Excerpted from Wall Street Journal,
A-12, August 12, 2003

Druids for a Day, Bards Forever

By JAN MORRIS

MEIFOD, Wales -- The nation of Wales, Cymru in Welsh, lives in the flank of England. Last week many thousands of Welsh people celebrated their style, their talents and themselves in the peculiar festival called the National Eisteddfod, one of the oldest and biggest such folk celebrations in Europe, which is held annually at a different site each year.

It is conducted entirely in the Welsh language, and this year in one of the most profoundly rural corners of the country, miles from any city. It was like a town of its own, there among the sheep-nibbled hills and meadows, with a grassy space in the middle where everyone went to meet everyone else.

Countless Welsh-speaking families use the occasion as an annual reunion, but the Eisteddfod is essentially a series of competitions, at which prizes are awarded for accomplishments in all the arts, and above all in literature. to the poet judged to have submitted the best awdl, a long poem on a set subject obeying fiendishly difficult traditional rules of poesy. The winner of the Chair can call himself Prifardd, Chief Bard, until the end of his days.

This year, as always, his identity was kept a breathless secret until the ceremony of the Chairing, and then all symbolism broke loose. The bards of the Gorsedd were ranked flower-embowered upon the stage, and there were fanfares, harp-melodies and dances by wreathed green-clad maidens.

And to a blare of trumpets, suddenly a searchlight was switched on, to play tantalizingly along the darkened rows of the audience, questing, faltering sometimes, wavering, until at last it settled upon the figure of the triumphant poet. Robed emissaries appeared out of the shadows to summon him, and to cheers and laughter, rhythmic hand-claps and celebratory music he was escorted through those thousands of his compatriots, now one and all on their feet in tribute, to be presented to the Archdruid and seated upon his Chair -- his to keep for ever, as an exotic piece of furniture and a stake in immortality.

All for poetry! It was a terrific moment, like no other, perhaps, in contemporary culture -- for the tumultuous festive assembly, for all the little nation, and of course for the champion poet himself: who happened to be, on Friday, my son Twm Dafydd Morys, Prifardd.

(Ms. Morris's retrospective collection of travel writing, "The World 1950-2000," will be published next month by W.W. Norton)

Sincerely,
Gargoyle