Saunders Lewis Buchedd Garmon (1937)

Abstract

That the radio play Buchedd Garmon was ever written by Saunders Lewis is, to a great degree, a matter of opportunism — a complex set of circumstances happening to coincide. Lewis hadn’t written a drama of any sort since 1925 (Williams, I., nd: 129) but in 1936 he was asked by the BBC in Wales to write a radio play for St. David’s Day (1st March) 1937 on the theme of ‘The Age of the Saints in Wales’. The invitation was rather routine on one level as Lewis had previously written two stage plays (‘The Eve of St. John’ in 1921 and ‘Gwaed yr Uchelwyr’ [Noble Blood] in 1922) and he had made his name as a lecturer in Welsh at the recently created University College of Swansea as an influential, ‘epoch-making’ according to some (Griffiths, B., 1979: 27), critic of historical Welsh language literature (e.g., Gruffydd, R. G. 2002). In particular, Lewis’s 1932 monograph Braslun o Hanes Llenyddiath Gymraeg: Y Gyfrol Gyntaf: Hyd 1535 [An Outline of the History of Welsh Literature: The First Volume: To 1535] along with Williams Pantycelyn (1927), a study of the eighteenth century Welsh language hymnodist, set the foundations for his vision of ‘the Welsh aesthetic’ (Williams, I., nd: 129). However, the commissioning of Buchedd Garmon by the BBC was wholly surprising in another sense. At the time Lewis was awaiting his trial for arson at the Old Bailey.

Llawen fo Cymru’n awr; Byth bythoedd fe saif ei Ffydd; Daeth ar ei thywyllwch wawr, Ac o garchar ofn daeth yn rhydd

[Wales is now contented; Faithful forevermore; Dawn broke upon her darkness, And from the prison of fear she escaped] (Buchedd Garmon, p.53).