3-017-243 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Welsh National Eisteddfod at Aberystwith, 1865. The annual congress of the students and amateurs of Welsh antiquities and literature...[was held] in a spacious and elegant pavilion...tastefully decorated by a committee of the ladies of Aberystwith...The prize for a Welsh ode on Aberystwith Castle was given to Mr. D. Harris, of Carmarthenshire. Prizes for musical compositions and performances on the harp were next bestowed, Mr. Lewis Williams being declared the best performer on the triple harp. Several choirs then competed in singing pieces of vocal music...Poetical addresses were recited; and songs composed for the occasion, in certain peculiar forms of versification and musical structure, were sung by various performers...Three essays on the selection and breeding of live stock in Wales...had been sent in by various authors... Each of the successful competitors, besides receiving a gift of money, was invested, by the hands of one or other of the ladies present, with a medal or similar decoration...In the evening there was a grand concert...with a chorus of 300 voices...Mr. Thomas, a composer of Welsh national music, had come from America, with a dozen other Welshmen resident there, on purpose for this Eisteddfod'. From "Illustrated London News", 1865.