The Eisteddfod
Wales holds a poetry contest where the winner is chased into the ceremony by a sword, a horn and a hush, and the prize is a carved oak chair.
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Quick Facts
- What it is
- A Welsh festival of music, literature and performance, built around competition
- First recorded court
- Cardigan, 1176, hosted by Lord Rhys ap Gruffydd
- Modern revival
- Late 18th and early 19th centuries, led by Welsh societies and Iolo Morganwg
- Top prizes
- The Chair for poetry in strict metre, the Crown for free-metre poetry, the Prose Medal
- Main event
- The National Eisteddfod of Wales, held each August and moving between north and south
- Youth rival
- The Urdd Eisteddfod, a huge annual festival for young people
- Gorsedd
- The robed order of bards, druids and ovates, introduced by Iolo Morganwg in 1792
- Language
- Overwhelmingly Welsh, with the main field treated as a Welsh-speaking space
A lord, a castle and a very old talent show
The first Eisteddfod that history can pin down took place at Cardigan Castle at Christmas 1176. Lord Rhys ap Gruffydd announced it a year ahead, inviting poets and musicians from across Wales and beyond, and put chairs of honour at stake for the winners. According to tradition, the poets and the harpists were the ones to beat. The word itself comes from the Welsh for 'sitting', which fits: the winners got a seat. After that the story gets patchy. Gatherings came and went, and by the 1700s the tradition had faded. Then Welsh societies, notably London's Gwyneddigion Society, which backed eisteddfodau from 1789, began bringing it back. The revival carried on through the 19th century.
The stonemason who invented a druid order
Much of what you see on the Eisteddfod stage was dreamed up by Edward Williams, a stonemason from Glamorgan who wrote as Iolo Morganwg. In 1792 he held a ceremony on Primrose Hill in London and presented it as an ancient bardic rite. It wasn't ancient, but it caught on. The Gorsedd of Bards was folded into the Eisteddfod in the 19th century, and today its members process in blue, white and green robes, each colour tied to a bardic rank. The Archdruid has stood at the centre of the ceremony, and a sword is part of the drama. It is partly drawn from its scabbard, and the assembled crowd is asked whether there is peace. The answer is shouted back: peace.
Why the poet's chair can be empty
The Chair is the glory prize, awarded for a poem in strict metre, the demanding cynghanedd form with its internal chiming of consonants. The poets enter under pseudonyms and the judges do not know who they are. Then comes the famous moment. The adjudicators announce that the winner is in the pavilion and ask them to stand. The crowd waits, a trumpet sounds, and the winner rises to be escorted to a chair made specially for the occasion. Sometimes nobody rises. If no entry is considered worthy, the Chair is withheld. The black drape is something else: a sign of mourning. It belongs to Hedd Wyn, the shepherd-poet killed at Passchendaele in 1917. He had won the Chair at Birkenhead that year but never knew it, and the ceremony is remembered as the Eisteddfod of the Black Chair.
A travelling field that never stays put
The National Eisteddfod moves every year, alternating between north and south Wales. Each host town builds a temporary 'Maes', a field of stalls, tents, cafés, societies and stages, with a big pavilion at its heart. The local committee raises money for years beforehand, and the festival leaves a mark on the area it visits. Welsh learners come in numbers too, and the Learner of the Year award shows how the event has become a gateway to the language. In recent years the programme has widened well beyond the competitions, bringing in pop and rock gigs, comedy, debates and political stalls. The traditional contests still sit at the centre, though.
Rival Eisteddfodau and rival ideas
There isn't just one. The Urdd Eisteddfod, run by Wales's youth movement, draws thousands of children and teenagers who compete in singing, recitation, dance and instrumental music. Plenty of future stars, and plenty of future nervous parents, have learned about competition there. Then there is the International Musical Eisteddfod at Llangollen, begun in 1947 as a way to bring the world together after the war. Choirs and dancers arrive from far and wide in national dress, a very different mood from the Welsh-language National. Smaller local Eisteddfodau thrive too, in chapels, schools and village halls, where recitation of a poem or a solo on the piano can feel just as weighty.
Notable people
- Lord Rhys ap Gruffydd
- Iolo Morganwg
- Hedd Wyn
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