WITH the National Eisteddfod due to arrive in Abergavenny in just a month, chairman of the executive committee and well known historian Frank Olding takes a look back at its predecessor, the famous Abergavenny Eisteddfodau of the 1830s

“Never before did we observe such a procession in Abergavenny; the road for nearly half a mile was literally crammed with carriages and people.”

Thus reported The Illustrated London News of October 25, 1845, listed as the ’Form of Procession’ were three huge silk banners, a military brass band, a wagon bearing a printing press operated by ’two lads dressed in Welsh woollen clothes’, another wagon with a working loom, a third bearing harpists, and no less than 39 other carriages.

What was the occasion? Some royal event? Not at all - what drew the attention of the London journalists was, in fact, the eighth Eisteddfod of the Abergavenny Cymreigyddion Society (Cymdeithas Cymreigyddion y Fenni). In attendance were the gathered gentry of Gwent and Glamorgan, presided over by an Indian prince as guest of honour - Dwarkanauth Tagore. The celebrations lasted two days and took place in a hall built especially for the Society in Tudor Street.

The Society was formed “in the house of Mr. Ioan Michell, at the sign of the Sun” (now the Coach and Horses in Cross Street) on November 22, 1833. About a dozen were present, mainly tradesmen and shop-keepers from the town, with one lawyer and a few clergymen. Their minutes (in Welsh) record that they were of the opinion that a society of the sort would be:

. . . of great benefit not only to the inhabitants of the Town but also to the people of the mountainous districts of Monmouthshire.

The minutes also state their aims:

. . . cherishing the Welsh language, through forming a collection of Welsh books and presenting prizes for speeches, essays and poems, in Welsh.

To this was added the organisation of Welsh medium education for the children of Wales. A simple rule was passed regarding the activities of the newly-born society, namely:

That all discussion or lengthy speech be carried out in the Welsh language only.

It should be remembered that in 1833 both Abergavenny and the surrounding district were overwhelmingly Welsh in speech. The Society’s minutes and activities make it clear that the majority of the local people still carried out their everyday lives almost entirely in Welsh. The English-speaking element was increasing all the time, of course – to the great concern of the Cymreigyddion.

Two local men were mainly responsible for founding the Society – Thomas Watkins (Eiddil Ifor) and Thomas Bevan (Caradawc). Thomas Watkins was born in Cwm Llanwenarth, some three miles west of Abergavenny. He worked as a “weigher” at the Cwm Celyn Ironworks in Blaenau Gwent. At the inaugural meeting, he was appointed the Society’s bard. Thomas Bevan – shop-keeper at the Clydach Ironworks - was the first secretary from 1833 to 1839 and Ioan Michell, landlord of the Sun Inn, was the first treasurer. These were the sort of people who were the leading lights in the Society in those early days.

As a mark of the members’ unanimous admiration, the first name on the list of members of the newly-fledged Cymreigyddion was Rev. Thomas Price, vicar of Cwm-du. He was better known by his bardic name Carnhuanawc. He was curate of Llanelli parish (now in Monmouthshire but hen part of Breconshire) between 1816 and 1825. He was an ardent advocate of the Welsh language and culture, and the interests of ordinary working people were always close to his heart.

In 1834, the Society held its first eisteddfod in the Grammar School in St. John’s Square. From 1833 to 1838, the Society’s membership increased rapidly, as did the scale of the eisteddfodau from 7 competitions and 28 entries in 1834, to 49 competitions and 193 entries in 1838. The competitions were for Welsh poetry and essays as well as for harpists, singers and other musicians. About this time, Lady Llanover became active in the work of the Society for the encouragement of the woollen industry in Wales as well as the Welsh language.

To the 1838 eisteddfod came a deputation from Brittany led by Theodore Hesart de la Villmarqué. Villmarqué was the founder of the Romantic Movement in Brittany and in 1839 he published a collection of “traditional” Breton ballads. He visited Wales and Oxford in 1838/9 in order to compile a report on any Welsh manuscripts with Breton connections. He had been invited to the eisteddfod by Carnhuanawc and in his speech to the Cymreigyddion he emphasised the strong ties that existed between the Bretons and the Welsh. In his report on the manuscripts, he drew attention to the influence of Welsh sources on Old French literature. Carnhuanawc and the Cymreigyddion were instrumental in the growing awareness of the Welsh and Bretons of their common heritage.

By the mid-1840s the Abergavenny Eisteddfod was the largest cultural festival in Wales. It attracted visitors from as far away as Sardinia, Denmark and Germany and, of course, from Brittany. In 1848 over 400 carts and carriages took part in the eisteddfod procession and similar scenes were witnessed in 1853. Suddenly, on January 14, 1854, the Society was dissolved and the eisteddfodau came to an abrupt end. The reason is something of an enigma. The Rev Price, who had always been the Society’s prime mover, died in 1848 and with him departed much of the old enthusiasm. His friend, Lady Llanover tried to carry on, but found the burden too great. A mysterious note is struck by an entry (in English) in the Society’s minutes of October 23rd 1845:

The Death blow to the society was given tonight.

