The Malad Valley Welsh Festival is an annual event that is relatively young, depending on how you look at it.  As a festival,  it is just now approaching its twentieth year—again, depending on how you look at it.  While the first Welsh Festival was officially held in 2005, there are a few reasons that this year is not being billed that way.  For one, the early version of the Festival was much humbler.  “It had a slow start,” director Jean Thomas said.  “We started with one presentation in the Relief Society room. It was well-attended, though, and people said they would like even more—which is what we did.”  

The first years of the event were missing many of the core elements that make the Festival what it is today, though they were added piece by piece as the years moved on.  “We had always ended with a concert, and that’s something we kept to,” Thomas continued.  What had originally been a single musical closing has now become two or three days (depending on how you look at it!) of music of all types.  An evening concert featuring different acts now takes place inside the historic church building, as well as in the bandshell.  A children’s musical concert sets the tone on Friday afternoon following the presentations on various Welsh topics of interest to guests.  Saturday is largely given over to poetry, though a traditional multi-piano concert is a musical highlight of the Saturday program.  This year, Larry Thomas indulged in a bit of music for the Sunday fireside as well!

Poetry is also something that has evolved as the Festival has gone on.  Patterning its “chairing” of a Festival bard loosely on the Eisteddfod tradition in Wales, the Malad Valley Festival partakes of the same underlying belief, which is that music and poetry are essential to a well lived life.  As a consequence, the original appreciation of Welsh cultural ways eventually became a fully committed weekend of entering into them.  One component that was added to the early versions of the festival was the inclusion of Malad’s young people into the poetry contest by way of the schools.  Students are encouraged to participate in competitions in art, music, and poetry for either prizes, recognition, or both.  While most of Malad’s school kids at one point or another end up writing poems for the Festival a smaller number of them are chosen to read their poems competitively at Friday’s event.  An even smaller number of them remain steadfast in performing their poems in front of what can be a large and intimidating audience!

Other changes, of course, have come to the festival over the years.  Wagon rides now take visitors to some of the historic sites around town and surrounding areas.  A Quilt Show is held in conjunction with the Festival in the Co-Op space downtown.  Welsh games and authentic food are provided at the City Park.  The cultural hall is filled with informative displays on local families and Wales itself.  Children’s art is displayed during the event, and most recently, short courses in the Welsh language have been provided.  And of course, now there is a fleet of food trucks and booths, as well as vendors!

As those new things are repeated from year to year, they themselves become traditions in short order.  Even so, there is room for surprises.  This year, the Knight of the Festival. Robert Washburn, also became the Bard of the Festival in a move that shocked his wife Lucie and plenty of others.  Washburn was awarded the Patsy Price Scott poetry prize during last year’s festival, which is judged anonymously.  Or rather, a pseudonym is submitted with the poem in order to make the evaluation as neutral as possible.  But since Washburn is obviously known to the Welsh Society and judges by virtue of his involvement as the knight, he employed an additional layer of obfuscation by borrowing the “real” name and address of a co-worker, which made his entry more or less invisible among the submissions.

After his pseudonym was called for the third time, he rose, handed his knightly trapping over to his waiting squire, and made his way to the podium to accept his laurels.  As of press time, Lucie is reportedly still recovering.

In coming weeks, we will bring you selections of the children’s poems, images of the event, and other things that still need to be on the record, but for this week, we leave you with Robert Washburn’s poem “My Home is My Castle.”  The Patsy Price Scott Poetry Prize was awarded to Megan Foy’s poem “Stones Upon the Hill,” which will be printed in coming weeks.