Albert Evans-Jones

Sir (Albert) Cynan Evans-Jones CBE (14 April 1895 – 26 January 1970), more commonly known within Wales by his bardic name of Cynan, was a Welsh poet and dramatist.

Cynan was born in Pwllheli as Albert Evan Jones, the son of Richard Albert Jones and Hannah Jane (née Evans). His father was the proprietor of the Central Restaurant in Penlan Street, Pwllheli. He was educated at Pwllheli Grammar School and the University College of North Wales at Bangor, where he graduated in 1916.

On graduation Cynan joined the Welsh Student Company of the RAMC, serving in Salonika and France, initially as an ambulance man and then as the company's military chaplain. His wartime experience had a profound effect on his poetic works, to such an extent that Alan Llwyd claims that Cynan, not Hedd Wyn, is the premier Welsh war poet of the First World War. Hedd Wyn's poems relating to the war were written before he had enlisted and he was killed before he could recount his experience of the war in his muse. Cynan, however, gives the best descriptions of the gritty atrocities of war, and the impact of war on a man's body as well as his spirit.

After the war, Cynan entered college in Pwllheli to train for the ministry of the Presbyterian Church of Wales. He was ordained at Penmaenmawr, Caernarfonshire, in 1920 where he served as minister until 1931 when he relinquished his calling having been appointed a tutor in the Extramural Department of the University College of North Wales specialising in Drama and Welsh Literature. Despite having given up his ministry Cynan continued to accept regular preaching engagements, and was one of the most popular preachers of his day on the nonconformist preaching circuit in Wales. On 4 June 1923, Cynan was initiated into Freemasonry in Penmaenmawr Lodge No.4417.

Whilst working in the university, Cynan lived in Menai Bridge, Anglesey, but in his best known poem he expressed a wish to retire to Aberdaron, Caernarfonshire,

Pan fwyf yn hen a pharchus
Ac arian yn fy nghod,
A phob beirniadaeth drosodd
A phawb yn canu 'nghlod
Mi brynaf fwthyn unig
Heb ddim o flaen y ddôr.
Ond creigiau Aberdaron
A thonnau gwyllt y môr

When I am old and reverend
With money to my name,
With all my judgments over
Yet basking in my fame:
I'll buy a lonely cottage
With nothing 'fore its door,
But the rocks of Aberdaron
And the ocean's maddened roar.

Apart from being an important figure in Welsh poetic circles Cynan was also influential in the field of Welsh drama. He wrote two full-length plays: Hywel Harris won the premier Eisteddfod prize for drama in 1931. He was commissioned to write an exemplary play for the National Eisteddfod in 1957 – his offering Absolom Fy Mab was accepted to great critical acclaim in Welsh dramatic circles as were his translations of English Language plays John Masefield's Good Friday and Norman Nicholson's The Old Man of the Mountain.