Cities and towns -- Growth -- Fiction; Wales -- Social life and customs -- Fiction
With the ceremony of the Gorsedd on the opening day Dafydd Dafis's
spellbound and uplifted hours began. At the sounding of the trumpets his
head flew proudly up; at the Drawing of the Sword and the solemn
question, "Is there Peace in the land?" his voice joined in the reply,
like a thunder-clap, "There is Peace"--for that was before the year
when, for three whole days, the blade remained naked and bright, while
far over the seas brave Englishmen and brave Welshmen fell and died
together. It was the single victory of Dafydd's life. On ordinary days
he now drove a road-engine--Howell Gruffydd had got him the job under
the Council; but he was a Lord of Song now. He had put his name down for
the "penillion" contest; should he prove successful, not he himself
only, but Llanyglo also, the place of his birth, would be forever
famous. He sat behind the semicircle of white-robed and oak-crowned and
druid-like figures that occupied the front part of the platform, looking
down on the vast oblong of faces, Saxon and Welsh, that resembled a
packed bed of London Pride; he was in the tenor wedge of the chorus; and
as the five hundred voices pealed together you thought of the roof and
of that singer whose voice had shivered vessels of glass.... Coming out
of the hall again at the end of the first day, Dafydd was still in his
trance. As he walked along the street past the "Trafford" Tap, Tommy
Kerr, who sat within drinking, hailed him and called for a song, while
one of his boon companions crying "Nay, we don't ask nobody to sing for
nowt!" cast a couple of pennies on the ground; but Dafydd seemed neither
to see nor to hear. At the break-up after the last chorus an august hand
had been placed on Dafydd's shoulder, and an archangelic voice had
spoken to him, saying that he, he the great one, had heard of Dafydd
Dafis; and what, after that, did pot-house insults matter? He passed on,
his eyes still flashing and his face shining like the Silver Chair
itself....
Two days later he was proclaimed the victor in the "penillion" contest,
and on the day after that, still drunk with song, he drove his
road-engine again. And so passed Llanyglo's first Eisteddfod.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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