While Rome and Milan were devoting themselves almost entirely to ecclesiastical music, there had sprung up among the barbarian nations a school of music more consonant to their habits, being warlike in its style, and having for its object the celebration of the heroes of each country, and the inciting of their descendants to similar deeds of glory. From earliest days Wales has possessed a guild of such singers, who were, in fact, the historians of the country, at a time when written books would have been nearly useless. The songs of the Welsh bards have been preserved traditionally by that people; while the songs of the druids who preceded them have been allowed to pass into utter oblivion, the latter having, evidently, not taken deep root in Welsh soil. At the commencement of the sixth century, the bards of Wales exerted all their energies of exhortation to animate their countrymen in the strife with the Saxon invaders, and when Wales was conquered by Edward I., (1284) he dreaded their influence so much that he is said to have persecuted them and put them to death. The bards in Wales had an organization similar to that which we shall presently find among the troubadours and minne-singers. They were divided into two classes,—poets, and musicians. Each of these classes were subdivided into three divisions. The first class of poet-bards was composed of those who understood history, and dabbled somewhat in sorcery, thus being held in awe as prophets and diviners. The second class consisted of bards attached to private families, whose duties were to chant the praises of the heroes of their particular house. The third class were the heraldic bards, who wrote the national annals and prescribed the laws of etiquette and precedence. These must have exerted a powerful influence on a nation which clung so strictly to ceremony and the privileges of lineage.