Tragic war poet Hedd Wyn to be remembered this week
EVENTS will be held in Gwynedd and Wirral this week and next to commemorate the award of an Eisteddfod chair to a tragic war poet.
Ellis Humphrey Evans, or Hedd Wyn, entered the chair competition at the National Eisteddfod held at Birkenhead on September 6-8, 1917.
He had written his poem, Yr Arwr (Hero), while serving with the Royal Welch Fusiliers in Flanders.
Just days after posting his entry, on July 31, 1917, he was killed in battle during the first few hours of the bloody Battle of Passchendaele.
When the Archdruid asked the winning bard to stand, there was a hushed silence.
After the trumpets had summoned the winner three times to stand it was announced the poet had been killed in action.
The chair, made by Flemish craftsman Eugeen Vanfleteren, who had settled in Birkenhead, was draped in a black shroud.
A two-day festival to commemorate the Eisteddfod will be staged in Birkenhead on September 9 and 10. The events on Saturday will be at at the Wirral Hospitals School – Joseph Paxton Campus, Park Road North, Birkenhead.
Sunday’s events will be at Laird Street Chapel, Birkenhead.
Organised by the Welsh Heritage Society and Friends of Birkenhead Park (with support from Wirral Council, Snowdonia National Park Authority and Birkenhead Lions) the festival will see the award of a bardic chair for a poem on Hedd Wyn.
The chair will be presented by the Flanders Hedd Wyn Society, which will be represented at the Festival.
Among other events, Professor Peredur Lynch, of Bangor University, will give a lecture in Welsh (translation facilities available) on Hedd Wyn.
And the broadcaster Huw Edwards will present a lecture in English on David Lloyd George, who was Prime Minister at the time and was at the Eisteddfod ceremony.
The men from Wales and Merseyside who died in the Great War will be remembered at a ceremony to unveil the cleaned commemorative stone and a new memorial to Hedd Wyn in Birkenhead Park.
After the 1917 National Eisteddfod, the chair was carried the 100 miles from Birkenhead to Trawsfynydd by train and then by horse and cart to Yr Ysgwrn, Hedd Wyn’s home.
Gwyl y Lleuad Borffor (the Purple Moon Festival) will be staged at Trawsfynydd. It is titled after one of Hedd Wyn’s best known poems about the moon shining in the sky above the Prysor river.
A number of events have been organised by Friends of Yr Ysgwrn in the village from September 9, when a cabaret with Geraint Lovgreen and poets Ifor ap Glyn and Myrddin ap Dafydd will be held.
On September 11, the Oscarnominated film Hedd Wyn will be shown.
The festival climaxes on Saturday, September 16, with the premiere of Yr Awen, a theatrical walk around the village of Trawsfynydd.
For more details about the festival call 01766 770324.