tag:theconversation.com,2011:/global/topics/welsh-culture-36356/articlesWelsh culture – The Conversation2024-01-11T17:16:14Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2112872024-01-11T17:16:14Z2024-01-11T17:16:14ZHedd Wyn: how the life of one of Wales’ most promising poets was cut short by the first world war<p>The names Passchendaele, the Somme and Mametz Wood stand as grim sentinels, forever bound to the unimaginable carnage of the first world war. Almost 500,000 men were killed in three months at Passchendaele, the <a href="https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/what-you-need-to-know-about-the-third-battle-of-ypres-passchendaele#:%7E:text=Casualties%20were%20heavy&text=Casualties%20among%20German%20forces%20were,the%20Third%20Battle%20of%20Ypres.">third battle of Ypres</a>. On the first day of that battle, Wales lost one of its most talented poets. </p>
<p>Born on January 13 1887, Ellis Humphrey Evans was the eldest child of Mary and Evan Evans and one of 11 siblings. He became known by his bardic name, <a href="https://www.ylolfa.com/products/9781784610425/cofiant-hedd-wyn">Hedd Wyn</a> (Blessed Peace). The family lived and worked at a remote farm outside Trawsfynydd in north-west Wales, called <em>Yr Ysgwrn</em>.</p>
<p>Evan Evans bought his son a book on the rules of <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-welsh-developed-their-own-form-of-poetry-73299">strict-metre Welsh verse</a> when Hedd Wyn was 11 years old. He read the book with passion and enthusiasm, and soon mastered the difficult and intricate rules of strict-metre verse, known as <em>cynghanedd</em>.</p>
<p>He wrote his first ever <em>englyn</em> (a short four-lined poem in strict-metre) before his 12th birthday. Soon after, he began competing at local <em>eisteddfodau</em>, Welsh cultural festivals which showcase literary and artistic endeavours.</p>
<p>Hedd Wyn spent most of his short life at home. He received little formal schooling. His education was spasmodic and he was frequently absent from school when the weather was bad, as there was a substantial distance between the school and his home.</p>
<p>Hedd Wyn was an inept farmer and shepherd, but he loved looking after the sheep out on the mountain pastures, though only because the solitude and silence gave him ample opportunity to meditate and to write poetry.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="An old black and white photo of a man wearing a suit." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/567888/original/file-20240104-26-q5itn3.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/567888/original/file-20240104-26-q5itn3.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=896&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567888/original/file-20240104-26-q5itn3.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=896&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567888/original/file-20240104-26-q5itn3.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=896&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567888/original/file-20240104-26-q5itn3.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1127&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567888/original/file-20240104-26-q5itn3.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1127&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567888/original/file-20240104-26-q5itn3.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1127&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Hedd Wyn was 30 years old when he was killed.</span>
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<h2>Conscription</h2>
<p>And then came war. Hedd Wyn’s fate, along with thousands of others, was sealed when parliament passed the <a href="https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1916/104/contents/enacted">Military Service Act</a> in 1916. This new legislation imposed conscription and was aimed at unmarried men or widowers. </p>
<p>Hedd Wyn had no choice but to enlist. He joined the 15th battalion of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers, and by July 1917, he was stationed at Fléchin, a small village in northern France. </p>
<p>He and thousands of other soldiers were to participate in one of the major engagements of the war, the third battle of Ypres, otherwise known as the battle of Passchendaele. British troops were to occupy the village of Pilkem on Pilkem Ridge, and the marshlands to the east of Ypres before advancing towards Langemarck. Capturing the village of Pilkem and Pilkem Ridge, and holding both positions, was one of the main objectives of this enormous campaign. </p>
<p>It was during a period of intense fighting on Iron Cross Ridge on July 31 that Hedd Wyn was mortally wounded. </p>
<h2>The National Eisteddfod</h2>
