The Bards of Wales (Hungarian:A walesi bárdok) is aballad by theHungarian poetJános Arany, written in 1857. Alongside theToldi trilogy, it is one of his best known works.
In 1857, Arany and other Hungarian poets were asked to writepraise poetry for the visit ofEmperor Franz Joseph. Instead, Arany wrote aballad which he alleged was rooted inWelsh folklore and in the early history ofWelsh nationalism.
Arany explained in hispreface to the poem, "Historians doubt it, but it strongly stands in legend thatEdward I of England sent 500 Welshbards tothe stake after his victory over the Welsh" (in 1277), "to prevent them from rousing the country and destroying English rule by telling of the glorious past of their nation."[1]
Arany's analogy criticised the tight control wielded over theKingdom of Hungary byBaron Alexander von Bach after the defeat of theHungarian Revolution of 1848 by a military alliance between theImperial Austrian Army and theImperial Russian Army. The ballad was also a covert form ofnonviolent resistance to Government censorship and to the many other repressive and widely unpopular policies imposed by the Baron upon theHungarian people. It was also a harsh denunciation of both the domestic policies of the Monarch and of his planned visit toBudapest.[1] This was because Emperor Franz Joseph had ascended to the throne during the 1848 revolutions throughout his Empire and had given the militarycarte blanche to defeat what he saw as bothrebels against his crown and as a serious threat to the future survival of both thedynasty and theRoman Catholic Church.
Arany's poem was accordingly written "for the desk drawer" and published only six years later in 1863, disguised as aliterary translation of aballad fromMiddle English literature, as a means of evading the censorship that ended only with theAustro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867.
In Wales, with only a few exceptions under theHouse of Tudor, the tradition of royal patronage of both theEisteddfodliterary festivals and of the composers ofWelsh bardic poetry ended with theattainder of theHouse of Aberffraw; after PrinceLlywelyn ap Gruffudd waskilled in action atCilmeri on11 December1282, while leading an uprising against theloss of Welsh independence to King Edward Longshanks.[2] For this reason, a very similar denunciation of King Edward to his face had already been followed by the suicide of the last Welsh poet at the end ofThomas Gray's1757 poemThe Bard (set c. 1283), and which, along with the legend, may also have inspired Arany. Gray's poem is also similar in being intended as an encoded criticism ofWhig political ideology and the allegedly repressive policies enabled by theBritish royal family during a much later period.[1]
In reality, subsequentWelsh history as well as that of the Welsh bardic profession is far more nuanced. Even after the end ofWelsh independence, thepatronage of the bards byRoman Catholic priests, bishops, andreligious orders continued until the Reformation. Afterwards, theWelsh nobility continued their own established custom of similar patronage; but this tradition also ended as the Welsh aristocracy became slowly but completelyAnglicized during the 17th- and 18th-centuries. An extremely stubborn determination to preserveWelsh literature andculture led in response to the late 18th-century revival of theEisteddfod tradition, but without royal or noble patronage, first by theGwyneddigion Society and then byIolo Morganwg and theGorsedd Cymru. The ensuing literary andlanguage revival still continues and is whyWelsh poetry instrict metre is still being written and why theWelsh language itself, almost alone of theCeltic languages, is neither adead or acritically endangered language.
All Hungarian students in the sixth grade of elementary school learn "The Bards of Wales" by heart, in view of its literary importance and historical message.[1]
The best-known English translation, by the Canadianliterary scholarWatson Kirkconnell, renders Arany's ballad into the same idiom as theBorder Ballads and was published in his1933 volumeThe Magyar Muse.[1] In September 2007 an English manuscript copy of the poem, translated byPéter Zollman, was donated to theNational Library of Wales inAberystwyth.[3]
The poem was set to music by the Hungarian bandKaláka in 1989.Dalriada made a different setting in 2003, which was re-recorded and re-released in 2004 and in 2009, on an album with several other settings of Arany poems. The Welsh composerKarl Jenkins wrote acantata to the Zollman translation of the poem in 2011.[4][5]