Iolo Morganwg
Drawing of Iolo Morganwg (c. 1800) by an unknown artist in the National Library of Wales
Edward Williams
Pen-onn, Glamorgan, Wales
18 December 1826(1826-12-18) (aged 79)
Stonemason, poet and literary forger
Edward Williams, better known by his bardic name Iolo Morganwg ([ˈjɔlɔ mɔrˈɡanʊɡ]; 10 March 1747 – 18 December 1826), was an influential Welsh antiquarian, poet, collector, and literary forger.[1][2] He had been widely considered a leading collector of Medieval Welsh literature and expert on it, but after his death it emerged that he had forged a number of manuscripts, notably parts of the Third Series of Welsh Triads.[3] Nonetheless, he had a lasting impact on Welsh culture, notably in founding the Gorsedd. The philosophy he developed in his forgeries had a huge impact on the early neo-druid movement. His bardic name is Welsh for "Iolo of Glamorgan".[4]
Williams's son, Taliesin (bardic name, Taliesin ab Iolo), whom he had named after the early medieval bard Taliesin, later went on to collect his manuscripts in twenty-six volumes,[5] a selection was published under the title of the Iolo Manuscripts by the Welsh Manuscripts Society in 1848.[6]
Literary career[edit]
From an early date Williams was concerned with preserving and maintaining the literary and cultural traditions of Wales. To this end he produced a large number of manuscripts as evidence for his claims that ancient druidic tradition had survived the Roman conquest, the conversion of the populace to Christianity, the persecution of the bards under King Edward I, and other adversities. His forgeries develop an elaborate mystical philosophy, which he claimed represented a direct continuation of ancient druidic practice. Williams's reported heavy use of laudanum may have been a contributing factor.[2]
Williams first came to public notice in 1789 when he produced Barddoniaeth Dafydd ab Gwilym, a collection of the poetry of the 14th-century Dafydd ap Gwilym. Included in this were a large number of previously unknown poems by Dafydd that he claimed to have discovered; these poems are regarded as Williams's first forgeries.[2] His success led him to return to London in 1791. There he founded the Gorsedd, a community of Welsh bards, at a ceremony on 21 June 1792 at Primrose Hill. He organised the proceedings, which he claimed were based on ancient druidic rites. In 1794 he published some of his own poetry, which was later collected in the two-volume Poems, Lyric and Pastoral. Essentially his only genuine work, it proved quite popular.[2]
Williams worked with Owen Jones and William Owen Pughe on The Myvyrian Archaiology of Wales, a three-volume collection of medieval Welsh literature published between 1801 and 1807.[3] The Myvyrian Archaiology relied partially on manuscripts in Williams's collection, some of which included his forgeries. Forged material included a false Brut chronicle and a book attributed to Saint Cadoc. The second volume, which collected the Welsh Triads, contained an additional "third series" of forged triads, as well as Williams's alterations to the authentic ones.[2]
After Williams's death some of his collection was compiled into The Iolo Manuscripts by his son, Taliesin Williams.[2] His papers were used by many later scholars and translators, and were used for reference by Lady Charlotte Guest as she was translating the prose collection Mabinogion. Guest did not, however, rely on William's editions of the tales themselves except for Hanes Taliesin.[2] Later still, more of Williams's forgeries were published in the text known as Barddas.[7] This work, published in two volumes in 1862 and 1874, was claimed to have been a translation of works by Llywelyn Siôn detailing the history of the Welsh bardic system from its ancient origins to the present day. Though it contains nothing of authentic druidic lore, it is the fullest account of the mystical cosmology Williams developed.[7] Other works by Williams include the "Druid's Prayer", still used by the Gorsedd and by neo-druid groups; a treatise on Welsh metrics called Cyfrinach Beirdd Ynys Prydain ("The Mystery of the Bards of the Isle of Britain"), published posthumously in 1828; and a series of hymns published as Salmau yr Eglwys yn yr Anialwch ("Psalms of the church in the wilderness") in 1812.
Philosophy[edit]
Iolo's philosophy represented a fusion of Christian and Arthurian influences, a romanticism comparable to that of William Blake and the Scottish poet and forger James MacPherson, the revived antiquarian enthusiasm for all things "Celtic", and such elements of bardic heritage as had genuinely survived among Welsh-language poets. Part of his aim was to assert the Welshness of South Wales, particularly his home region of Glamorgan, against the prevalent idea that North Wales represented the purest survival of Welsh traditions. The metaphysics elucidated in his forgeries and other works proposed a theory of concentric "rings of existence", proceeding outward from Annwn (the Otherworld) through Abred and Ceugant to Gwynfyd (purity or Heaven).
Outside his shop in Cowbridge was a sign explaining that the sugar he sold was from plantations which did not employ slaves. He also refused an inheritance from his brothers, who owned plantations in Jamaica that used slave labour.[8]
By 1799 he had become a Unitarian and he was the leading spirit when a Unitarian Association was formed in South Wales in 1802; it was he who drew up the Rheolau a Threfniadau (Rules and Procedures) of that body published in 1803.[1]
Bardic alphabet[edit]
Main article: Coelbren y Beirdd
Bardic Alphabet
Iolo Morganwg developed his own runic system, in Welsh Coelbren y Beirdd ("the Bardic Alphabet"). It was said to be the alphabetic system of the ancient druids. It consisted of 20 main letters, and 20 others "to represent elongated vowels and mutations."[9] These symbols were to be represented in a wooden frame, known as peithynen.
Exposure[edit]
Towards the end of the 19th century, the grammarian Sir John Morris-Jones was involved in exposing Iolo as a forger, which resulted in his being labelled a charlatan.[10] Morris-Jones described Iolo as "hateful" and said that it would take an age "before our history and literature are clean of the traces of his dirty fingers".[11]
After the First World War, the scholar Griffith John Williams (1892-1963) became the first to conduct a full study of Iolo's work, consulting original documents donated to the National Library of Wales by Iolo's descendants in 1917.[12] Williams's aim was to ascertain exactly how much of Iolo's output was based on imagination rather than fact, and he established that the poems Iolo had attributed to Dafydd ap Gwilym were forgeries. As a result of his researches, he became a defender of Iolo's reputation as well as a critic.[13]
Such was the extent of his forgery that, even into the 21st century, some of his tampered versions of medieval Welsh texts are better known than the original versions.[14]
^ Iolo Morganwg; Owen Jones; Society for the Publication of Ancient Welsh Manuscripts, Abergavenny (1848). Iolo manuscripts: A selection of ancient Welsh manuscripts, in prose and verse, from the collection made by the late Edward Williams, Iolo Morganwg, for the purpose of forming a continuation of the Myfyrian archaeology; and subsequently proposed as materials for a new history of Wales. W. Rees; sold by Longman and co., London. p. 1 ff. Retrieved 15 October 2012.
Löffler, Marion (2007). The Literary and Historical Legacy of Iolo Morganwg 1826–1926. Cardiff: Univ. of Wales Press. ISBN 978-0-7083-2113-3.
Morgan, Prys (1975). Iolo Morganwg, (Writers of Wales). Cardiff: University of Wales Press
Williams, Edward (1848) [c. 1810]. Williams (ab Iolo), Taliesin, ed. Iolo Manuscripts. Llandovery: William Rees.
Williams, G. J. (1956). Iolo Morganwg. Y Gyfrol Gyntaf, Cardiff: University of Wales Press
Williams, G. J. (1926). Iolo Morganwg a Chywyddau'r Ychwanegiad. Cardiff: University of Wales Press
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