Briwsion ! Yet again I have not spotted a Welsh-Related Radio Programme ... WRRP) .....bah! I only found out about it when I heard the last 5 minutes of it while I was driving the dog back from her afternoon walk.
However, all is not lost ... it's listenable on that "Listen Again" thingy ...and lucky you can go straight to it using this Dolen Hud .....
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b072j3fy
..well, for the next 29 days or so anyway.... and it's well worth a listen because this Iolo Morganwg was a remarkable person...... he "invented" the fake "billion-year-old-tradition" of the Eisteddfod for a start! Cheeky sod. He seems to have completely fooled many people for a long time, and has thoroughly muddied the waters of Welsh history much to the consternation of Welsh historians who can't be sure of what is truth and what is fiction. Ouch.
The programme also has a few very neat and clever surprises which it would be wrong of me to reveal .... they're worth waiting for.
So ..there you are. The rest is up to you... but to help you decide, here's a bit more about him...
WHO WAS IOLO MORGANWG? Literary Forger and Forger of a Nation
• EDWARD WILLIAMS (1747-1826) was, and remains, better known by his bardic name IOLO MORGANWG.
• As his bardic name suggests, Iolo was a native of GLAMORGAN, and it is this county and its history that became the focal point of his bardic vision.
• Like his father, Iolo worked at his trade as a STONEMASON.
• Iolo was a prolific POET in both Welsh and English, writing in the guise of other poets as well as in his own voice. The forged poems which he attributed to the fourteenth-century poet Dafydd ap Gwilym are the most famous of his works as a LITERARY FORGER. As a result, he gained a posthumous reputation as one of Europe's most successful forgers.
• He is also considered an ARCHITECT OF THE WELSH NATION on the strength of his contribution to the eighteenth-century cultural renaissance. He upheld Wales's reputation as a civil nation in Bardism and the Gorsedd of the Bards. He was also the first to suggest that Wales should have its own national institutions: a library, an academy, a museum and a folk museum.
• Iolo was a self-taught POLYMATH and his manuscripts attest to the sheer diversity of his interests: druidism, poetry, folk songs, antiquities, architecture, agriculture, geology, language and dialect, pedigrees, radicalism and abolitionism.
• As eighteenth-century Wales's most prodigious letter-writer, Iolo has left a rich and varied corpus of CORRESPONDENCE which captures all the dynamism and contentiousness of his life and times.
• Iolo embraced political and religious RADICALISM. As well as being involved with the London-Welsh Gwyneddigion society who supported 'Freedom in State and Church' ('Rhydd-did mewn Gwlad ac Eglwys'), Iolo moved in London's radical circles during the 1790s. Inspired by the foremost radical thinkers of his time, he became acquainted with many of them: George Dyer, William Godwin, Joseph Johnson, Thomas Paine, Joseph Priestley, Robert Southey, John Thelwall, Horne Tooke, Gilbert Wakefield, and David Williams. In religious terms, Iolo was a Rational Dissenter and was instrumental in establishing the UNITARIAN cause in south Wales.
• Iolo's poetry and bardic vision bear the hallmarks of ROMANTICISM. His Romantic image of Wales and its past had a far-reaching effect on the way in which the Welsh envisaged their own national identity during the nineteenth century.
Flemingston/Flimston (Trefflemin) This is the village most associated with Iolo Morganwg. This is where he made his home, where he raised his children, where he dreamed of Glamorgan's Romantic and druidic past, and where he composed many of his letters, poems, essays and literary forgeries. Indeed, letters were sometimes addressed to him at the 'Bardic Lodge, Flimston'. His home stood on the site of present-day 'Gregory Farm' and a rough sketch of Iolo's cottage (in his own hand) survives.
This is not a self-portrait of Iolo after all
Local tradition has it that a small statue (left) on the gable end of a house near where Iolo's cottage stood is a self-portrait. By 1815 Iolo complained that his cottage was in a pitiful state: '(it) is now in a ruinous state uninhabited and uninhabitable' (NLW 21410E).
After his death, his daughter Margaret (Peggy) composed a sentimentalEnglish poem describing her father's dilapidated cottage. According to the testimony of Mary Williams (wife of Taliesin Williams) in 1846, Iolo was buried inside the church (NLW 21277E, no. 854).
A memorial to Iolo and his son Taliesin is seen on a wall inside the church, and a stained-glass window dedicated to Taliesin's son, Edward Williams, is also visible there.