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Liber XXXV · Witchcraft & Wicca

Liber XXXV · Witchcraft & Wicca · Chapter I: Druidry

Iolo Morganwg and the Gorsedd of Bards: The Druid Revival

Iolo Morganwg and the Gorsedd of Bards: the Welsh stonemason-poet who staged the first Gorsedd in 1792, forged bardic lore and shaped modern Druidry.

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Iolo Morganwg was the bardic name of Edward Williams (1747–1826), a Welsh stonemason, poet and antiquary who claimed to have inherited the secret wisdom of the ancient Druids and who founded the Gorsedd of the Bards of the Isle of Britain in 1792. His Gorsedd still crowns and chairs the poets of the National Eisteddfod of Wales, and his writings, published after his death as Barddas, became a central source for modern Druidry. Twentieth-century scholars showed that much of what he presented as ancient tradition was his own brilliant invention.

Edward Williams: Stonemason, Poet and Radical§

Edward Williams was born on 10 March 1747 at Pennon in the parish of Llancarfan in the Vale of Glamorgan and grew up at Flemingston, where he died on 18 December 1826. Like his father he trained as a stonemason, and he worked at the trade in Wales, London and the south of England. He had little formal schooling but read voraciously, learning the Welsh poetic tradition from manuscripts, local poets and antiquarian books. He took the bardic name Iolo Morganwg, "Iolo of Glamorgan".

Iolo's life combined great learning with chronic poverty and restlessness. He spent periods in London among the expatriate Welsh societies, especially the Gwyneddigion, founded in 1770, whose members promoted Welsh literature and revived the eisteddfod. He published Poems, Lyric and Pastoral in English in 1794. He also suffered from poor health and for many years took laudanum, the opium preparation then widely prescribed, which some biographers have connected with his imaginative excesses, though the link is uncertain.

Politically he was a radical. He sympathised with the American and French revolutions, signed himself "Bard of Liberty", was watched by the authorities during the 1790s, and became a founder of the South Wales Unitarian Society in 1802. As a shopkeeper in Cowbridge he is said to have refused to sell sugar produced by enslaved labour. Geraint H. Jenkins and his colleagues have emphasised that Iolo's Druidism was bound up with these commitments: his Druids were peaceful, egalitarian, rational sages of liberty, the ancestors of the Welsh as a free and cultured people.

The First Gorsedd on Primrose Hill, 1792§

On 21 June 1792, the summer solstice, Iolo and a small group of London Welshmen met on Primrose Hill, then open ground north of the city. They formed a circle of small stones, laid a sword on the central stone as a sign of peace, and held what Iolo called a Gorsedd of the Bards of the Isle of Britain (Gorsedd Beirdd Ynys Prydain). Iolo claimed that such assemblies had been held "in the face of the sun and in the eye of light" since Druidic times and that the tradition had survived unbroken in Glamorgan, whose poets he presented as the last keepers of the ancient bardic system.

The claim was false, but the ceremony was a striking piece of cultural theatre. It fused the eighteenth-century fascination with Druids, already fed by antiquarians such as William Stukeley, with the specifically Welsh tradition of bardic competition. The Gorsedd conferred bardic degrees on its members and gave Welsh literary culture a ceremonial dignity at a time when the language was being marginalised.

Iolo held further Gorsedd ceremonies in Wales in the following years. The background to this Druid enthusiasm is surveyed in Druidry: the ancient Druids and the modern revival, and the classical image of Druids gathering mistletoe that inspired it is discussed in mistletoe and the Druids.

Forgeries, Manuscripts and the Myvyrian Archaiology§

Iolo was a genuine expert on Welsh manuscripts, and he copied and preserved a great deal of authentic material. He also forged on a large scale. His first notable deception came in 1789, when he contributed to an edition of the poems of the fourteenth-century poet Dafydd ap Gwilym a group of additional poems that he had written himself in Dafydd's style; they were good enough to be accepted for well over a century.

His greatest influence came through The Myvyrian Archaiology of Wales (1801–1807), a three-volume collection of early Welsh poetry, prose and triads edited by Owen Jones (Owain Myfyr), William Owen Pughe and Iolo himself. Much of the work was sound, but Iolo inserted documents of his own making, notably a series of triads and chronicles that supported his vision of bardic and Druidic history. He also devised Coelbren y Beirdd, a supposed ancient bardic alphabet carved on wooden staves, for which no genuine evidence exists.

After his death his son Taliesin Williams published a selection of his papers as the Iolo Manuscripts (1848), and John Williams ab Ithel edited the two volumes of Barddas (1862 and 1874). These spread Iolo's inventions further, often to readers who had no way of checking them.

The unmasking came gradually. Doubts were voiced in the nineteenth century, but it was the Welsh scholar Griffith John Williams who, from the 1920s onward, compared Iolo's texts systematically with the genuine manuscripts and demonstrated the scale of his fabrication. Modern scholars stress that Iolo was not a simple fraud: he seems to have regarded his inventions as restorations of a lost truth, and his scholarship and creativity were inseparable.

