaeth Cerdd Dannau (‘The Conservation of Cerdd Dant’).
See also Wales, §II.
In medieval Gaelic society in Ireland and Scotland, professional men of learning were organized in a caste system, under various descriptions: draoi (the Gaelic equivalent of ‘druid’), fili, later file (poet-seer), breitheamh (‘brehon’, or lawgiver) and seanchaidh (historian-antiquarian). These terms appear to denote various offices, or perhaps duties, of the highest orders in the professional hierarchy.
The bard occupied a lower position. Until the Norman Conquest, the filidh (plural of fili) specialized in a form of poetry called seanchas that drew on the high learning, historical and mythological, of the Gaels; and the filidh appear to have maintained some vestiges of pagan religion (the word fili derives from a root ‘to see’). But the bard, according to 10th-century Irish juristic tradition, had an honour price only half that of a fili; and, according to another medieval juristic tradition, a bard might claim nothing on the grounds of his status as a man of learning but should rest satisfied with whatever his native wit might win him.
Both filidh and baird (plural of bard) were divided into classes by the jurists. The two main bardic classes, sóerbaird (free, privileged bards) and dóerbaird (base bards), were each subdivided into eight further grades. It would seem likely that a general distinction was observed between bards of good family, or of special genius, and others less respected, but the precision of the grades may have been little more than theoretical.
The original function of the bard was to compose eulogy, his craft – bairdne (bardic verse) – contrasting with the filidecht (seanchas poetry) of the fili. With the social changes after the Norman invasion of Ireland, however, patronage for the filidh disappeared, since there was no longer an audience for the ancient high learning; but bardic praise-poetry, with its obverse of dispraise, continued to exist where Gaelic kings or petty rulers succeeded in saving some part of their ancient lordships from the general ruin. Before this time (the late 12th century), filidh had occasionally composed panegyric, but now this seems to have become their primary function.
From about 1200 to 1650, these composers used a highly elaborate and subtle metric system and a standard language (classical Gaelic), perhaps somewhat conservative in pronunciation but very progressive in form. Poets were taught in schools: much didactic material survives – discussions of grammatical and metrical usage – to show that the academic discipline was severe; it is said, but on uncertain evidence, that the period of training was seven years. Much of the poetry survives, particularly from Ireland but also from Scotland (classical Gaelic was common to the two countries); it consists not only of panegyric but also of religious, love and Ossianic verse (see Ossian). It is known in English as ‘bardic’ verse, although its composers called themselves filidh not baird: they knew that the word bard had connotations of low rank. To the present day, indeed, the Irish word for ‘poet’ is not bard but file (plural filí).
The bard was mentioned in the context of this poetry in Ireland and Scotland in the 17th century, but in a subordinate role. He might be a kind of literary retainer in the household of a file, he might be assigned to recite the poem, or he might also be placed in charge of the musical accompaniment: his exact functions probably varied from place to place. The Irish Clanricarde Memoirs (quoted in Bergin, 1913, pp.158–9) relate, in a probably reliable account:
The Action and Pronunciation of the Poem … was perform’d with a great deal of Ceremony in a Consort of Vocal and Instrumental Musick. The Poet himself said nothing, but directed and took care that every body else did his Part right. The Bards having first had the Composition from him, got it well by Heart, and now pronounc’d it orderly, keeping even Pace with a Harp, touch’d upon that Occasion; no other Instrument being allowed for the said Purpose than this alone.
This highly literate tradition of classical Gaelic ‘bardic poetry’, cultivated by the filí, ceased in Ireland in the 17th century; there are fewer survivals in Scotland despite its persistence in that country to the mid-18th century.
