Festival on the move

BBC Wales's Grahame Davies reports from Denbigh

It is sometimes said that the Welsh must be a strange people if they can make a festival out of erecting a huge tent each year and walking around it for a week.

But the leisurely circuit around the main pavillion in a different field each year is part of the annual life-cycle of large numbers of the Welsh-speaking community.

The whole experience is part Glyndebourne, part Glastonbury, and part pow-wow. But it is all unmistakably Welsh.

Like many events, the festival's fringe - rock concerts, parties and poetry readings at a host of local venues - has grown to such a degree that a young eisteddfodwr can spend a week at the festival without ever entering the main pavillion where the ceremonies such as the crowning, the chairing and the choral singing are held.

Eisteddfod: Always on the move

It is a kind of a rite of passage for a Welsh-speaker when he or she eventually attends the eisteddfod and actually finds themselves in the pavilion. It is a sure sign that they have moved up a generation.

It usually happens when somebody is in their mid-thirties.

You can postpone the day beyond that, of course, but eventually, as you circle the maes, the main pavillion, like the centre of a whirlpool, will draw you ever closer until you eventually find yourself there with the rest of the aficionados, fanning yourself with your programme and pondering the merits of the winning ode.

Like the eisteddfodwyr circling the pavillion, the eisteddfod itself is in perpetual motion, albeit at a slower pace.

Each year, it is held in a different part of Wales, alternating between the north and south.

Last year it was in Llanelli, this year Denbigh, and next year it will be in the tiny cathedral city of St David's in Pembrokeshire.

One of the questions which has sparked a lively debate this week is whether the eisteddfod should continue in its endless pilgrimage around Wales.

On the plus side, it is argued that a moveable eisteddfod provides a vital injection of Welshness into whichever part of Wales it visits.

It also introduces its regular visitors to a different part of Wales each year and secures major economic benefits for the communities concerned.

On the minus side, it is pointed out that moving the eisteddfod each year to a different location is very expensive, and that a large amount of the substantial sum of money the host community must raise in order to attract the festival is actually spent on the relocation costs.

Atrocious weather

It is also argued that not every eisteddfod field enjoys the same geographic advantages.

The Fishguard eisteddfod in the 1980s was legendary for the sea of mud in which it was enveloped thanks to atrocious weather.

The Cwm Rhymni festival in south Wales a few years later was notorious for the clouds of dust which arose in baking heat from its windswept hillside site.

The argument as to whether the eisteddfod should find a permanent home is one which orbits round every few years.

This year, its main supporter is the veteran language activist, folk singer and Plaid Cymru politician Dafydd Iwan.

He proposes three permanent locations, a combination he says would provide the benefit of geographical variety and infrastructural stability.