First we went to the Gorsedd, or preliminary
congress for conferring the degree of bard. The Gorsedd was held in
the open air, at the windy corner of a street, and the morning was
not favourable to open-air solemnities. The Welsh, too, share, it
seems to me, with their Saxon invaders, an inaptitude for show and
spectacle. Show and spectacle are better managed by the Latin race
and those whom it has moulded; the Welsh, like us, are a little
awkward and resourceless in the organisation of a festival. The
presiding genius of the mystic circle, in our hideous nineteenth-
century costume, relieved only by a green scarf, the wind drowning
his voice and the dust powdering his whiskers, looked thoroughly
wretched; so did the aspirants for bardic honours; and I believe,
after about an hour of it, we all of us, as we stood shivering round
the sacred stones, began half to wish for the Druid's sacrificial
knife to end our sufferings. But the Druid's knife is gone from his
hands; so we sought the shelter of the Eisteddfod building.
The sight inside was not lively. The president and his supporters
mustered strong on the platform. On the floor the one or two front
benches were pretty well filled, but their occupants were for the
most part Saxons, who came there from curiosity, not from enthusiasm;
and all the middle and back benches, where should have been the true
enthusiasts,--the Welsh people, were nearly empty.
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