'Our own pageantry and peacockry': the Gorsedd of the Bards

A portrait of Edward Williams, Ned of Glamorgan or Iolo Morganwg by George Cruickshank.

What is the Gorsedd?

The Gorsedd of the Bards of the Isle of Britain is a society of poets, writers, musicians, artists and individuals who have made a notable contribution to the nation, its language and culture. It operates through the medium of the Welsh language.

The Gorsedd of the Bards is responsible for the pageantry of the National Eisteddfod of Wales and it organises and presents the colourful and dramatic Proclamation and Gorsedd Circle rites, and the Chairing, Crowning and Prose Medal ceremonies on the main festival stage.

'The gorsedd is a sort of guild of literati and it provides at 'the national' the ceremonial aspect, the incantations, the robes of white, blue and green, the dancing elves, the sword of peace, the horn of plenty, the sheaf of corn. All the tribes of the world like ritual, badges, medals, strange hats, parades and archaic nomenclature and language. … Wales likes its own pageantry and peacockry …'
(Trevor Fishlock, Talking of Wales, London: Cassells, 1976, pp.75-6)

The inventor of the tradition: Iolo Morganwg

The Gorsedd is the product of the fertile imagination of Edward Williams, otherwise known as Ned of Glamorgan or Iolo Morganwg (1747-1826). He was born in the parish of Llancarfan, Glamorganshire, and although English was his home language he soon became interested in the Welsh language, its literature and history. He was a stonemason by craft and travelled throughout Wales and especially to London. Once there he came into contact with the Gwyneddigion Society and began to turn in cultural and radical circles.

Iolo Morganwg was a genius - one of the founder members of the Unitarian movement in Wales, a political radical who supported the French Revolution, a pacifist, an antiquarian, a hymn-writer and an able lyrical poet who called himself 'The Bard of Liberty'.

A Dreamer and a Forger

But he was also a dreamer and a forger. He was addicted to the drug laudanum and this probably affected his perception of the world. The creation of the Gorsedd of the Bards of the Isle of Britain was part of his dream and vision for Wales and Glamorgan and he managed to convince the scholars of his own time that it was a totally authentic institution. Why did he go to such trouble? There are a number of possible reasons:

• He was entranced by the romanticism of eighteenth-century neo-Druidism and he believed that Welsh poets had inherited the mantle of the Celtic druids.
• When he was in London he realised that the English disparaged the language of culture of Wales. Therefore, he decided to create a brilliant ancient past for his nation through the Gorsedd of the Bards of the Isle of Britain.
• Iolo was jealous of the Gwyneddigion's confidence that Welsh poetry and culture were at their purest in Gwynedd. Thus, he tried to prove that druidic traditions had survived only in Glamorganshire. As the scholar G.J.Williams has shown, 'The Gorsedd was an attempt at taking the wind out of the people of Gwynedd's sails … an attempt to show that they in Glamorgan had safeguarded the old Welsh institution in its original purity.'
• And, of course, Iolo was central to his own vision. He wanted to define a central role for himself in Welsh history through the Gorsedd of the Bards of the Isle of Britain.

Historian, Gwyn A. Williams crystallised Iolo's complex motives by claiming that he was driven by, 'a Welsh resentment against arrogant English, a south Wales resentment against arrogant northerners, a Glamorgan resentment against the rest and a Iolo resentment against any who snubbed him.'

When Iolo died in 1826 Wales had scarcely begun to fathom the full nature and extent of his invention and deceit.