Welsh Nonconformity and Popular Culture 4: The Eiseddfod (Part two)

Today's illustration shows the Gorsedd Circle outside Cardiff Town Hall. Until recently, when the Gorsedd acquired brand new fibreglass stones, such circles would be erected wherever the National Eiseddfod met, a permanent monument to the cultural gathering. As we saw in yesterday's post, the Gorsedd of bards, with its ceremonial, allowed Nonconformist preacher-poets the experience of hierarchy and liturgy.

What sort of poetry, then, did these poet-preachers actually write? It was not simply secular poetry, but their religious convictions determined the form and content. Caledfryn was the first to lay down the principles that should govern distinctively Nonconformist poetry. His base standard was the poetry of the Psalms and songs of the Bible. ‘The Bible,’ he declared, ‘or the Bible’s poetry, is the only perfect standard for us to know what poetry is.’[1]

Like his Puritan forebears, Williams found in the Bible a complete rule for life and work and it was this that he attempted to apply to poetry. The subject matter had to be suitably lofty, possessed of a moral purpose. Ideally the subject of Nonconformist poetry should be religious experience or Doctrine. This was popular poetry, aimed at the common people and aimed at improving the common people.[2] W.J Gruffydd and Thomas Parry were later to criticize much of this poetry as weak and sentimental. It probably was, as poetry, but the poets and their readers had somewhat different standards, measuring the quality of poetry by its usefulness in declaring Jesus Christ or moving people to live better lives. Still, in comparison to Bunyan and Pantycelyn, the work of these poets was weak and ephemeral.[3] Additionally, involvement in Eisteddfodau could lead to an unhealthy spirit of emulation among ministers (one minister compared another to the devil!), as they competed for the prize in a most un-Christian manner, as well as unnecessarily stoking denominational jealousies.[4]

[1] Jones, Congregationalism, p.179.
[2] Jones, Congregationalism, p.180.
[3] Jones, Congregationalism, pp.180-1.
[4] Jones, Congregationalism, pp.178-9.