Welsh Journals

extraordinary success of Joseph Parry who subsequently became one of the most distinguished Welsh composers of his time. He captured every prize in the contests for musical composition. It speaks well for the enterprise and cultural taste of the Llandudno residents of 1864, who barely numbered more than eight hundred, that they should have built for the festival a splendid timber pavilion to accommodate six to seven thousand people at a cost of over £ 650 which represented a very considerable amount eighty years ago Llandudno held a second National in 1896, and I well remember Dr. Joseph Parry conducting his own work Cambria and a grateful nation taking advantage of the occasion to present the composer with a national testimonial of £ 600. Mathew Arnold attended a National Eisteddfod sometime in the Sixties and it is interesting to recall a remark he made at that time When I see the enthusiasm the Eisteddfod can awaken in your whole people, and then think of the tastes, the literature, the amusements of our own lower and middle classes, I am filled with admiration for the Welsh." On another occasion Arnold referred to Wales as a land where the Past still lives, where every place has its tradition, every name its poetry, and where the people, the genuine people, know this past, this tradition, this poetry, and live with it, and cling to it." Jeannette Marks, an American writer of repute, visited the Colwyn Bay National Eisteddfod in 1910. And concluding a chapter she wrote after the visit, she says, This national festival is the popular university of the people, it is the centre of Welsh nationalism, the feast of Welsh brotherhood. Only listened to in this spirit can one understand what it means when an Eisteddfod throng, after the crowning of the bard, rises to sing Hen Wlad fy Nhadau Home to their Mountains By IVOR LEWIS HE beamed liberally, exclaiming, You see a lot in six years, Mrs. then flushed, thinking his pause made it sound like the vulgar missus one read in print; he had felt quite sure he could remember her name. Hair sandy, complexion fresh, the blush gave him a raw blistered look, resembling that of a Lancashire day-tripper to the coast, as vaguely punctured of desire. But his self-wrought confusion passed largely unnoticed, only the calm woman in the centre of the compartment watched him kindly.