Hedd Wyn

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Hedd Wyn (13 January 1887–31 July 1917) was a Merionethshire farmer and Welsh language poet of World War I.

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[edit] Welsh Bard

Born Ellis Humphrey Evans, the oldest of eleven children of Evan and Mary Evans, he used the Bardic name Hedd Wyn, Welsh for "white peace".

Evans spent most of his life on a hill farm, Yr Ysgwrn, near Trawsfynydd, Merionethshire (Gwynedd). By the age of 28 he had won four Eisteddfod chairs for his poetry.

The son of Evans' youngest sister, Gerald Williams, still lives at Ysgwrn today and regularly entertains many guests with the story of Ellis and his bardic chairs.

[edit] Killed in Action

Evans was awarded the Bardic Chair at the 1917 National Eisteddfod, Birkenhead, for his poem "Yr Arwr" ("The Hero"), written in the verse form known as an awdl. The award was posthumous, with the Eisteddfod Chair draped in black cloth during the award ceremony, Evans having been killed in Belgium, serving with 15th Battalion, Royal Welch Fusiliers, at Pilckem Ridge shortly before. (Another war poet, Francis Ledwidge, was killed on the same day.)

He is buried at Artillery Wood Cemetery, near Boezinge (section II, row F, grave 11) (see external link below for picture).

[edit] 1992 Film

The story became the subject of the Oscar-nominated Welsh-language film Hedd Wyn in 1992. It won a Bafta for the best foreign language film in the year of its release.

[edit] External links


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