The Welsh Eisteddfod. No country in the world has a greater love of music and poetry than the people of Wales. Today, Eisteddfod is held at scores of places throughout Wales, particularly from May to early November.
The habit of holding similar events dates back to early history and there are records of competitions for Welsh poets and musicians in the twelfth century. The Eisteddfod sprang from the Gorsedd, or National Assembly of Bards. It was held occasionally up to 1819, but since then has become an annual event for the encouragement of Welsh literature and music and the preservation of the Welsh language and ancient national customs.
The Royal National Eisteddfod of Wales is held annually early in August, in North and South Wales alternately, its actual venue varying from year to year. It attracts Welsh people from all over the world.
The programme includes male and mixed choirs, brass-band concerts, many childrens events, drama, arts and crafts and, of course, the ceremony of the Crowning of the Bard. Next in importance is the great Llangollen International Music Eisteddfod, held early in July and attended by competitors from many countries, all wearing their picturesque and often colourful national costumes.
It is an event probably without parallel anywhere in the world. There are at least twenty-five other major Eisteddfods from May to November. In addition to the Eisteddfod, about thirty major Welsh Singing Festivals are held throughout Wales from May until early November. The Edinburgh Festival It is a good thing that the Edinburgh Festival hits the Scottish Capital outside term time. Not so much because the University hostels - and students digs - are needed of provide accommodation for Festival visitors but because this most exhilarating occasion allows no time for anything mundane. It gives intelligent diversion for most of the twenty - four hours each weekday in its three weeks it is not tactful to ask about Sundays - you explore the surrounding terrain then. The programmes always include some of the finest chamber music ensemble and soloists in the world.
There are plenty of matinees evening concerts, opera, drama and ballet performances usually take place at conventional times - but the floodlit Military Tattoo at Edinburgh Castle obviously doesnt start till after dusk, and late night entertainments and the Festival Club can take you into the early hours of the morning.
In recent years, about 90,000 people have flocked into Edinburgh every year during the three weeks at the end of August and early September. The 90,000, of course, does not include the very large numbers of people who discover pressing reasons for visiting their Edinburgh relations about this time, nor the many thousands who come into the city on day trips from all over the country.
They wouldnt all come, year after year, to a city bursting to capacity if they didnt find the journey eminently worth-while. They find in Edinburgh Festival the great orchestras and soloists of the world, with top-class opera thrown in famous ballet companies, art exhibitions and leading drama the Tattoo, whose dramatic colour inspires many a hurried claim to Scottish ancestry.
Since the Festival started in 1947 as a gesture of the Scottish renaissance against post-war austerity, much has blossomed around it. Every hall in the city is occupied by some diversion and you may find Shakespeare by penetrating an ancient close off the Royal Mile, or plain-song in a local church. Fringe events bring performing bodies from all over Britain and beyond, and student groups are always prominent among them, responsible often for interesting experiments in the drama.
Then there is the International Film Festival, bringing documentaries from perhaps 30 countries Highland Games, and all sorts of other ploys from puppet to photo shows.