Better known by the bardic name of Iolo Morgannwg, Edward Williams was born in Llancarfan, near Cowbridge in Glamorgan. A stonemason by trade, he was also one of history’s great fantasists. He once wrote fourteen verses in the name of the medieval poet Dafydd ap Gwilym and sent them off for inclusion in a literary collection.

But it was far from the most astonishing of his inventions. Eager to assert the Welshness of his native county - long derided by the poets of North Wales- he claimed that the bards of Glamorgan used a metre that had disappeared from all other areas of Wales.

He also asserted that they would gather together in an elaborate ceremonial event that he called the Gorsedd. He claimed the tradition had continued unbroken in Glamorgan since before the birth of Christ.

In 1792 he succeeded in persuading a number of the London Welsh to hold a Gorsedd at Primrose Hill. In Wales, however, there wasn’t much interest in the Gorsedd until 27 years later, when Morgannwg succeeded in forging links with the National Eisteddfod taking place in Carmarthen.

Williams established several businesses but each one of them failed and he spent some time in Cardiff Gaol as a bankrupt. He began taking laudanum (a form of opium) when he was young, and he was addicted to it for the rest of his life – possibly explaining his fertile imagination.

An industrious academic and charming romantic poet, the legacy he left behind was a cottage filled to the ceiling with manuscripts. The question of their authenticity- or lack of it- has given headaches to academics ever since.

Like most ‘ancient’ British ceremonial institutions then, the Gorsedd was invented relatively recently. Thankfully that hasn’t prevented the National Eisteddfod becoming one of Europe’s most popular cultural events.