Iolo Morgannwg and his total refusal to die

Reading Francis Pryor's 'Britain AD' has made me curious about our modern attitude towards the Bards which is all-too-often plagued by figures in hooded cloaks cutting mistletoe with scythes. I'm very much of the opinion that the truth is always more widely dazzling than any superficially enchanting lie, but it's evident with the rise of vaguely Celtic Paganism that not everyone feels the same way.

So how does everyone here feel about the whole Glastonbury Tor strain of ancient revival? I get the feeling that many of the people involved in it do not truly appreciate that entire heritage and prefer to live up to Roman propaganda stories and narrow-hedged mysticism than truly continue the lineage of ancient intellectuals who, in contrast with their embarrassing reputation, wittily examined every aspect of their world and didn't try to shroud it all in darkness and seriousness. The Bards were an artistic branch of the Druids, yes, but the Druids were an intellectual caste of judges, doctors, scribes, priests, architects and mediators. There was far more to them than Iolo Morgannwg's reigning interpretation of watery spirits and star-lore. Like most nationalists, Iolo has a lot to answer for.

Having said all this I hope you do actually have an opinion. Bardic group and all that!

The problem with authors like Morgannwg and Graves is that their sources of information are either dubious, discredited or appear to have been entirely fabricated. The new-agers call this 'channelling'. Too many people regard their works as canonical and subsequently we have a plethora of interpretations of the Irish 'Tree Calendar', which may have no historical veracity at all. Many UK neo-pagans are firmly (and mistakenly) convinced that the 'Tree Calendar' is part of the Brythonic tradition.

What evidence we do have points towards the Brythonic Celts converting to Christianity in the AD60s, which kind of messes up the Roman version of events and means we would have to accept "those feet" in ancient time walking upon England's pastures green. Personally, I regard the idea of Jo of Arim bringing St Just to Loegria as a plausible version of events. It would take a full essay for me to justify this assertion; it goes against the Roman version of events quite radically, but makes more sense, for example, that characters like St Alban had got their Christianity from a 'native' tradition rather than being an early convert from a supposed Pauline missionary.

Obviously, many neo-pagans are uncomfortable with this argument. While the Celts had mixed feelings about being subjugated by the Romans, the stories we have suggest that they were accepted to a certain extent because they were considered to be distant cousins of the Celts and nearly as cultured. The Anglo-Saxons were not regarded in the same way by all accounts. Either way Celtic Christianity pre-dates the Roman and Saxon conversions.

One of the big problems with ancient British history is that only the Roman accounts are regarded as reliable, due to history being written by the conquerors. The Celts are regarded as being a wild unruly people that were civilised by the Romans. The Picts are seen as relatively modern invaders of Scotland that were too wild even for that (They didn't have mitochondrial DNA testing in those days). To make matters worse, British schoolkids are rarely taught about anything that happened before 1066. It's little wonder we're all a bit confused.

I'm not saying I believe or disbelieve any of these theories. I think the Druidic approach would be to openly debate all ideas. I'm know that part of the art of the Bard was storytelling and in light of this, the works of Morgannwg and Graves have great value as the starting point of discussion and as springboards for other ideas. Whether they are any more important than the works of CS Lewis, Tolkien, Joyce or Yeats is also debatable.

Anyway, Glastonbury (Ynyswitrin) now has a new Bard: "Ash", who delivered an electrifying performance on St Dunstan's day last. The feedback I keep getting from these events is that we have managed to create a meaningful experience for our community - the format we have works for the people of Glastonbury. It doesn't mean that is the only way to do it, far from it, but we have developed a reasonable working model, a small acorn if you like, from which, we hope, a durable tradition will grow.