When the young Breton scholar Hersart de La Villemarqué was initiated as a bard amidst the Cercle de Pierres mystiques at the Abergavenny eisteddfod in 1838, it was one of the most profoundly moving moments of his life. Much of the frisson religieux he experienced during the ceremony derived from his belief that the proceedings (which include the sheathing of a sword, as a symbol of peace) were many centuries old, dating back to the days of the 6th-century Welsh bards. In fact, the impressive stone-circle rituals of the bardic initiation go back no further than 1792, when Iolo Morganwg, the visionary Glamorgan stonemason, first had them performed on Primrose Hill in central London. By 1838 Iolo’s Neo-Druidic ceremony, known as the Gorsedd, and widely believed to be truly ancient, was thoroughly integrated into the general festivities of the eisteddfod, and has remained a highlight of the yearly gathering to this day.
But if the Gorsedd (“throne”) undoubtedly belongs to the class of invented ancient national traditions, the eisteddfod has a more complex history. Poetic and musical competitions, eisteddfodau (“sessions”), were held in Wales from at least 1170. They were not only occasions for displays of talent, but allowed the guild of professional poets to regulate their activities. Important eisteddfodau took place in 1450 (Carmarthen) and in 1523 and 1567 (Caerwys), but by the 17th century the whole bardic order was in serious decline. By the 18th century, with professional court poets now extinct, these literary meetings had become essentially local, amateur affairs. It was not until the end of that century, with the stirrings of a wider renewal of interest in Welsh language and culture, that newly-formed Welsh societies such as the Gwyneddigion, based in London, set about reviving the fortunes of the eisteddfod at a national level. The first of these was held at Corwen in 1789. Growing in importance year on year, they became an important focus for nourishing and promoting musical and poetic talent in Wales, the high-points of the festival being (as today) the awarding of a Cadair (“Chair”) for the best awdl (strict-metre poem), and the Coron (“Crown”) for poetry in free metre.
By the 1830s much of Welsh cultural activity was based in the south of the country, and had shifted from the artisan classes to the gentry and clerics. The eisteddfodau associated with the Cymreigyddion Society of Abergavenny are famous for their pomp and splendour. Newspaper reports of the 1838 festivities describe a great procession, over two and half miles long, with a line of costumed bards and druids and a riot of banners and symbols (among them a giant six-foot leek) enthusiastically proclaiming devotion to Wales and loyalty to the British Crown.
The eisteddfod gathered strength throughout the century as a rallying point for Welsh culture, particularly in the wake of the perturbation caused by the 1848 “Blue Books” report, which had criticized literacy, living standards and morality in Wales. But Wales’s complex literary and historical inheritance, partly the result of the legacy of Iolo Morganwg, meant that certain aspects of Welshness were more acceptable than others, and certain ideas proved hard to relinquish. At a notorious eisteddfod organized by John Williams (“Ab Ithel”) in Llangollen in 1858, Thomas Stephens of Merthyr Tydfil was denied a prize for his brilliant and painstaking demolition of the notion that the medieval Prince Madoc had discovered America: his findings were not acceptable to the more Romantically-inclined organizers. Matthew Arnold’s serio-comic encounter with the event in a windswept Llandudno in 1864 opens the introduction to his influential essay On the study of Celtic literature (1867), which (conceding that the “inconvenient” Welsh language should be phased out as quickly as possible) vindicated a positive interest in the place of Welsh culture in the greater British sphere.
During the 19th century the eisteddfod encouraged international links with other Celtic-speaking countries. Similar events, complete with Gorsedd ceremonies, took place in Cornwall and Brittany; the Irish Oireachtas and the Scottish Mòd are evident spin-offs. After 1860 the Gorsedd and the eisteddfod officially merged to become the National Eisteddfod, which remains to this day a high point in the Welsh cultural calendar, with thousands of competitors and visitors enjoying eight days of competitions and events in everything from woodwork to folk singing (though poetry still retains pride of place and Welsh remains the language of all the competitions). Since the mid-20th century there has also been a thriving Youth Eisteddfod (Eisteddfod yr Urdd) which takes place every May and involves schoolchildren from all over Wales.