With the social changes that followed the introduction of the feudal system to Scotland, during which the court language changed from Gaelic to Norman-French and later to Scots, the classical tradition began to disappear, but the status of the panegyrist bard improved, though doubtless not in an identical manner in every place. The Scots Gaelic term for a poet is bard to the present day; and by the 17th century, Scottish bardic poetry was dominated not by the strict metres of classical Gaelic but by vernacular Scots Gaelic. Unlike their classical counterparts, the vernacular poets were mostly illiterate until the 18th century, although some earlier bards who recited for poets may have been partially literate. Literacy was unusual, however, until the 19th century, for vernacular Gaelic verse developed in a predominantly oral tradition. Some of these vernacular bards had patrons, some did not; but Gaelic makers of verse have always enjoyed both honour and a kind of diplomatic immunity. From the earliest times the poet (file or bard) held the power to redress grievances in society and, in popular belief to the present day, to wound or even kill by means of aer (later aoir), usually translated ‘satire’.
The essential rhetorical structure of the poetry derives from panegyric, although its subject matter is very varied. As a result of the 20th-century revival of Scots Gaelic literature, contemporary literary poets may be distinguished from the semi-literate or (now rarely) non-literate ‘bards’ of the Gaelic-speaking areas of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. The latter continue to bring traditional attitudes to bear upon topical events at local or national level, with praise, rebuke, humour etc.; they also compose more personal poetry such as love poetry or elegy, and there is a continuing output of religious verse. Like the vast bulk of traditional Gaelic poetry, these compositions are all designed for singing or chanting, and the melodies are drawn from the still considerable mass of orally transmitted traditional song.
It is impossible to tell with certainty how much or how little of bardic music survives. By the 18th century, when antiquarians in Britain and Ireland became aware of the social function of ‘ancient’ music (i.e. ‘Celtic’ music), it was already too late to record in reliable form an authentic bardic style of singing, chanting or reciting poetry to the accompaniment of a harp. It is important, furthermore, to separate the concept of ‘bard’ from that of ‘instrumental musician’, for they were distinct in the Middle Ages. The bard would often have with him a harper and a person (datgeiniaid) to sing or declaim his songs, but no description of how the songs were performed survives. In Ireland, a parallel class, namely the recairi, sang or recited the praises of their leaders, again to the accompaniment provided by a harper. The main part of the verse may have been chanted in a monotone, with cadential melodic inflections as in psalmody, and supported by harp chords; such a method of performance is described in Mayo as late as the 18th century.
The earliest competitive festival in Wales, that held under the patronage of Lord Rhys ap Gruffudd at Cardigan at Christmas 1176, instituted two contests: between the bards and poets, and among harpers, crowthers and pipers. But by the time of the Carmarthen Eisteddfod of 1451, music and poetry were coming into looser association. Later, after 1600, with the decline of patronage, the functions became confused or had merged, although the term lived on: Edward Jones (1752–1824), for example, harper and author of Musical and Poetical Relicks of the Welsh Bards (1784), came to be known as ‘Bardd y Brenin’ (King's Bard), and John Parry of Denbigh (1776–1851), who published Welsh harp music and popularized the term ‘penillion singing’ (improvised song with harp accompaniment) in about 1830, was known as ‘Bardd Alaw’ (Master of Song).
The nine or so Welsh composers represented in the Robert ap Huw harp manuscript (c1613), have been dated between approximately 1340 and 1485, and among the compositions are some that suggest accompaniment for sung poems (caniad; seeRobert ap Huw). By the 18th century, however, blind John Parry (c1710–82), the Welsh harper, was already being influenced by the Italian Baroque style, as was his counterpart in Ireland, Turlough Carolan (1670–1738), famously described by Goldsmith as ‘the last Irish bard’. Carolan composed hundreds of songs in honour of his Irish patrons, singing them to the accompaniment of his harp. By 1792 Edward Bunting was attempting to note down the tunes played at the famous Belfast Harp Festival of that year, and these later formed the basis for his three-volume The Ancient Music of Ireland (1796, 1809, 1840). In Scotland the Rev. Patrick Macdonald can be found complaining, in his Collection of Highland Vocal Airs (1784), of the foreign influence on clàrsach performance. Carolan's contemporary there, Roderick Morison (c1656–1713/14), known as ‘An Clarsair Dall’ (The Blind Harper), has similarly been termed ‘Gaelic Scotland's last minstrel’. Born in Lewis, he completed his musical training in Ireland. Like Carolan, he was itinerant from time to time and dependent on the gentry for his livelihood. Combining the skills of poet, musician and performer, he composed a number of songs to his patrons the MacLeods: for example, his Féill nan crann (‘Harp-Key Fair’), the words and music of which survive, reflects a satirical, self-mocking strain.
