Bred of Heaven (31 page)

Let us gloss over the fact that the stage is not filled with real Druids of the type who were once slaughtered by the Romans on Anglesey. There is no pagan connotation at work here. Nor does it pay to seek deep-rooted antecedents for the elaborate theatrical construct being enacted in front of us. But while they are not exactly ancient, nor are the procedures of the Gorsedd exactly modern: they have been in existence for slightly less time than the United States of America. This is the climax of the week of ceremonial devised in the 1790s by an enthusiastic celebrant of Welsh bardic traditions who called himself Iolo Morganwg. Indeed he was so enthusiastic that he invented some fresh traditions, and it is thanks to these that the National Eisteddfod's penchant for ritual is sometimes derided by outsiders as ever so slightly bogus.

What is indisputably antique is the Welsh veneration of poetry as a public and democratic art form. In the courts of the princes the leading bard's stature was enshrined for all to see in the splendid chair reserved for him. The first bardic competitions flourished in medieval times, but the skills associated with Welsh poetry were allowed to slide into abeyance after defeat by the Normans, and more dramatically after Henry VIII's Act of Union. The Eisteddfod in its current form took shape as a political response to a public inquiry into the state of Welsh education. This wrong-headed Anglocentric document, drawn up in 1846, attributed the perceived indolence and ignorance of the Welsh to the twin influences of Nonconformist Sunday school and the Welsh language. The report ignited an upsurge of fervour which manifested itself above
all in Cymru Cymraeg's determination to celebrate its musical and literary traditions at an annual gathering. The first official National Eisteddfod was held in Denbigh in 1860. On the National Eisteddfod's website, the records of prizes handed out to poets go back to 1880.

The two principal prizes consist of the Crown, awarded for a sequence of poems not exceeding 200 lines, and the Chair, awarded for the best poem written in a strict metre known as
cynghanedd
. And this is where the traditions of the National Eisteddfod are not remotely bogus. The rules governing metre and rhyme in Welsh poetry are fiendishly exacting and uphold literary values which were established back in the golden age of the bard in the Middle Ages. Reverence for those skilled in Welsh poetry is undiminished. It's difficult to imagine the scene which now unfolds in the pavilion happening in any other culture. The Archdruid gives a short speech, the climax of which is the naming of the winner of the Chair. When Welsh bards compose they use bardic pseudonyms. Thus everyone turns to look around the auditorium to see if they can see someone called Yr Wylan, the tradition being that he (and much more rarely she) identify himself (or herself) by standing up. A few rows back from me a stocky red-haired man in early middle age sheepishly rises to his feet. No sooner has a swivelling spotlight fixed on him than a quartet from the Gorsedd approaches to clothe him in a purple robe with gold braiding and lead him through the audience to the stage. Everyone claps furiously as ‘Men of Harlech' loops out of the organ. Yr Wylan is duly installed in the tall-backed Chair, commissioned for the occasion, while the ceremonial sword is held over his head by a member of the Gorsedd who is none other than former front row forward of Wales as the Archdruid says some more words. There is more applause, more harp music, and before long the Gorsedd is processing out of the auditorium,
the Archdruid and the newly chaired Yr Wylan in the vanguard preceded by a cameraman walking carefully backwards to capture every hallowed tread.

As I watch the proceedings unfold, it occurs to me that the time has come for Project Wales to turn poetical. In order to approach ever closer to the citadel of Welshness, I must publish my own bardic contribution. However bad.

Dorothy's project for survival was a great success. She lived until the age of ninety-six, lucidly almost to the last. For six years she trekked around her bungalow overlooking Carmarthen and the Tywi Valley, surrounded by old bits of wooden Welsh furniture which looked hulkish and neutered in this small characterless space. As her own world continued to shrink – she lost her sense of smell – and the piano, knitting, painting, cooking, flower-pressing and other accomplishments receded beyond her reach, she kept a busy mind ticking over by learning large swathes of the atlas by heart: the states of America, the countries and capitals of Europe and Africa, which she could recite on demand.

