Cornwall’s blue-robed bards return to Bodmin after 29 years

A single note from a set of pipes cut across a car park in Bodmin on Saturday 5 September, and a line of figures in sky-blue robes fell into step behind a fringed banner topped with gold tassels. For anyone catching the town by surprise that afternoon, it must have looked like a scene from another century. In a sense, it was.

What is Gorsedh Kernow?

The procession belonged to Gorsedh Kernow, a non-political organisation that exists to promote and protect Cornish Celtic history, language and tradition. It was founded in 1928 by two men steeped in the subject, the Celtic language scholar Henry Jenner and the nautical archaeologist and Cornish scholar Robert Morton Nance. Between them they set out to keep Cornwall’s Celtic identity alive at a time when the Cornish language had all but vanished from everyday use, and the Gorsedh they built has held its bardic ceremony every year since, always on the first Saturday of September, always with its bards dressed in blue.

The bards, keepers of Cornwall’s memory

The title itself is far older than the organisation. From ancient Celtic times through to the 11th century, bards across the Celtic nations were prestigious poets, musicians and historians, the people trusted to hold a community’s records and oral traditions at a time when little else was written down. Losing a bard meant losing a library. Gorsedh Kernow revived the title in a modern form, awarding it to people who have done outstanding work for Cornish language, history, music or community life, and inducting them into the College of Bards at the annual ceremony.

A festival before the ceremony

This year’s gathering formed part of Esedhvos, the Festival of Cornish Culture, which ran across several days in and around Bodmin before building to the main ceremony. Priory Park hosted stalls from groups including the Federation of Old Cornwall Societies, Cornwall Heritage Trust and Cornwall Wildlife Trust, alongside a day of entertainment that took in Cornish wrestling demonstrations, a mummers play, a school choir and Bodmin Town Band. It was the first time the Gorsedh’s main ceremony had returned to the town since 1997, nearly three decades earlier, and Bodmin made the most of the occasion.

The Grand Procession and a new College of Bards

The afternoon built towards the Grand Procession of Bards, when banners from Old Cornwall Societies across the county, Bodmin’s own among them, were carried into the park ahead of the bards themselves. The ceremony that followed was led by the Grand Bard of Cornwall, Jenefer Lowe, known within the Gorsedh by her bardic name Gwythvosen, and conducted largely in the Cornish language, with an English translation available in the ceremony booklet for anyone following along. Twenty-one new bards were welcomed into the College of Bards during the ceremony, recognised for work ranging from Cornish music to strengthening Cornish identity as far away as California, and each received a bardic name of their own for the first time as they took their place among the robes.

“We are delighted that the Gorsedh is coming to Bodmin,” Jenefer said beforehand, adding that the town lies at the heart of Cornwall and Cornish culture. Bodmin’s mayor, Liz Ahearn, called it an honour for the town to be chosen as host. The celebrations did not end there either. Esedhvos continued into Sunday with a Gorsedh Evensong at St Petroc’s Church, one more note in a week built around a tradition considerably older than the town’s last turn hosting it.