Hedd Wyn and the Black Chair: Poetry, War and the 1917 Eisteddfod
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When the winning poet was called at the 1917 National Eisteddfod, nobody stood. The bard using the pen name Fleur-de-lis had written the best ode, but he had been killed in Flanders five weeks earlier. The chair was covered in black cloth. From that moment, one piece of carved wood became y Gadair Ddu, the Black Chair, and one young soldier-poet became a symbol of Wales's lost generation.
His name was Ellis Humphrey Evans. Most people know him as Hedd Wyn. His story is often told as a devastating ending, but the poetry came first: years of writing after farm work, competing under bardic names and trying to master an exacting tradition.
- 13 January 1887: Ellis Humphrey Evans is born
- 1907: he wins his first local eisteddfod chair
- 1916: he joins the 15th Battalion, Royal Welsh Fusiliers
- 31 July 1917: he is killed at Pilckem Ridge
- 6 September 1917: his ode wins the National Eisteddfod chair
Hedd Wyn and the Black Chair: the shepherd before the soldier
Evans grew up in a Welsh-speaking farming family near Trawsfynydd in Meirionnydd. He left school at fourteen and worked as a shepherd on the family farm. That description can sound romantic from a distance. In reality, farming meant long physical days. Poetry had to be fitted around the work.
He began writing as a child and entered local competitions. The eisteddfod system gave a rural poet a ladder: compose to a set subject, submit under a ffugenw, or pseudonym, and let the work be judged without the author's name. He won his first chair in Bala in 1907 and continued competing. By 1917 he was not an unknown beginner. He was a practised poet seeking the highest honour in Welsh-language verse.
What does Hedd Wyn mean?
Hedd means peace. Gwyn can carry meanings including white, fair, blessed or pure, and it mutates to wyn after the feminine noun hedd. A single neat English translation cannot hold every shade, but Blessed Peace or Fair Peace gives the sense.
The bardic name is painful in hindsight. It was chosen before his death and should not be treated as a slogan invented for a war memorial. It belonged to his identity as a poet. The contrast between peace and the way he died is real, but it came from history, not later branding.
The National Library of Wales records that his winning 1917 entry was submitted under Fleur-de-lis. The public did not know who had won until the ceremony tried to call the bard forward.
What was Yr Arwr about?
The set subject for the chair was Yr Arwr, meaning The Hero. Evans wrote an awdl, a long poem in strict metres using cynghanedd. If you are new to that craft, our beginner's guide to cynghanedd explains the patterned harmony of consonants, stress and rhyme that the poet had to control.
The poem does not work as simple battlefield celebration. It wrestles with heroism, suffering and spiritual struggle. That matters because the posthumous story can swallow the actual work. Evans did not win because judges pitied a dead soldier. The adjudicators selected an anonymous poem before they knew its author had died.
Reading even a short section in Welsh makes the achievement clearer. Do not begin by translating every word. Listen for returning sounds and sentence pressure, then use a translation to check meaning. The method in our guide to reading Welsh poetry without translating every word works especially well here.
What happened at the 1917 Eisteddfod?
The National Eisteddfod was held at Birkenhead Park. On 6 September, the Archdruid announced that Fleur-de-lis had won. The customary call was made for the poet to stand. No winner appeared. The audience then learned that Ellis Humphrey Evans had been killed on 31 July during the opening day of the Battle of Pilckem Ridge, part of the wider Third Battle of Ypres.
The empty chair was draped in black. That visual act transformed the ceremony. An eisteddfod chair normally makes achievement physical: the winning poet sits before the crowd and is welcomed into public memory. Here the object made absence physical instead.
There is a useful correction to a common retelling. The chair was not carved after the judges discovered his death. It already existed as the 1917 prize. Belgian refugee Eugeen Vanfleteren, living in Britain after fleeing the German invasion, carved it with Celtic bands and Welsh dragons. A refugee made a chair won by a soldier killed in Belgium. The history was already crossing borders before black cloth gave the object its name.
Why the Black Chair carries so much weight
The chair is unique, but the empty place was not. Thousands of Welsh families had a son, brother, father or friend missing from the table. The National Library has described the chair as a symbol for those empty chairs in homes across Wales. That is why the story reaches beyond literary history.
It also complicates any easy claim that Welsh culture and military service sat in separate worlds. Evans wrote in Welsh, worked a farm, entered eisteddfodau and served in a British regiment. His life held all of those facts at once. Remembering him honestly means resisting the urge to turn him into only a pacifist emblem, only a patriotic soldier or only a tragic young genius.
Visiting Yr Ysgwrn
The family home near Trawsfynydd is now a heritage site. The farmhouse, landscape and Black Chair let visitors encounter the poet at human scale. Check the official Yr Ysgwrn website for current opening arrangements and guided-visit information before travelling, because access is managed to protect the house and collection.
Go for the chair, but notice the desk, farm and view. They answer a better question than where the famous object is kept: what kind of daily life produced the poems? The mountain landscape did not shield Evans from the European war. It did, however, shape the language and imagination he carried into it.
Sources, further reading and image credits
Image credits
- Ellis Humphrey Evans, the shepherd-poet remembered by his bardic name. John Wickens, Wikimedia Commons, Public domain.
- Yr Ysgwrn, the family farm where the poet worked and wrote. Alan Fryer, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0.
- The memorial at Trawsfynydd keeps the poet's story in the landscape that formed him. Alan Fryer, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0.
