Welsh Journals

Search over 450 titles and 1.2 million pages

Each of these two controlling authorities was originally intended to be an essentially democratic institution each has, for a considerable time past developed-or degenerated as the reader pleases to regard it-into a benevolent autocracy. The Association has a Council, which has not been summoned for many a year past; The Gorsedd has an Association which is nominally held during the Eisteddfod week, but at an hour when few can be expected to attend. For practical purposes the Eis- teddfod Association is controlled, so far as the public knows, by its chairman and secretary; the Gorsedd Association similarly by the Archdruid and the Recorder the seat of authority in the first is in London, and in the second in Wales-just now in Cardiff as the home of the Archdruid. The two hold a Joint Annual Meeting during Eisteddfod week, at which is presented the annual report, and the applications for holding the Eisteddfod two years thereafter are considered. Every member of either society has the right to attend and vote at this joint meeting, presided over by the Archdruid, supported in the vice- chair by the Chairman of the Eisteddfod Association. This is at it should be,-the traditional supremacy of the Bardic fraternity in the Eisteddfodic state being recognised in the position accorded to the Head of the Gorsedd. That, in brief outline, is the machinery of the present day Eisteddfod, as established by mutual consent of the two bodies interested, and endorsed by practically unanimous national assent a full generation ago. What Wales, Welsh literature, music, and art owe to this beneficent constitution can only be properly appreciated by those who, like myself, remember the chaos previously existing in the Eisteddfodic state. Aforetime the annual meeting of the Bards was a carousal, presenting scenes which characterised a banquet of bucks in the days of the Regency, and which Hogarth would have loved to limn. I speak of what I have myself seen in the Gorsedd pre- reform period. The finances of the Eisteddfod were at times a combination of muddle and scandal. One has only to recall the Eisteddfodic financial morass in which the late ever honoured patriot Archdeacon Griffiths, Rector of Neath, and his equally patriotic colleagues were almost engulfed in their self-sacrificing efforts to reform the Eisteddfod, to realise the stupendous task which the National Eisteddfod Association successfully achieved. I speak whereof I know. All honour then, to the Gorsedd and to the National Eisteddfod Association for having, now for a whole generation past, saved Wales from this scandal and the Eisteddfod from this disaster. In seeking further reforms let us not forget those already won, and won not without effort, and at the cost of much personal sacrifice. But, while the reforms initiated a generation ago have in some material respects been well maintained, they have in others, not fulfilled either popular or expert anticipa- tions. New brooms proverbially sweep clean but new brooms in process of time grow old, and their work is less well done. The Gorsedd and National Eisteddfod Association of a generation ago may he likened to a well- constructed motor car which rolled smoothly along doing credit alike to its manufacturers and its chauffeurs. In process of time it showed signs of wear and tear worn parts were not attended to bearings worked loose the gearing became slack the familiarity which proverbially breeds contempt made the chauffeurs if not neglectful of, at least less attentive to, their duties. The result has been that the machinery needs overhauling the parts do not work smoothly; the machine still travels, but not as easily as it once did. The travellers bump along in dis- comfort. The Eisteddfod itself has developed features which do not harmonise with either national needs or national aspirations. One side has been cultivated at the expense of another one art, delightful in itself, has been allowed to develope a rank growth which, while it overshadows other and no less necessary arts, loses in its rankness much of the native charm and delicacy which first gave it claim to a position of honour in the National Festival. Other arts are -knocking insistently but vainly at the portals for admission. The Eisteddfod is thus in danger of becoming a monstrosity instead of continuing to be a thing of national beauty, and a People's University, to degenerate into a musical orgie instead of developing every national artistic taste. What then are the imperative reforms urgently needed ? I will enumerate a few. The Eisteddfod must not be permitted to degenerate into a great Competitive Concert, overshadowing or excluding all other forms of art. Music, and musical com- petitions, must, of necessity have a place, and a prominent place, but not a dominant, certainly not the predominant, place in the Festival. The parasitic Cymanfa Ganu must be subjected to an effective surgical operation, relieving the body Eistedd- fodic for all time from an alien cankerous growth which threatens to sap its vitality. Those who witnessed the scenes at Birkenhead, and still more emphatically at Neath, cannot fail to have realised that the Cymanfa Ganu was held not so much to the glory of God as to the glorification of man. The native drama must find an honoured place in the National Festival, which must encourage both dramatic writing and representation. This opens up a wide field requiring an article to itself to do it anything approaching justice. Carnarvon, which hopes to have the honour of holding the Eisteddfod of 1921 has broken new ground. It offers a prize of £ 50 (with all rights reverting to the author after the Eisteddfod), for a drama in Welsh com- positions to be in hand sufficiently early next summer to permit dramatic companies from all parts of Wales to rehearse the prize play for competition at the Eisteddfod in 1921. A further prize of £ 15 is offered for a Welsh Historical Drama, suitable for school pupils to perform at an ordinary school prize day-another welcome innovation. Literature, literary criticism, and oratory, must regain their once honoured, but now lost, position in the National Festival. This can be done without trenching on the position 'due to music, or depriving the music-loving crowd of its feasts.