Rees · 1176
The first Eisteddfod
Christmas 1176, Cardigan Castle. The Lord Rhys threw open his hall to every bard and musician in Wales, and a competitive tradition began that has continued ever since.
Rhys ap Gruffydd held Cardigan Castle for the kingdom of Deheubarth and at the Christmas of 1176 — to mark a year-long season at peace with the Angevin crown — he proclaimed an open competition. Bards, harpers and crwth-players from every part of Wales were invited a year and a day in advance. The chairs were two: one for poetry, one for music. The prizes were named.
The chair for poetry went to a man of Gwynedd, the chair for music to a man of Deheubarth. The detailed result is in Brut y Tywysogion — the Chronicle of the Princes — written within a generation of the events. The Eisteddfod survived in noble households, then through the Tudor period in regulated bardic gatherings at Caerwys, then in renewed national form from 1789 onward under the patronage of the London Welsh societies. The National Eisteddfod of Wales has met every summer since 1861, almost without interruption.
The poetic chair from the modern Eisteddfod — y Gadair Eisteddfod — has the same iconographic continuity with the chair Rhys placed in his hall in 1176. The current chair is awarded for an awdl in strict-metre cynghanedd, the Welsh metric system that Rhys's bards would have recognised. Few European cultural institutions can trace a continuous tradition over eight hundred and fifty years through a single language. This one can.