What caused such despondency so early on? We shall probably never know, but here are a few personal thoughts on the matter. Lady Llanover was acquainted with many wealthy London families, as well as many of the landed gentry of Gwent and Glamorgan. She was responsible for persuading many of them to sponsor the eisteddfodau financially and for drawing them into the social circles around the eisteddfod. Many of them, naturally enough, spoke only English, and from about 1845, more and more English was to be heard in the eisteddfod, largely for the sake of these ’sponsors’. A letter in a Welsh periodical of that year protests strongly against this situation, expressing fear for the future of the Society. A fierce debate followed in the local Press, but the decline continued.

The Abergavenny Eisteddfod had ceased to belong to ’y Werin’, the Welsh-speaking working class, and in the end the Welsh language lost its central place in its activities. Having said all that, the sadness and disappointments of these final years should not blind us to the true scale of the Society’s contribution to the Welsh language and its literature. From the very beginning, one of the main aims of the Cymreigyddion was to support local people and institutions. From 1837 onwards, for instance, the Society contributed ten guineas per annum to maintain a Bilingual Free School in Llanwenarth. Gradually, their horizons broadened and important developments in Welsh scholarship had their origins in the activities of the Society and its members.

As early as 1836, in the annual meeting of the Cymreigyddion, the famous Welsh Manuscripts Society was founded as an off-shoot of the Society. This Society went on to publish some of the first printed editions of medieval Welsh texts as well as the more enigmatic and controversial works of Iolo Morganwg. The Society’s first publication was W. J. Rees’s edition of the Book of Llandaff in 1840. It was followed by Heraldic Visitations, a genealogical work by the Elizabethan poet Lewys Dwnn, in 1846 and by the Iolo Manuscripts (1848) and Lives of the Cambro-British Saints (1853). The rest of the Society’s publications - Y Gododin (1852), Dosparth Edeyrn Davod Aur (1856), Brut y Tywysogion (1860), Annales Cambriae (1860), Meddygon Myddfai (1861) a Barddas (1862) – were edited by Rev. John Williams Ab Ithel and that, according to the great Welsh scholar, Thomas Parry, “without the slightest trace of either the critical capacity or ethics of the true scholar . . . there is now not the slightest value in anything he did.” A pity that the solid work of the pioneers should be tainted in such a way.

But without any doubt, the greatest contribution of the Abergavenny Cymreigyddion to the literary heritage of Wales was the part it played in the translation and publication of the medieval Welsh tales known as the Mabinogion. In addressing the audience of the 1838 Abergavenny Eisteddfod in the George Hotel, Carnhuanawc disclosed that the Society had long harboured an ambition to publish the Mabinogion, but had been frustrated by financial difficulties. Now, he said, mainly thanks to the fact that Lady Charlotte Guest had shouldered the entire financial cost of the venture, he was able to present to their attention the first part of the completed work.

Charlotte Guest – the wife of the Merthyr Ironmaster, Sir John Guest – had been one of the first members of the Cymreigyddion. She translated the tales from the Red Book of Hergest with the help of John Jones (Tegid) who copied the original manuscript in the library of Jesus College, Oxford. With these, she also published Hanes Taliesin (the “History of Taliesin”) from an 18th century source, probably assisted by Carnhuanawc. The whole work was published between 1838 and 1849. The greatest literary treasure of the Welsh people had seen the light of day in all its glory for the first time – we find it difficult today to appreciate the full importance of the event at the time.

In the meantime, Maria Jane Williams’s collection of the folk tunes of Glamorgan and Gwent has won the first prize at the Abergavenny Eisteddfod in 1837. The publication of her work as the Ancient National Airs of Gwent and Morgannwg in 1844 was an important milestone in the study of traditional Welsh music and folk-lore. In 1839, the Cymreigyddion had, with an ambition bordering on rashness, established a committee to rationalise the orthography of the Welsh language! A pipe dream far ahead of its time, of course. It would not be until the early years of the twentieth century that such a plan would come to fruition.

In 1848, an apothocary from Merthyr by the name of Thomas Stephens, won the Cymreigyddion prize for his essay on the history of Welsh literature from 1100 to 1350. It was published the follwing year as Literature of the Kymry. Thomas Stephens was far in advance of his contemporaries in his scientifically analytical methods and it could be argued that his volume marks the birth of scholarly literary criticism in Wales.

The Abegavenny Cymreigyddion Society holds a unique and honuroed place in the history of Welsh culture and literature. To quote once more the opinion of Thomas Parry, the Society “was the means by which were produced some of the best books of the [19th] century on the history of Welsh literature and the history of Wales in general.” And, from Tom Parry, that is high praise indeed!