Eventually she was obliged to take up residence in a private home. Everyone gathered there for her ninetieth birthday – Reeses, Owens, Carmarthenshire friends, old colleagues of Bert. On this occasion I was in a position to bring along her first great-grandchild. A new arrival in a family often presages a departure, but not on this occasion. Dorothy could not have been more thrilled to dandle one great-granddaughter, then another, on her knee. As they giggled and cooed at each other, as one baby girl after another made a grab for their great-grandmother's pebble-thick glasses, it was possible to catch a glimpse of the mother she must have been to her own small boys in the 1930s.

Eventually she entirely lost the use of her legs and stayed in bed
where she started to talk of having lived a rich full life and wanting to go. When I visited her for the last time she barely spoke or even noticed our massed presence at the end of the bed.

Thirteen years after Bert made the same journey, they carried Dorothy's tiny coffin into St David's Church where she lay under the stained-glass depiction of Christ in Majesty which together they had endowed in 1962. His Grace the Archbishop of Wales did not attend on this occasion. The church was much emptier than it had been when she was the chief mourner: at ninety-six, she had lost all of her contemporaries. She was the last of the eighteen – the siblings of Meidrim and their spouses – to go. They started dying in 1958 and here she was forty years later, having survived them all. There was a hymn in Welsh at which I made a paltry stab. Then they took her to the crematorium and brought her ashes back to the churchyard and placed them in the ground next to Bert. For their two sons, doors would now swing open or click shut. My uncle began thinking about a permanent return to Wales while that afternoon my father left Carmarthen for the last time.

After my day on the Maes I head back along the Heads of the Valleys Road to the Rhondda Fach for a final choir practice. Tomorrow I am taking part in the most prestigious musical competition of the lot: the prize for the best male choir of over forty-five voices. Pendyrus have put themselves forward for their first National Eisteddfod since 1968 (when I was three). I have been yo-yoing along the M4, learning words and music for the very big day when one of the great choirs of Wales steps in front of the judges and the television cameras and takes on all-comers. It's the climactic moment of the Eisteddfod and brings the entire sequence of competitions to a close on Saturday afternoon.

It has been fiendish learning the music. Stewart Roberts has
concocted a repertoire to fill a slot of fifteen minutes. One of the songs I already know: every choir has to perform the same test piece, which this year is ‘Heriwn, Wynebwn y Wawr'. We are also having a stab at some operatic repertoire, a choral bauble plucked from Bellini's
I Puritani
. This being the National Eisteddfod, it's not in Italian. The Welsh words of ‘Pan Seinio'r Utgorn Arian' (‘When The Silver Trumpet Sounds') are, fortunately, repetitive in the bel canto style, although it does go on a bit and the words are ever so pernickety. Our third song is a lyrical ballad entitled ‘Cenin Aur' (‘Daffodils'), whose two verses are a heartbreaking lament inspired by the turn of the seasons and the impermanence of life. The problem here is that, to a perilous degree, the second tenor part clambers north into falsetto territory. In case there's time in the allotted space, Stewart has also lobbed in a traditional Welsh folk song called ‘Hela'r Sgyfarnog' (‘Hunting The Hare'). It's extremely fast for those of us not used to sight-reading in Welsh at seventy-eight revs per minute.

But I learn, I learn. The tried and tested methods work. For the two Welsh folk tunes, I simply recite them to buggery while in bed or the shower or on the M4. For this big practice the level of focus is intense. Stewart has brought in a distinguished Welsh conductor whose name escapes me to observe and comment. Our Welsh pronunciation is the perpetual bugbear: curl those
R
s. He has also plumped the choir with a variety of mop-haired and crew-cutted juniors, budding talents from the various schools where he teaches up and down Rhondda Cynon Taf. I stand next to one of them. He is even less word-confident than me, which is and isn't reassuring.

We are in full voice but, not wishing to put too much pressure on the more senior larynxes of Pendyrus, Stewart cuts the proceedings short. I could do with a couple more runs, to be frank, being
still shaky on some of the less penetrable lyrics here and the odd notational chicane there. Stewart concludes with some heartfelt words of congratulation and encouragement – ‘Gentlemen,' he says, ‘I couldn't ask any more of you' – which we all lap up. It's followed by an injunction not to allow a drop of alcohol to pass our lips until after the performance.

