A Poem by Albert Cynan Evans-Jones

We celebrate the first week of Reading Wales 2024 with two verses from a poem written by the Welsh war poet, writer and dramatist Albert Cynan Evans-Jones

Aberdaron

When I am old and honoured
With silver in my purse
All criticism over
All men singing my praise
I will purchase a lonely cottage
With nothing facing its door,
But the cliffs of Aberdaron
And the wild waves on the shore

For there I will discover
In the stormy wind and its cry
Echoes of the old rebellion
My soul knew in days gone by
And I will sing with the old passion
While gazing through the door
At the cliffs of Aberdaron
And the wild waves on the shore

(The above first two verses of this well-loved poem can be seen carved in stone near the centre of Aberdaron village.)

Reverend Sir Albert Evans-Jones (1895-1970), whose Bardic name was Cynan, was born in the market town of Pwllheli on the north-west coast of Wales and was educated at the local grammar school. He went on to study at the University College of North Wales in Bangor, graduating in 1916, before enlisting with the Welsh Student Company of the Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC) during the First World War, with whom he served in Salonika and France, first as an ambulance driver and then as the Company’s temporary military chaplain.

His experiences during the Great War influenced Evans-Jones’s poetry most profoundly and his words reflected the horrifying realities of conflict – not only on the battlefield but on the bodies and emotions of those fighting at the front.

When peace was declared, he enrolled in Pwllheli college to train for the ministry of the Presbyterian Church of Wales and was ordained in 1920, serving in Penmaenmawr as a minister until 1931, after which he was appointed a tutor in the Extramural Department of the University College of North Wales specialising in Drama and Welsh Literature.

Evans-Jones is probably most widely remembered for being hugely influential in modernising the National Eisteddfod, the largest, most important festival of music and poetry – not merely in Wales but in Europe. He was twice an Archdruid (the only person to be nominated a second time for the position), serving from 1950 until 1954, and again from 1963 until 1966. He was also the Recorder of the Gorsedd of Bards (a Welsh society of poets) in 1935, and joint secretary of the National Eisteddfod Council in 1937.

As a competitor, he won the Bardic Crown for his poem Mab y Bwthyn (‘A Cottage Son’) when the National Eisteddfod was held in Caernarfon in 1921 and again in 1923 for Yr Ynys Unig (‘The Lonely Isle’) when it took place in Mold. He then held the title for an impressive third time with Y Dyrfa (‘The Crowd’) in the cathedral city of Bangor in 1931.

He is buried in the grounds of St Tysilio’s Church, Menai Bridge, Church Island, Menai Strait, Anglesey.