Eisteddfod
Flanked by his fellow members of the Gorsedd in ceremonial Neo-Druidic robes, as well as the Herald, the Recorder, and the Swordbearer, the Archdruid partially withdraws the Great Sword from its sheath three times, and asks, "A oes heddwch?"
Gently he is seated upon the Chair which is itself his prize, and he is proclaimed a champion: not because he won a war or a football game or even an election, but because he is judged by wise men of his nation to have composed a worthy cywydd concerning the nature of clouds.
"[6]: 152 According to Hywel Teifi Edwards, "The Eisteddfod, then, has evolved from a medieval testing-ground-cum-house of correction for professional Bards and Minstrels into a popular festival which annually highlights the literary scene with the aid of the Gorsedd.
At the eisteddfod the Cadair Arian ('Silver Chair'), which is said to have been fashioned by Gruffudd ap Nicolas himself, was won by a cywydd in honour of the Holy Trinity composed by Dafydd ab Edmwnd, a Welsh poet who did not depend on noble patronage, from Hanmer, Flintshire.
Although Edwards has compared the unlicensed bards of the era with, "today's abusers of the Social security system,"[7]: 8–10 historian Philip Caraman quotes a 1575 "Report on Wales" that reveals an additional reason for the decree.
When Welsh Recusant, schoolmaster, and unlicensed bard Richard Gwyn was put on trial for high treason before a panel of judges headed by the Chief Justice of Chester, Sir George Bromley, at Wrexham in 1583, Gwyn stood accused of refusing to take the Oath of Supremacy, denying the Queen's claim to be Supreme Head of the Church of England, of involvement in the local Catholic underground, but also of composing satirical poetry aimed at the established church and reciting, "certain rhymes of his own making against married priests and ministers."
Following Catholic Emancipation in 1829, six works of Christian poetry in the Welsh language by Richard Gwyn, five carols and a satirical Cywydd composed in Wrexham Gaol following the assassination of Dutch Revolt leader William the Silent by Balthasar Gérard, were discovered and published.
According to Marcus Tanner, Queen Elizabeth I's experiment at royal patronage of the eisteddfod did not catch on and, as the 16th and 17th centuries progressed, the Welsh nobility became increasingly Anglicized and ceased to grant employment or hospitality to Welsh-language poets.
According to Hywel Teifi Edwards, "there was to be notice given a year in advance of one organized, annual eisteddfod answerable to a central, controlling authority which would require competitors to submit their compositions pseudonymously to a panel of competent adjudicators.
[7]: 14–15 Long before his death on his tobacco and cotton plantation near Lawrenceville, Virginia in 1769, Owen had often expressed the desire to compose an epic work of Christian poetry which would be the equal of John Milton's Paradise Lost.
[7]: 18 Meanwhile, Archdeacon Thomas Beynon, the president of the Carmarthen Cymreigyddion Society and a staunch patron of the provincial eisteddfodau, was persistently urging for the adoption of blank verse, or unrhymed iambic pentameter, as another alternative to Welsh poetry in strict meter.
[7]: 21 The Llangollen eisteddfod also saw the first public appearance of John Ceiriog Hughes, who won a prize for the love poem, Myfanwy Fychan of Dinas Brân, which contradicts the Blue Books by describing a virtuous Welsh woman.
Edward Dafydd, in 1655, expressed the sense of desolation he felt as he pondered the passing of the old order and the coming of a bleak age: Nid yw'r bid hwn gyda'r beirdd ('This world is not for poets.')
[30] Thomas Gwynn Jones has been called the greatest master of Welsh poetry in strict meter since the 15th century[31][32] and, in Ymadawiad Arthur, according to one critic, the cynghanedd "is so smooth and natural that often we deem it accidental".
Mab y Bwthyn "tells, in a gushingly romantic, lyrical style how a young gwerinwr, scarred by the horrors of war, turns from the fetid city to seek spiritual renewal in the natural beauty of his home and the love of a pure country girl."
