In 1851 he became the first known person ever definitely to expel a Bard permanently from the official company of those initiated at a gorsedd. The victim had committed the sin of accepting a cash prize in an eisteddfod held at Dowlais, site of the Guest family ironworks. Evan Davies declared him ‘excommunicated through the tail of the serpent [of the rocking stone complex], and driven to the brook, and from the brook to the river Taff, and from the river Taff to the sea, and from the sea to the state of evil, and from the state of evil to Annwn, and from Annwn to the water closet of Lucifer’.