Heading back to Mal's for the night, we speak Welsh. I worry that Mal has never heard me utter a single articulate thought. For a man who learned the language after he retired, when the brain ought by rights to be shutting down, his Welsh is remarkable. We watch the Eisteddfod highlights on S4C. Groups of poets are competing in teams, reciting short poems composed at speed. Judges loftily comment on their efforts, like schoolmasters marking an oral. The music of the poetry is manifest, but I can't say I understand much. Even Mal says he gets only about half.

The next morning two well-rested Pendyrus choristers prepare for the day ahead with a bacon sandwich, heavy on the butter and dripping with brown sauce. We are singing in the afternoon, but have a final practice somewhere on the Maes before lunch. There are shirts to be ironed, black leather shoes to be buffed. We pick up two more choristers, first tenor Gareth and his father Mel, an exminer whom Gareth encouraged to join. Having spent a life underground breathing in coal dust, Mel finds he's shorter of breath than the rest of us. We pooter down to Abercynon, the mouth of the valley, then head up past Merthyr towards the Heads of the Valleys Road where we park and catch the shuttle bus.

And so I enter the Maes in the jacket and tie of Pendyrus, the crest on my breast pocket. This feels validly Welsh. But there's more. Mal and I, Mel and Gareth and a few others are wandering along the tented street, the freshly dampened walkway glinting in the sun, when I hear a voice just off behind to the left.

‘Pob lwc.' I don't initially twig that I'm being addressed, but turn and see a short barrel-chested man with a round face wearing a light-brown corduroy suit. ‘Pob lwc,' he says again. Is he looking at me? He is, definitely. But why? I don't know him from … no, it can't be … it is! It's Dafydd Iwan, the president of Plaid Cymru and the musical conscience of Welsh Wales, who went to prison in defence of the language. And here on the Maes, as members of the Welsh-speaking public drift past and other choristers in their jackets wander about, he's wishing me good luck, of all people. I go over and shake his hand and ask him if he's coming along to hear Pendyrus compete. He's doubtless seen a thousand choirs sing, which explains the shoe-gazing evasion and muttered excuses. I don't mind in the slightest. The last time we spoke it was in English. This time, I am speaking Welsh to Dafydd Iwan on the Maes.

‘Wyt ti'n adnabod pawb?' says Mal when I rejoin the group. Do I know everyone?

The day after competing in the National Eisteddfod I will have to go to New York. I'm determined to travel with a Welsh-language passport. Or a passport with lots of Welsh in it, such as I believe you can get if you apply in Welsh. I have taken the precaution of filling out my Welsh-language application form. I'm not quite sure if I can claim to have written it in actual Welsh, date of birth (
dyddiad geni
) and suchlike requiring answers in numerals.
Cyfenw
? At least my surname's Welsh, though one or two of its stablemates let the side down. Jasper Matthew Charles Bertram. When they ask my place of birth (
man geni
) I write ‘Llundain'. There is no room to put Gower Street, the Welsh-sounding address of my birth.

The passport form is of course triply incomprehensible being (a) a passport form, (b) in official Welsh and (c) a daunting
combination of the above. Thank goodness for the English form handed me by the post-office mistress in Machynlleth. That's only singly incomprehensible.

For my passport photo I wear my Welsh rugby shirt. Next I book an appointment at the passport office in Newport, handily arranged as a stop-off on the way to choir practice. And this is where my plan to enshrine my Welshness in an official document starts to go wrong. I saunter over to the counter brimming with confident goodwill. There's a pleasant-looking man uniformed as a representative of the United Kingdom Identity and Passport Service who also wears an earring and a thin moustache.

‘Hoffwn i gwneud cais am basport yn Gymraeg.' Note the soft mutation of
p
to
b
, I think, as I look my man in the eye.

‘Um, I don't actually speak Welsh, sir.'

‘Oh.'

‘No, I'm English. I just work here.'

‘Oh.'

‘Sorry about that, sir.'

‘Is there someone I can speak Welsh to here?'

‘Well, normally there is but they're on their break.'

‘Oh.' I need to think on my feet. ‘I want to apply for a Welsh passport.' There's a pause.

‘I'm … not quite sure what you mean.'

‘A passport in Welsh. I've seen them.' In fact I've seen one. He's looking a bit befuddled. ‘I've filled out the form in Welsh.' I produce the Welsh-language application form and brandish it, along with my two passport photos featuring me in a Welsh rugby shirt.