Testing the cultural temperature

BBC Wales's Grahame Davies reports from Denbigh

Among its many functions, the National Eisteddfod provides the opportunity for a kind of annual check-up on the condition of Welsh-speaking Wales.

Through the competitions, but also, and perhaps more importantly, through the unscheduled events, it is the yearly chance to take the temperature of the Welsh-language culture shared by over half a million people in Wales.

Three snapshots from this year's festival at Denbigh give some insights into the concerns of this community, and of the tensions and opportunities it faces.

Firstly, there was the acrimonious dispute relating to the attempts which have been made to highlight the perceived dangers to the Welsh language's heartlands caused by locals being outbid for homes by wealthier English-speaking incomers.

It revealed great sensitivities in both language communities, with accusations of racism being flung around by both sides.

However, it has been argued that the dispute has so far not revealed any great readiness on the part of the politicians to address the underlying problems.

There has been growing impatience from some commentators, who have argued that the problems of the Welsh-speaking communities, many of which are in Wales's poorest economic areas, need solutions which use the terms of housing policy and economic activity rather than the language of race.

Learners bring hope

Secondly, and staying with the question of speaking the language, there was the Welsh Learner of the Year competition.

This year, it went to Spencer Harris from the former mining village of Coedpoeth near Wrexham, and his win reveals some of the processes which are changing the historic fortunes of the Welsh language.

Far from being a resident of a traditionally Welsh-speaking area - or even a recent incomer - he is from the north east border region of Wales, in which the language has been marginalised for the best part of a century.

It is in Anglicised areas of Wales that the language is showing a marked resurgence.

Welsh-medium schools are opening the length and breadth of areas such as the south Wales Valleys.

In Cardiff there are now more than a dozen Welsh-medium primary and two secondary schools, and the growth can even be seen in Monmouthshire, where the most recent Welsh-medium school has been established close to the English border.

In addition, Spencer Harris's success in attaining fluency from a standing start in 1996, shows that it is possible for adults to master the language in a reasonable period of time.

Although only one person gets the award each year, there are thousands of adult learners throughout Wales, and thousands who have come to fluency in Welsh as adults.

And the intention of Mr Harris and his wife Jeni, a native Welsh-speaker, to raise their children Welsh-speaking is another indicator of hope for the language's future.

Historic chairing ceremony.

And finally, there was the last main ceremony of the week, the chairing of the bard in the pavilion on Friday, which provided a truly historic moment.

This is traditionally the main poetry event of the festival, and is the highlight of the week.

Unlike the crown, which is awarded on the Monday of eisteddfod week for poems in the free metres, the chair is reserved for poems in cynghanedd, the ancient system of strict poetic metres which requires poems to be written in a complex mix of consonantal harmony, stress, rhythm and rhyme.

Again, unlike the crown, the chair has never been won by a woman.

And although in recent years, a growing number of women poets have broken into the traditional male preserve of writing in cynghanedd, none of them have succeeded in taking the eisteddfod's main prize.

Until this year, that is. The chair was awarded to Mererid Hopwood, 37, a mother of three, from Llangynnwr near Carmarthen.

When the Archdruid announced that the chair had finally gone to a woman, there was resounding applause in the pavillion.

Born and brought up in Cardiff, Mererid Hopwood was a lecturer in Spanish and German in London and Swansea before working for the Arts Council of Wales in west Wales and recently going freelance.

The chair this year was awarded for a poem on the set theme of "Dadeni" or "Rebirth".

In Welsh and Celtic mythology, the concept of rebirth is a central one.

At the end of a week which has seen fears about the future of the language mixed with more hopeful signs such as the success of the learners of Welsh and the opening up one of the traditional bastions of Welsh culture to new talents, the subject of "rebirth" could hardly have been a more appropriate one.