Tagged: hedd wyn
Outside the slate mining town of Blaenau Ffestiniog, in the foothills of Snowdon, in Trawsfynydd, is a house with the “black chair.” Yr Ysgwrn was built in the 1830’s and only one family lived in it until 2012, when Gerald Williams sold the house to the Snowdonia National Park. It has since been renovated for visitors, but maintains the look it would have had in 1917 – the year Ellis Humphrey Evans, known by the bardic name Hedd Wyn, was killed in a battle in WWI. The bardic chair at the National Eisteddfod is awarded to a living poet, but Hedd Wyn died in battle on August 31, 1917, and was awarded the chair before news arrived of his death. When the ceremony was held for the award, the chair was draped in black, and has famously become known as Y Gadair Ddu.
I visited Yr Ysgwrn three days before the 100th anniversary of the death of Hedd Wyn. A bilingual tour of the house was given, and during the tour, Gerald, who still lives nearby on the property popped in to say hello.
Gerald lived in the house with seven bardic chairs awarded to Hedd Wyn, and kept the house basically unchanged through the years. He did not have a refrigerator. He used a slate pantry to keep things cool. His oven and the heating for the house were the same wood stove from the days of Hedd Wyn. When he moved out to allow for the renovation, he insisted that the place remain as the home it would have been for Hedd Wyn, instead of becoming a stuffy museum. Gerald appears to be cut out of the same cloth as one of Wales most famous 20th century poets, R.S. Thomas, who was a bit of a cantankerous prophet – seeing the machine of anglicized modernization as the death of the Welsh langauge and the rural Welsh community spirit.
Gerald walked into the room during the tour, was introduced to everyone, and upon discovering that I was an American who spoke a bit of Welsh, smiled, hung and my arm, and talked with me for a while.
The scenery around Yr Ysgwrn evokes poetry. A hundred years after the death of the Welsh Bard, Hedd Wyn’s home and his story touched my heart as deeply anything I’ve experienced on this trip. If you listen closely enough, musical words bounce on the winds from the surrounding mountains and valleys.
Gwae fi fy myw mewn oes mor ddreng,
A Duw ar drai ar orwel pell;
O'i ôl mae dyn, yn deyrn a gwreng,
Yn codi ei awdurdod hell.
Pan deimlodd fyned ymaith Dduw
Cyfododd gledd i ladd ei frawd;
Mae sŵn yr ymladd ar ein clyw,
A'i gysgod ar fythynnod tlawd.
Mae'r hen delynau genid gynt
Ynghrog ar gangau'r helyg draw,
A gwaedd y bechgyn lond y gwynt,
A'u gwaed yn gymysg efo'r glaw.
An Empty Chair by acclaimed author Haf Llewelyn follows young poet Ellis, and when the First World War arrives, he has to join up and go and be a soldier like dozens of other young men from rural Trawsfynydd. His teenage sister Anni longs to have him home again on their family farm, Yr Ysgwrn, especially after seeing the terrible effect of the war on her best friend Lora’s father.
Meanwhile Ellis is in the trenches in Belgium, hoping to make it home safely, and to win the Chair at the National Eisteddfod – the most important prize in Welsh poetry.
The novel is published as part of the centenary commemorations for World War I, and particularly to mark the centenary of the battle of Passchendaele in July 1917, and Hedd Wyn’s involvement in it.
The novel follows the huge impact of the war on village life through the eyes of Hedd Wyn’s 14-year-old sister Anni, bringing the incredibly moving events to life for teenagers through a vivid voice of their own age. At the centre of everything is Anni’s relationship with her best friend Lora, and the difficult decisions the two have to face concerning family, friendship, love and honesty, as well the effects of the war on their whole community.
The original Welsh-language version of the novel ( Diffodd y Sêr , Y Lolfa, 2013) is highly critically acclaimed and won the Tir na n-Og secondary fiction prize in 2014. Since 2015, it has been a set text on the Welsh Literature GCSE syllabus.
A farmer’s son from Trawsfynydd, Hedd Wyn – real name Ellis Humphrey Evans – fought in the trenches in the First World War as part of the 15th Battalion Royal Welsh Fusiliers, and fought at Passchendaele in July 1917, one hundred years ago this month, and is famous for being awarded the Chair at the 1917 National Eisteddfod, held in Birkenhead shortly afterwards.
Haf Llewelyn comes from Ardudwy and was brought up very near Trawsfynydd and Yr Ysgwrn. She now lives in Llanuwchllyn and is a full-time author. After travelling to the small town of Ypres in Belgium, she was struck by the thousands of white gravestones in the World War I cemeteries there, and what the stories of those who fought at Passchendaele might be. Her inspiration to write this novel stemmed from that trip.
‘Seeing the names and ages of the young men carved on those white gravestones in Ypres made me realise the terrible price of war’ said Haf, ‘Sometimes it's difficult for us to connect with a time that has passed, but when visiting Yr Ysgwrn, the home of Hedd Wyn, time has somehow stood still.’
‘The scale of the loss is just incomprehensible when you see those thousands of gravestones, but when you bring it all down to one story about one actual person and the people at home who loved him, it somehow seems more real’ added Haf, ‘The terrible events of July 1917 continue to cast a shadow over the home of one of Wales's best-known poets.’
An Empty Chair by Haf Llewelyn (£5.99, Y Lolfa) is available now.