Owen's Cilmeri reimagines the death of Prince Llywelyn ap Gruffudd of the House of Gwynedd in battle near the village of that name in 1282, while leading a doomed uprising against the occupation of Wales by King Edward I of England.
"[7]: 51-53 In 1999 the centenary of early Gaelic revival poet and Easter Rising leader Patrick Pearse's initiation into the Gorsedd at the 1899 Pan Celtic Eisteddfod in Cardiff (where he took the Bardic name of Areithiwr) was marked by the unveiling of a plaque at the Consulate General of the Irish Republic in Wales.
[51] In a ceremony held entirely in the Welsh language during the 2002 National Eisteddfod at St. David's, Rowan Williams, the Anglican Archbishop of Wales, was sworn into the Gorsedd as a "White Druid" under the bardic name "Ap Aneurin".
[52] According to Marcus Tanner, "The hour-long ritual, which took place at dawn inside a circle of improvised standing stones, seemed culled from the pages of Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, not least because the more intrusive signs of modern technology, such as loudspeakers, had been concealed beneath wreaths of foliage.
Organised by Urdd Gobaith Cymru, it involves young Welsh people from nursery age to 25 in a week of competition in singing, recitation, dancing, acting and musicianship during the summer half-term school holiday.
In 1757, Reverend Goronwy Owen, an Anglican vicar born at Y Dafarn Goch, in the parish of Llanfair Mathafarn Eithaf in Anglesey and the poet most responsible for the subsequent Welsh eighteenth-century renaissance,[88] emigrated to Williamsburg, in the Colony of Virginia.
At the Llanrwst eisteddfod in June 1791, Jones distributed copies of an address, entitled To all Indigenous Cambro-Britons, in which he urged Welsh tenant farmers and craftsmen to pack their bags, emigrate from Wales, and sail for what he called the "Promised Land" in the United States of America.
"[104]: 131 According to David M. Jones, a Calvinistic Methodist minister born at Ty Rhedyn, near Marian-glas, Anglesey and Welsh-language writer whose literary talents drew comparisons with Washington Irving,[103]: 215-216 the first eisteddfod held in Cambria Township took place on the Fourth of July, 1871.
[107] Also during the American Civil War, Edward Thomas, a Welsh-language poet born in Centerville, Ohio to parents from Llanidloes and whose bardic name was Awenydd, was living and working as a schoolmaster at the Welsh-American farming settlement at South Bend Township, in Blue Earth County, Minnesota.
The Cornouaille Kemper was accordingly transformed by Pêr-Jakez Helias, François Bégot and Jo Halleguen into an Eisteddfod-inspired summer festival celebrating Breton culture, mythology, literature, and traditional music.
Irish bards and their students were expected[137][138] to compose their verses lying down and in the dark, "to avoid the distraction which light and the variety of objects represented commonly occasions" and to concentrate solely, "upon the subject at hand and the theme given".
During the early 18th century, Irish-language poet, composer, and itinerant harpist Turlough O'Carolan is said to have improvised Carolan's Concerto inside the house of the Anglo-Irish Power family, during such a contest against the Italian violinist Francesco Geminiani.
The festival was traditionally held in Dublin, but, beginning in 1974, Coiste Cearta Síbialta na Gaeilge (English: Irish Language Civil Rights Committee") successfully coerced an end to the practice of never holding Oireachtas in Ireland's Gaeltacht areas.
"[156] Unlike in other Celtic nations, the Eisteddfod in the Isle of Man has much less to do with the ongoing revival efforts spearheaded by Brian Stowell, Robert Corteen Carswell, Yn Çheshaght Ghailckagh, and the Bunscoill Ghaelgagh, for the island's heritage language of Manx Gaelic, its literature, and its culture.
"[168] More recently, Scottish traditional musician Fergus Munro has also gone on the record, as Scotland has grown increasingly secularised, as a critic of what he alleges is a growing tendency to exclude both Christian poetry and Gaelic psalm- and hymn-singing from the Mòd.