Another noted Highland satirist, Iain Lom (c1625–c1707) created a famous song, still sung, on the Battle of Inverlochy (1645) in which the MacDonalds overcame the Campbells. The female poet, Sileas na Ceapaich (c1660–c1729), who possibly used trance-like states induced by starvation as a source for inspiration, left a notable lament for the harper Lachlann Dall, who died in the 1720s. Possibly the last remnants of the bardic profession (in the original sense of that term) to have survived were the MacMhuirich family, hereditary bards to the MacDonalds of Clanranald: the last practising MacMhuirich classical bard was Domhnall (fl 1710). A forbear, Niall Mór (c1550 – after 1613) may well be the composer of a satire on the bagpipes, which had begun to rival the harp as a basis for extended composition. But although both writing and singing were creative activities among such bards as the MacMhuirichs, there is little evidence of a musical notation. Joseph Walker's Historical Memoirs of the Irish Bards (1786, 2/1818) includes airs by Carolan and an essay by William Beauford that purports to prove that a system of musical notation was used in Ireland in the 11th and 12th centuries. In 1980 another scholar put forward the theory of a secret notation contained in the early Irish linear script ogam.
Current knowledge of bardic practice in its original environment is largely circumstantial or inadequate to a full description of performing style. The Fenian lays of Ireland and Scotland were composed by bards in the medieval syllabic metres known as dán, with a set number of syllables to the line (see Ossian). Evidence in the 20th century for the singing style of heroic ballads in modern stressed metres includes a tendency, among the few vernacular singers recorded in South Uist, to regularize the tempo, a fact that may suggest a break with the traditional stress patterns of Gaelic. Certainly, the few examples of heroic lays from the Hebrides and Ireland may, however, also be suggestive of the range and limits of an older style: the melodic shape of an essentially word-orientated style of sung declamation usually falls within the octave, although one notable example (the melody of Laoidh Fhraoich) covers the span of a 10th (ex.1).
The term ‘bard’ has now come, in any case, to mean simply ‘poet’. It can have a local connotation in the Highlands and is used in such phrases as bard baile (‘township poet’), that is, a poet-composer in the Gaelic vernacular idiom. Some of these latterday ‘bards’ in the Hebrides look to the great songmakers of the 18th century as their ideal if not their actual models for composition: masters such as Alexander MacDonald (c1695–c1770), a fervent Jacobite who composed his poems to Lowland and English airs, his unschooled friend John MacCodrum (1710–96), family bard to Sir James MacDonald of Sleat, or the untutored Duncan Ban MacIntyre (1724–1812), who, though politically a Hanoverian, forged elaborate songs like In Praise of Ben Doran, a composition based on the musical structure of ceol mor (i.e. air and variations). In 1789 MacIntyre competed unsuccessfully with Donald Shaw for the post of ‘Gaelic Bard’ to the Highland and Agricultural Society. More of MacIntyre's songs survive in oral tradition than those of his contemporaries. His reputation, like that of Mary MacLeod (c1615–c1707), the similarly unschooled Rob Donn Mackay (1714–78), and William Ross (1762–?1791), has carried over, firmly enhanced, into the 20th century and bears testimony to the strength of Gaelic oral tradition.
