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A new collection of essays offers a fascinating insight into the complex and paradoxical figure of Iolo, but, asks Dafydd Moore, are his critics being too generous?


A Rattleskull Genius:
The Many Faces of Iolo Morganwg
Geraint H. Jenkins


University of Wales Press
£45.00 Hardback
ISBN 0708319718


While Edward Williams, a.k.a. Iolo Morganwg, stonemason, Romantic poet, antiquarian, druid, Bard (very much with a capital B), radical Dissenter, agricultural commentator, field archaeologist, controversialist, and master forger was one of the more remarkable literary Welshmen, he is far from being a household name in Wales. And, despite ticking many currently fashionable boxes in his career as a labouring class poet, literary forger, Romantic Radical and as the inventor of especially Celtic national tradition during the Romantic period, Iolo barely registers on the consciousness of late eighteenth–century literary historians more widely. This handsome collection of 22 various and wide–ranging essays by recognised authorities is the first of a series, Iolo Morganwg and the Romantic Tradition in Wales, which aims to put the record straight.

   There are various reasons for Iolo’s neglect hitherto. Firstly, the most eye–catching dimension of his career, that of forger of national antiquities in order to corroborate his historical vision of the Welsh nation (for example the druidic ceremony of the gorsedd he ‘revived’ in 1792) is distinctly double–edged. It leads to the taint of charlatanism – ‘there remain still in Wales fastidious "purists" who would rather sell their souls to Beelzebub than thumb the tarnished manuscripts of such a flawed figure’ – and means that Iolo’s other talents have been overshadowed. Furthermore, Iolo’s forgery was complex and subtle in its substance and effects. Compared with William Henry Ireland’s ‘discovery’ of lost Shakespeare plays, or James Macpherson’s ‘salvaging’ of an entire and entirely recogniseable epic tradition from Gaelic Scotland, Iolo’s creation of the textual culture of the Druidic–Bardic tradition or his supplementing the oeuvre of existing poets in ‘authentic’ ways are rather less headline–grabbing. This is to his credit: that Iolo did not produce an English ‘translation’ of Dafydd ap Gwilym’s ‘lost’ neo–classical epic poem demonstrates his skill as a forger and his appreciation of the native traditions and forms of Welsh literature (it also points to Iolo’s Romantic sensibility compared with Macpherson’s Augustan one). Nevertheless this has not made Iolo as accessible to Anglophone  scholarship as the likes of Macpherson.

   Iolo’s inaccessibility is also a material fact. Despite his seemingly boundless energies, he published relatively little during his lifetime beyond a collection of poems in English, Poems, Lyric and Pastoral (1794). But he did leave an archive of material and correspondence testifying to the range and (often eccentric) brilliance of his writings. This archive is currently the subject of a major research project at the University of Wales’ Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies, and this collection represents an important milestone in the project (16 of the contributions here are from scholars associated with the research group).

   These consistently excellent essays explore the myriad faces and voices of Iolo, revealing – and revelling in – the inconsistencies, contradictions and paradoxes such a wide–ranging career generated. The volume is commendably determined to give appropriate play to these features, not to resolve or explain away Iolo’s inherent contradictions for the sake of some totalising narrative or picture of its subject. That said, there are places where the tensions identified are more amenable to contextualisation (and indeed are more commonly encountered) during Iolo’s time than is credited here. A future volume situating Iolo more firmly within contexts other than directly Welsh ones (illuminating and welcome as these are) would be welcome, and in fairness the fascinating contributions here of Mary Ann Constantine, Jon Mee and Damian Walford Davies demonstrate that this is within the series’ terms of reference.

   My sole reservation about this excellent book concerns the vexed question of audience, particularly with regards to the academic community outside of Wales (relevant since the establishment of Iolo within this community is one of the volume’s stated aims). The collection assumes a scholarly audience ignorant of but well– disposed towards Iolo. However these things do not necessarily – if ever – go together. The collection unapologetically represents, refreshingly, the work of Iolo enthusiasts but enthusiasm is not necessarily infectious, and can sometimes seem alienating. Accordingly, there are places where the collection might be vulnerable to the charge from more sceptical readers of over–generosity towards its subject. This air of indulgence is exacerbated by a degree of repetition in relating key events of Iolo’s career. This is in some measure inevitable; nevertheless more thorough cross–referencing might allay uncharitable suspicions that Iolo is not quite so inexhaustible a source of scholarship as claimed. Overall, future volumes might usefully accommodate a higher number of contributions that take a more robust attitude to some aspects of Iolo, if only as a way of pre–emptively engaging with the nay–sayers. On the subject of catering to a less enlightened audience, this reader – rather shame–facedly – has to admit that a map of South Wales showing the precise geography of Glamorgan would have complemented his enjoyment of the volume at key moments. Shocking ignorance on the part of your reviewer no doubt, but likely to be shared by those readers outside of Wales at whom the volume is to a significant extent aimed.

   These minor quibbles aside this is a hugely informative, and entertaining book. It in large measure conveys Iolo’s sense, in Prys Morgan’s words, ‘of the vitality and viability of the Welsh language and its history’, and makes clear why understanding Iolo is a constituent element in understanding Modern Wales, whatever understanding might mean in either case. Leaving aside its other excellencies, it is most welcome for this reason alone.