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Edward Williams, better known by his bardic name Iolo Morganwg (; 10March 174718December 1826), was a Welsh antiquarian, poet and collector.Jones, Mary (2004). "Edward Williams/Iolo Morganwg/Iolo Morgannwg". From Jones' Celtic Encyclopedia. Retrieved 11 June 2009 (only USA, see: WayBackMachine). He was seen as an expert collector of Medieval Welsh literature, but it emerged after his death that he had forged several manuscripts, notably some of the Third Series of Welsh Triads.Mary Jones (2003), "Y Myvyrian Archaiology". From Jones' Celtic Encyclopedia. Retrieved 11 June 2009 (in US only: WayBackMachine). Even so, he had a lasting impact on Welsh culture, notably in founding the secret society known as the Gorsedd, through which Iolo Morganwg successfully co-opted the 18th-century Eisteddfod revival. The philosophy he spread in his forgeries has had an enormous impact upon neo-Druidism. His bardic name is Welsh for "Iolo of Glamorgan".The county name is spelt "Morgannwg" in modern Welsh. Iolo is a diminutive of "Iorwerth", a Welsh name often matched with Edward, though neither translates as the other.
In 1773, he moved to London, where the antiquary Owen Jones introduced him to the city's Welsh literary community, and where he became a member of the Gwyneddigion Society: he would later also be active in the Cymreigyddion Society. In 1777 he returned to Wales, where he married and tried farming, but without success. During this time he produced his first forgeries.
Williams's son, Taliesin (bardic name, Taliesin ab Iolo), whom he had named after the early medieval bard Taliesin, later went on to collect his manuscripts in 26 volumes, a selection being published as the Iolo Manuscripts by the Welsh Manuscripts Society in 1848.
Williams first came to public notice in 1789 for Barddoniaeth Dafydd ab Gwilym, a collection of the poetry of the 14th-century Dafydd ap Gwilym. Included were a large number of hitherto unknown poems by Dafydd that he claimed to have found; these are regarded as Williams's first forgeries.
His success led him to return to London in 1791, where he founded the Gorsedd, a community of Welsh , at a ceremony on 21 June 1792 at Primrose Hill. He organised the occasion according to what he claimed were ancient Druidic rites. In 1794 he published some of his own poetry, which was later collected in a two-volume Poems, Lyric and Pastoral. Essentially his only genuine work, it proved quite popular.
Williams worked with Owen Jones and William Owen Pughe on The Myvyrian Archaiology of Wales, a three-volume collection of medieval Welsh literature published in 1801–1807. This relied partly on manuscripts in Williams's collection, some his forgeries. The forged material included a false Brut chronicle and a book attributed to Saint Cadoc. The second volume, which collected the Welsh Triads, contained an additional "third series" of forged triads, as well as Williams's alterations to the authentic ones.
After Williams's death some of his collection was compiled into The Iolo Manuscripts by his son, Taliesin Williams. His papers were used by many later scholars and translators, and for reference by Lady Charlotte Guest as she translated the prose collection Mabinogion. She did not, however, rely on Williams's editions of the tales themselves, except for Hanes Taliesin. Later still, further Williams forgeries were published in a text known as Barddas.Jones, Mary (2004). "Barddas". From Jones' Celtic Encyclopedia. Retrieved 11 June 2009. (For the United States, see WayBackMachine). This work, published in two volumes in 1862 and 1874, was claimed to be a translation of works by Llywelyn Siôn, detailing the history of the Welsh bardic system from its ancient origins to the present day. Though it contains nothing of authentic Druidic lore, it is the fullest account of the mystical cosmology Williams developed.
Other works by Williams include the "Druid's Prayer", still used by the Gorsedd and by neo-Druid groups, a treatise on Welsh metrics called Cyfrinach Beirdd Ynys Prydain ("The Mystery of the Bards of the Isle of Britain"), published posthumously in 1828, and a hymn series published as Salmau yr Eglwys yn yr Anialwch ("Psalms of the church in the wilderness") in 1812.
Outside his shop in Cowbridge was a sign saying his sugar was from plantations that employed no slaves. However, he contested a will in order to receive a legacy from one of his three brothers, all of whose plantations in Jamaica used slave labour.Geraint H. Jenkins, Y Digymar Iolo (Talybont: Y Lolfa, 2018), pp. 150-152
By 1799 he had become a Unitarianism, and was a leading spirit when a Unitarian Association was formed in South Wales in 1802. It was he who drew up its Rheolau a Threfniadau (Rules and Procedures), published in 1803.
After the First World War, the scholar Griffith John Williams (1892–1963) was the first to make a full study of Iolo's work, consulting original documents donated to the National Library of Wales by Iolo's descendants in 1917. Williams aimed to find out exactly how much of Iolo's output was based on imagination rather than fact. He established that the poems Iolo attributed to Dafydd ap Gwilym were forgeries. His researches led him to become a defender of Iolo's reputation as well as a critic.
It has been suggested that some of Iolo's claims were supported by oral tradition: recent research has revealed that the tale of Ieuan Gethin, a soldier in the Glyndŵr revolt, might have basis in fact.
A memorial plaque was erected in 2009, on the approximate site of the first Gorsedd ceremony, held on London's Primrose Hill in 1792, and another memorial stone on Stalling Down near Cowbridge, where the first Gorsedd ceremony in Wales took place in 1795.
Such was the extent of his forgery that, even into the 21st century, some of his tampered versions of medieval Welsh texts are better known than the original versions.Rachel Bromwich, Trioedd Ynys Prydein. University of Wales Press, 2006, p. 213.
A Welsh-language school in Cowbridge, Ysgol Iolo Morganwg, is named after him, and Super Furry Animals vocalist Gruff Rhys dedicated a song to him on his 2014 album, American Interior.
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