E. Jones: Musical and Poetical Relicks of the Welsh Bards (London, 1784/R, enlarged 2/1794; music only, 1800–05, enlarged 3/1808 [as Musical and Poetical Relicks of the Welsh Bards, i], 4/1825) [most melodies incl. in The Welsh Harper, ed. J. Parry (ii) (London, 1839–48)]
P. MacDonald: A Collection of Highland Vocal Airs (Edinburgh, 1784)
E. Jones: The Bardic Museum (London, 1802) [as Musical and Poetical Relicks of the Welsh Bards, ii], 2/1825) [most melodies incl. in The Welsh Harper, ed. J. Parry (ii), i (London, 1839), ii (London, 1848)]
E. Bunting: The Ancient Music of Ireland, iii (Dublin, 1840) [incl. 150 airs and a diss. on the history of music in Ireland]
J.L. Campbell, ed.: Highland Songs of the Forty-Five (Edinburgh, 1933/R)
J.C. Watson, ed.: The Gaelic Songs of Mary MacLeod (London and Glasgow, 1934/R) [in Eng. and Gaelic]
A. MacLeod, ed.: The Songs of Duncan Ban MacIntyre (Edinburgh, 1952)
W.J. Watson, ed.: Bardachd ghaidhlig: Specimens of Gaelic Poetry, 1550–1900 (Stirling, 3/1959)
W.S. Gwynn Williams: Ceinciau telyn cymru/Harp Tunes of Wales (Penygroes, 1962)
A.M MacKenzie, ed.: Orain Iain Luim/Songs of John MacDonald, Bard of Keppoch (Edinburgh, 1964) [in Gaelic and Eng.]
W. Matheson, ed.: The Blind Harper (An Clarsair Dall): the Songs of Roderick Morison and his Music (Edinburgh, 1970)
C.O. Baoill, ed.: Sileas MacDonald: Poems and Songs (Edinburgh, 1972) [in Eng. and Gaelic]
A. Holder, ed.: Alt-celtischer Sprachschatz, i (Leipzig, 1896/R), 347
W. Dinan, ed.: Monumenta historica celtica, i (London, 1911), 321–3, 331–3, 345
I. Zwicker, ed.: Fontes historiae religionis celticae (Berlin, 1934)
T.G.E. Powell: ‘Religion, Celtic’, The Oxford Classical Dictionary (Oxford, 1948, 2/1970)
J.J. Tierney: ‘The Celtic Ethnography of Posidonius’, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, section C, lx (1960), 189–275
W.F. Skene: The Four Ancient Books of Wales (Edinburgh, 1868), i, 29–32, 522ff; ii, 324
T. Gwynn Jones: ‘Bardism and Romance’, Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion (1913–14), 208–310
T. Roberts: Gwaith Dafydd ab Edmwnd (Bangor, 1914)
J. Morris-Jones: ‘Taliesin’, Y Cymmrodor, xxviii (London, 1918)
T. Parry: ‘Statud Gruffudd ap Cynan’, Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies, v (1929), 25–33
I. Williams and T. Roberts: Cywyddau Dafydd ap Gwilym a‘i Gyfoeswyr (Cardiff, 1935)
I. Williams, ed.: Canu Llywarch Hên (Cardiff, 1935)
P. Crossley-Holland: ‘Secular Homophonic Music in Wales in the Middle Ages’, ML, xxiii (1942), 135–62; rev. and repr. in Secular Medieval Music in Wales (Cardiff, 1942)
I. Williams: Lectures on Early Welsh Poetry (Dublin, 1944/R), 9
I. Williams: Canu Taliesin (Cardiff, 1960)
T. Parry: A History of Welsh Literature (Oxford, 1962/R), 43–66, 69, 84, 128, 133–6, 159
G. Thomas: The Caerwys Eisteddfodau of 1523 and 1567 (Cardiff, 1968)
I. Williams: Canu Aneirin (Cardiff, 1968)
I. Williams: The Poems of Taliesin (Dublin, 1975) [incl. Eng. trans. by J.E. Caerwyn Williams
