Hedd Wyn - Early Life

Early Life

Ellis Humphrey Evans was born on 13 January 1887 (Ionawr y Trydydd a'r Ddeg) in Pen Lan, a house in the middle of Trawsfynydd, Meirionydd, North Wales. He was the eldest of eleven children born to Evan and Mary Evans. In the spring of 1887 the family moved to the isolated hill-farm of Yr Ysgwrn, a few miles from Trawsfynydd.

Ellis Evans received a basic education at elementary and Sunday school. He left school at fourteen and began work as a shepherd on his father’s farm. He had not been a particularly brilliant student but he had a natural gift for poetry. He had already composed his first poems by the age of eleven that were already better than some established British poets.

He took part in eisteddfodau from the age of 19 and won his first chair (Cadair y Bardd) at Bala in 1907. In 1910 he took the bardic name Hedd Wyn, Welsh for "blessed peace", a reference to the sun’s rays penetrating the mists in the valleys of Meirionydd. It was suggested by the poet 'Bryfdir' at a poets' meeting. Hedd Wyn's main influence was the Romantic poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelley and themes of nature and religion dominated his work. In 1913 he won the chairs at Pwllheli and Llanuwchllyn and in 1915 he was successful at Pontardawe and Llanuwchllyn. The same year he wrote his first poem for the National Eisteddfod of Wales—Eryri, an ode to Snowdon. In 1916 he took second place at the Aberystwyth National Eisteddfod with Ystrad Fflur, an awdl written in honour of Strata Florida, the medieval Cistercian abbey ruins in Ceredigion. He determined to win the National Eisteddfodd chair the following year.