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THE WELSH SGORSEDD.

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THE WELSH SGORSEDD. An interesting article on the antiquity and rites of the Gorsedd appears in last weak's issue of Nature from the pen of Rev. W. Griffiths, Holloway. Mr. Griffith con- tends that the old Eisteddfod ic ceremony is of great antiquity, and is not a follower of Professor J. Morris Jones on this subject. Indeed, the main object of the article is to controvert the Professor's attack on the Gorsedd, an attack which, although made as long ago as 1896, has been left unanswered by the Bards. It may be remembered that Professor Jones asserts that the Gorsedd is a creation of the Glamorgan Bards of the sixteenth century, and not the old institution claimed for it by some bardic writers Mr. Griffith, on the other hand, claims that the Laws of Hywel Dda mention the "Gorsedd" as an old institution, and as these Laws were compiled in the tenth century, the Professor's onslaught on the Gorsedd is both unfair and unjustifiable. He says:- The bardic literature of the sixteenth century onward, discussed by Professor J. Morris Jones, mentions only the solstices and equinoxes as the proper times to hold Gor- sedd meetings. Did the bards have access only to the later codes, and therefrom take their Gor- seddic instructions ? The Rev. John Griffith in Nature, May 2, 1907, directed attention to the interesting fact that the plan of the May-November Welsh Gorsedd preserved by Iolo Morganwg was accompanied by in- structions applicable only to a solstitial Gorsedd. The full history of this plan has not yet been found out, but we would suggest that the solstitial instructions be- came attached to the May-November plan by quarrying in the wrong sections of the Laws. The Venedotian Code contains the instruc- tions proper for holding a May-November Gorsedd they correspond with the stone- circle plan preserved by the bards, while the bards have failed to preserve a stone circle to correspond with the solstitial instructions. Sir Norman Lockyer found evidence at Stonehenge that the solstitial replaced the earlier May-November cult, and in Welsh bardic traditions we have to this day evidence of this struggle. We have references to the solstitial and the May-November years. They seem to have got mixed up by the blunder- ings of the bards The Gorsedd plan as preserved, and followed in London by the Welsh bards, and the corresponding enact- ments of Howel Dda's Laws, especially the Venedotian Code, represent the older arrange- ment, while the several references in the Welsh Triads to Stonehenge as one of the mighty deeds of the Cymry, the solstitial instructions about holding a Gorsedd, and the great desire of present-day leading Gorseddites to hold a meeting at Stone- henge, represent the newer arrangement that pprevailed until the coming of the Julian year. "In the records of the tenth century there were at least four Gorsedds, suggestive of peculiar administrative power, and on the analogy of the development of institutions in every country it does not require a very great effort of the imagination to see that in the long ago in this country there was but one Gorsedd, from which emanated the directing influence of a whole people."

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Welsh in Ireland.

---The Welsh Club

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