Y FERCH YN Y GADAIR

[This year is the 20th anniversary of a significant historical event at the National Eisteddfod of Wales which was held in Denbigh in 2001. What follows is an extract from my more extensive report on that Eisteddfod published in that year on my return to Dublin.]

The competition for the bardic chair (Y Gadair), involves a poem of not more than 200 lines in very strict traditional metre (cynghanedd), and this year it had as its theme “renaissance” or “rebirth”.

This had also been the subject for the crown competition in 1972 and at that time the winning poem examined contemporary Welsh problems, drawing on the Mabinogion tale of Branwen, Matholwch, the Irish and the “cauldron of rebirth".

This year’s winning entry was more intensely personal. It dealt with the initial fulfillment of a maiden through the birth of her baby and her subsequent despair at the baby’s death. She was then “neither maiden nor mother”. It finishes with her realisation that, despite what happens to us, we still have the power of choice - to choose living over despair. This is the “rebirth”. In his adjudication, Dic Jones confessed to being “completely floored by the section dealing with the pregnancy, birth and mourning”.

Secrets are hard to keep, particularly in a close community like that of Welsh Wales, where everyone either knows everyone else, or at least knows someone else who does. There was a great air of expectancy building up around this competition during the week (some would say for the previous month).

Rumour had it that something big was going to happen and everyone wanted to be there. The BBC was finding it hard to line up people for a live studio discussion during the event. For once, no one wanted to be part of the chattering class, commenting on history as it passed them by. They wanted to be part of its making.

There are two magic moments at the culmination of the poetry and prose competitions, more so the poetry than the prose and most particularly the chair. The competitors have entered under pen-names. The Gorsedd are assembled on stage, their bardic finery a sea of gold, white, blue and green shimmering under the floodlights. They face out to a packed and eager audience of 4,000 people.

The air is electric as the adjudicator delivers the adjudication. The audience hang on every word - has he found someone worthy of the prize? Will there be a chair? There is a palpable sigh of relief as the pen name of the winner is revealed. This is the first magic moment.

The Archdruid proclaims the name from the stage asking that person, and no other, to stand. The spotlight searches over the hushed and darkened audience. Yes, someone has risen to their feet. The spotlight finds them, a lighted winner in a vast sea of darkness.

A collective gasp which slowly turns to applause. Ever rising waves of cheering and clapping roll around the pavilion. Everyone is on their feet.

This year the winner was a woman, we were part of history and the enthusiasm of the crowd knew no bounds. Pure magic. Hwyl.

This was the defining moment of this year’s Eisteddfod. For the first time in the history of the Eisteddfod, the chair was won by a woman. Women had won the crown and the prose medal in the past, though rarely. But the supreme honour had never been achieved by a woman before. And now it had finally happened in Denbigh, where nobody had ever won a chair, and, fittingly, where, at the 1882 Eisteddfod, women had first been admitted to the Gorsedd.

A further piece of history was made when the Archdruid kissed the Chair Bard onstage, a not so surprising first when one considers that these two offices have been male preserves since time immemorial. The Archdruid, whose term ends this year, also had the satisfaction that there had been no chairs or crowns withheld on this three year watch.

The winner was Mererid Hopwood. Her academic training is in languages and she was recently Head of the Arts Council West and mid Wales Office before venturing on the path of self-employment. She has been studying cynghanedd for the last six years. She handled her press conference very adroitly, dealing very firmly with the journalists.

She revealed that she had already entered this competition some years ago, and would not have done so again, were it not for the encouragement of the adjudicator who spotted her potential.

When journalists pressed her for more details she referred them to previous published volumes of adjudications with the clue that her pen-name then had not been much different from the one she used this year. She clearly felt that journalists should do a little more of their own research rather than having stories handed to them on a plate.