In looking for articles about the Eisteddfods place in the history of the welsh language and culture I came across this article on walesonline.co.uk a welsh news publication. The provenance of this article is perhaps not the most appropriate in an academic context but I feel it provides a good sense of the welsh attitude to the Eisteddfods place in welsh culture from the welsh people themselves. It does aim to provide a decently balanced approach to the festival but overall looks on it with a positive light.
It pretty well points out the place it has and how it helps solidify welsh culture and language in the modern era. It doesn’t provide any sources or figures for this which is something I would quite like to find in order to give a more factual/statistical angle to the points I’ll be making in my essay but ultimately its very difficult to measure the security and strength of a language and there are many ways to approach this. It also becomes even harder to pin this to the eisteddfod specifically and so I feel the best thing I can really expect is the word of mouth from the people themselves. I count myself among the welsh people but i am certainly not as in touch with wales as I could be and so articles like this are very helpful in giving a solid source for the kind of thing I want to talk about.