Barddas and Iolo's Bardic Cosmology: Abred, Gwynfyd and Ceugant§

Barddas, meaning roughly "bardism" or "bardic lore", presents itself as the secret philosophy of the Druids preserved by the bards of Glamorgan. Its theology is unmistakably a product of eighteenth-century Unitarian and Enlightenment thought, dressed in archaic language. Its central ideas include:

  • Three circles of existence. Ceugant, the infinite circle occupied by God alone; Abred, the circle of necessity, through which souls rise from the lowest forms of life through successive incarnations; and Gwynfyd, the circle of bliss or felicity, to which souls attain at last. Below Abred lies Annwn, the abyss where life begins.
  • Progressive transmigration. Every soul eventually reaches happiness; there is no eternal damnation, a view that reflects Iolo's Unitarian rejection of hell.
  • The Awen. Iolo described the divine name as three rays of light, written /|, which became the most widely used symbol of modern Druidry. The word awen, poetic inspiration, is genuinely medieval Welsh; the three-ray symbol is Iolo's.
  • The Gorsedd Prayer. A short prayer asking God for strength, understanding, knowledge, justice and love, still recited at Gorsedd ceremonies and adapted by Druid groups worldwide.

To scholars these are evidence of Romantic religion rather than ancient belief. To many modern Druids they remain meaningful as a spiritual vision, whatever their date. On what can actually be known of Iron Age religion, see Celtic religion.

The Gorsedd and the National Eisteddfod§

The turning point for Iolo's institution came in 1819, when he held a Gorsedd in the garden of the Ivy Bush Inn at Carmarthen during a provincial eisteddfod, marking out the circle with stones he carried in his pocket. From then on the Gorsedd and the eisteddfod were increasingly linked. When the National Eisteddfod of Wales was established on a regular basis in the later nineteenth century, the Gorsedd became its ceremonial heart.

Today the Gorsedd is an honorary society of people who have served Welsh language and culture. Members are admitted in three orders, traditionally distinguished by robes: green for Ovates, blue for Bards (including musicians and writers) and white for Druids, the highest order. The Archdruid presides over the ceremonies of the Crowning and Chairing of the Bard, which honour the winners of the eisteddfod's principal poetry competitions. A stone circle, or in recent years a temporary representation of one, marks the place of proclamation of each year's festival.

The Gorsedd is not a Pagan religious body. Its ceremonies have long been conducted in a broadly Christian spirit, and Welsh ministers have worn its white robes; Rowan Williams was admitted in 2002, shortly before he became Archbishop of Canterbury. Sister Gorseddau were founded in Brittany at the start of the twentieth century and in Cornwall (Gorsedh Kernow) in 1928.

Iolo's Legacy in Modern Druidry§

Iolo's influence on Druidry as a spiritual path is difficult to overstate. Nineteenth-century writers mined Barddas for the "Druidic" teachings of reincarnation and divine unity, and the twentieth-century Druid orders inherited them. Ross Nichols, founder of the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids in 1964, drew on Iolo's three grades and cosmology, and the Awen symbol and Gorsedd Prayer are now used by Druid groups across Britain, North America and beyond.

The discovery that so much of this lore is of eighteenth-century origin has prompted different responses. Some Druids have quietly set Barddas aside in favour of the medieval Welsh and Irish literature and archaeology. Others argue that a living tradition can legitimately grow from a modern visionary, much as Wicca grew from Gerald Gardner. Ronald Hutton's histories present Iolo as one of the great creative figures of British cultural history: a forger, certainly, but also a poet and patriot whose inventions gave a small nation a ceremonial voice that it still uses. The wider question of how modern Pagan movements relate to the past is explored in what is a pagan.

Frequently asked questions§

Who was Iolo Morganwg?§

Iolo Morganwg was Edward Williams (1747–1826), a stonemason, poet and antiquary from Glamorgan. He founded the Gorsedd of Bards in 1792, collected and preserved Welsh manuscripts, and also forged a large body of poetry and "Druidic" lore that influenced Welsh culture and modern Druidry.

Was the Gorsedd of Bards an ancient institution?§

No. Iolo claimed it descended from the Druids, but the first known Gorsedd was the one he organised on Primrose Hill in London in 1792. It became an established part of Welsh cultural life during the nineteenth century through its association with the eisteddfod.

Where does the Awen symbol /|\ come from?§

The three-rayed symbol was devised by Iolo Morganwg, who presented it as an ancient representation of the divine name. The Welsh word awen, meaning poetic inspiration, is medieval, but there is no evidence for the symbol before Iolo's time.

Is Barddas a genuine Druid text?§

Barddas, published by John Williams ab Ithel in 1862 and 1874, was compiled from Iolo's papers. Scholars regard its philosophy as Iolo's own creation, reflecting eighteenth-century Unitarian and Romantic ideas rather than ancient Druid teaching.

Sources and further reading§