J.E. Caerwyn Williams: The Poets of the Welsh Princes (Cardiff, 1978)
A.O.H. Jarman: The Cynfeirdd: Early Welsh Poets and Poetry (Cardiff, 1981)
A.O.H. Jarman, ed. and trans.: Y Gododdin: Britain's Oldest Heroic Poem (Llandysul, 1988)
C. Lofmark: Bards and Heroes (Felinfach, 1989)
O. Ellis: The Story of the Harp in Wales (Cardiff, 1991)
P. Crossley-Holland: The Composers in the Robert ap Huw Manuscript: the Evidence for Identity, Dating and Locality (Bangor, 1998)
M. Stephens, ed.: ‘Bardic, Order, The’, Companion to the Literature of Wales (Cardiff, 1998)
M. Martin: A Description of the Western Islands of Scotland (London,1703, 4/1934)
J.C. Walker: Historical Memoirs of the Irish Bards (Dublin and London, 1786/R, 2/1818)
E. O'Curry: On the Manners and Customs of the Ancient Irish (London, 1873/R)
G. Sigerson, ed.: Bards of the Gael and Gall (London, 1897, 3/1925/R)
P.W. Joyce: A Social History of Ancient Ireland (London, 1903, 2/1913/R), i, 417–22, 448–9
O.J. Bergin: ‘Bardic Poetry’, Ivernian Journal, v (1913), 153–203
D. Corkery: The Hidden Ireland: a Study of Gaelic Munster in the Eighteenth Century (Dublin, 1925), 58–9, 122–3
E. Curtis: A History of Ireland (London, 1936, 6/1950), 113
G. Murphy: ‘Bards and Filidh’, Éigse: a Journal of Irish Studies, ii (1940), 200–07
G. Murphy: Early Irish Metrics (Dublin, 1961), 26–7
J.L. Campbell and D.S. Thomson, eds.: Edward Lhuyd in the Scottish Highlands, 1699–1700 (Oxford, 1963), esp. 33–4
F. Collinson: The Traditional and National Music of Scotland (London,1966), 39, 48, 50–51
E. Knott: ‘Irish Classical Poetry’, Early Irish Literature, ed. E. Knott and G. Murphy (London, 1966), 21–93
D.S. Thomson: ‘The MacMhuirich Bardic Family’, Transactions of the Gaelic Society of Inverness, xliii (1966), 276–304
J. MacInnes: ‘The Oral Tradition in Scottish Gaelic Poetry’, Scottish Studies, xii (1968), 29–43
W. Matheson, ed.: The Blind Harper (An Clasair Dall): the Songs of Roderick Morison and his Music (Edinburgh, 1970)
T. Knudsen: ‘Calum Ruadh, Bard of Skye’, DFS information, no.1 (1969)
D.S. Thomson: ‘Niall Mór MacMhuirich’, Transactions of the Gaelic Society of Inverness, xlix (1977) [whole issue]
E. Cregeen and D.W. MacKenzie: Tiree Bards and their Bardachd: the Poets in a Hebridean Community (Isle of Coll, 1978)
S.O. Boyle: Ogam: the Poet's Secret (Dublin, 1980)
T.P. McCaughey: ‘The Performing of Dán’, Eriu, xxxv (1984), 39–57
A. Bruford: ‘The Singing of Fenian and Similar Lays in Scotland’, Ballad Research: Dublin 1985, 55–70
J. MacInnes: ‘Recordings of Scottish Gaelic Heroic Ballads’, The Heroic Process, ed. B. Almqvist and others (Dun Laoghaire, 1987), 101–30
H. Shields: Narrative Singing in Ireland (Dublin, 1993)
T.A. McKean: Hebridean Song-Maker: Iain MacNeacail of the Isle of Skye (Edinburgh, 1997) [incl. disc]
Gaelic Bards & Minstrels, perf. W. Matheson, Greentrax CTRAX9016D (1993) [2 cassettes, with notes ]