A lovely story of achieving one's dream - Paul Pots from Port Talbot, S Wales.

This was Paul's start in the `Britain's Got Talent' competition. Watch the judges' expressions as they look and listen!

Read what the BBC has to say about Cwm Rhondda; the alternative Welsh National Anthem

Click here/ Cliciwch yma

Music among the Celts in Pre-Christian Times

'They have poets whom they call bards, who sing songs of eulogy and of satire, accompanying themselves on instruments very like the lyre. They also have philosophers and theologians whom they hold in extreme honour, and name Druids. They possess prophets too who are much revered. . . . Friend and foe submit to the song of the bard. Often when two armies meet, and swords are drawn, and lances set, the bards throw themselves between the contending parties, and pacify them, as one by magic subdues the wild beast. And thus, even among the most savage non-Greeks, frenzy yields to wisdom, and Mars respects the Muses.' Ref: Diodorus Siculus.

Also they `possess uncouth trumpets (The Carnyx) of peculiar formation which emit a hoarse and warlike sound to inspire terror'. These instruments, it would appear, were part of the equipment of the soldier rather than of the poet-musician, for they are mentioned between descriptions of shields and helmets, and swords, lances and javelins. `The spoils stained with blood they hand to their retainers to carry, and chant the hymn of victory.'

`The Bards composed and sung odes; the Uates attended to the sacrifices and studied nature; while the Druids studied nature and moral philosophy.' Ref: Strabo.

There is also preserved a fragment written in the fourth century BC by an unknown Greek author who says, as translated by W. Dinan as follows: 

The Celts practise the customs of the Greeks, being on the most friendly terms with Greece

through the exchange of 'guest-friendship': they conduct their public assemblies to the accompaniment of music,

zealously practising it for its softening effects.

These quotations may not give one much detailed information concerning the state of music among the Celts of Gaul and Britain in pre-Christian times, but they certainly help one to realize something of the deep-rooted effect of music and poetry upon the Celtic race.

Bard with harp

Carnyx

From early times the Welsh tribesmen had beyond a doubt their skilled poets and musicians, whose flights of song were independent of literary aid, for the leading terms connected with these two arts, such as "bardd" (poet), prydydd^» (maker), ^«cerddor^» (musician [artist]), ^«crwth^» (crowd), "telyn" (harp), "cathl" (song), "tant" (string), are of' purely Celtic origin, being, for the most part, common to Brythons (Welsh) and Goidels (Irish). 

The harp and the crwth/ Y telyn a'r crwth - We know from the Welsh Laws codified by Howel the Good/ Hywel Dda (died, 949 or 950) that it was the telyn which was the royal and bardic instrument in the tenth century and earlier. It may be that the crwth was associated at this time with the singers of the ancient British Church, with whom the Italian most probably came chiefly in contact and hence why the crwth was given so much prominence.

From the beginning of the sixth century, perhaps from a somewhat earlier date, it would seem, according to Dr. H. D. M. Spence Jones, that the British Church in Wales developed great strength, owing chiefly to the ever flowing stream of Christian fugitives flying from the desolating conquests of Roman Britain by the pagan Angles, Saxons and Jutes. 

Dewi, Padarn, Teilo, Cadog, Illtud and Cybi founded Monasteries in different parts of Wales and, we are told `in the secluded valleys and hills of wild Wales laid the foundation of that great Irish Celtic Church which for some 200 years aroused the admiration, the wonder and the emulation of the Christian world of the west.

Modern day bard

Crwth