The Eisteddfod
… I think the last two days have been two of the most interesting days I have ever spent. I have seen i Welsh Eisteddfod, a national gathering of an enormous crowd of people devoted to music and poetry. The Welsh are a nation of singers — Wherever pou gel a crowd of Welshmen, whether they’re down the mine, in the factory or watting on the platform for a train, they just can’t help bursting into song. «Anyone,» said Mr. Evans, » who has heard a crowd of 50,000 Welshmen before a Rugby match at Cardiff singing ‘ Land of my Fathers’, will never forget it,» You could hardly find a town in.
Wales, however ttnall, that hasn’t a choir. Its conductor isn’t a trained musician; he may be only a miner, an agricultural labourer or «Jones the milk»; but the university lecturer or the doctor’s daughter will be happy to under his leadership. The choir will gather in little chapel almost every night for practice-for
Their National Eisteddfod* is held every year in the first week in August, one year in the North of Wales, the next year m the South, and competitors come from all pans of Wales to compete in it. For twelve months thousands of Welsh people have been practising music; the shepherd on the hills, the teacher in the grammar school have been working at the poem that they hope will win the prize — Ahousewlfc may he a harpist, a parson a poet. During the week of the competition about a hundred thousand people will travel to the Eisteddfod to hear the competitors and listen to the judges* decisions. The Eisteddfod is one of the oldest of all Welsh customs; the first one of which we have any record waa held in ihe 6th century, and as early as A. D, 940 the prize for the winning » bard » was a chair or throne. And that is still Ihe prise today.
In medieval
Mr. Evans has a brother who lives in Caernarvon and he invited us to stay at his house the night before ihe meeting opened.
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