<p>For a Welsh poet, winning the coveted chair at the <a href="https://eisteddfod.wales">National Eisteddfod</a>, an annual festival celebrating arts, language and culture, represents the <a href="https://blog.library.wales/the-chairing-of-the-bard-3/">pinnacle of achievement</a>. The chair is awarded to the winning entrant in the competition for the <em>awdl</em> – poetry written in strict-metre <em>cynghanedd</em> . A crown is awarded separately to those writing in free verse.</p>
<p>Chairing ceremonies are presided over by the archdruid, who reads the adjudicators’ comments before announcing the nom de plume of the winning bard. Nobody knows the true identity of the poet until the archdruid asks them to stand. </p>
<p>Before enlisting, Hedd Wyn had started working on an <em>awdl</em> for the chair at the 1917 National Eisteddfod. Due to the war, the Eisteddfod that year was held in England, in Birkenhead near Liverpool. Hedd Wyn had almost won the chair the previous year in Aberystwyth.</p>
<p>While stationed in France, he finally completed his <em>awdl</em> titled <em><a href="https://www.library.wales/discover-learn/digital-exhibitions/manuscripts/modern-period/yr-arwr-hedd-wyn">Yr Arwr</a></em> (The Hero) and posted it to Birkenhead under his nom de plume, <em>Fleur-de-lis</em>. He was working on the poem until the last possible minute.</p>
<p>A packed crowd was watching the chairing ceremony in Birkenhead in early September, and among them was the prime minister at the time, David Lloyd George, himself a Welsh speaker. Without knowing he had died of his wounds several weeks earlier, the adjudicators had unanimously awarded the chair to Hedd Wyn. </p>
<p>As is customary, the archdruid called out <em>Fleur-de-lis</em> three times. But nobody stood up. Then he solemnly announced that the poet had been killed in battle six weeks earlier. The empty chair was draped in black in front of an emotional crowd. The 1917 eisteddfod became known as <em>Eisteddfod y Gadair Ddu</em> (the Eisteddfod of the Black Chair). </p>
<h2>Hedd Wyn’s legacy</h2>
<p>A volume of Hedd Wyn’s poetry, entitled <em>Cerddi’r Bugail</em> (The Shepherd’s Verses), was published a year later. The first 1,000 copies were sold in five days. Eventually every copy of the 4,000 first edition was sold. </p>
<p>In 1923, a statue, depicting Hedd Wyn as a shepherd, the work of artist L. S. Merrifield, was unveiled by his mother in Trawsfynydd. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/lAU8frR8GiA?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Hedd Wyn was the first Welsh film to be nominated for best foreign language film at the Oscars in 1993.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>On St David’s Day 2012, Wales’ then first minister, Carwyn Jones, <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-north-west-wales-17221011">announced</a> that Hedd Wyn’s home, <em>Yr Ysgwrn</em>, had been bought for the nation, to secure and safeguard the poet’s legacy. Two years later, it was renovated and turned into a <a href="https://yrysgwrn.com/en/">museum</a> by the Eryri (Snowdonia) National Park.</p>
<p>Hedd Wyn was a highly talented poet who wrote exquisite work. His <em>englyn</em> in memory of his friend, Lieutenant D. O. Evans of Blaenau Ffestiniog, for example, became an elegy for all the young men who had fallen on the killing fields of the Great War: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Ei aberth nid â heibio – ei wyneb</p>
<p>Annwyl nid â'n ango</p>
<p>Er i'r Almaen ystaenio</p>
<p>Ei dwrn dur yn ei waed o.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It can be translated as:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>His sacrifice was not in vain, his dear</p>
<p>Face will always remain,</p>
<p>Although he left a bloodstain</p>
<p>On Germany’s iron fist of pain.</p>
</blockquote>
<hr>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alan Llwyd does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Bard Hedd Wyn was killed in action in France in 1917.Alan Llwyd, Professor of Welsh, Swansea UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2109412023-12-27T09:10:11Z2023-12-27T09:10:11ZHorse skulls and harmony singing – two winter customs which bring people in Wales together<p>Imagine you’re having a quiet evening at home when suddenly there’s a knock on the door. You open it to find a boisterous crowd carrying a horse’s skull mounted on a pole and draped in ribbons – the <em><a href="https://museum.wales/articles/1187/Christmas-Traditions-The-Mari-Lwyd">Mari Lwyd</a></em> has arrived. </p>
<p>The <em>Mari Lwyd</em>, meaning “grey (or pale) mare”, is a Christmas and new year custom in areas of south Wales dating back to the 18th century. A horse’s skull is placed on a pole and covered in a white sheet, decorated with ribbons. A person, concealed under the sheet, carries the pole and operates the horse’s jaw, making it snap. A group of stock characters accompany them including Sergeant, Merryman, Punch and Judy. </p>
<p>The procession goes from house to house and the group sing verses asking for admittance. The household is expected to respond, also in verse. And so begins a (sometimes very long) improvised poetic contest or rhyming ritual known as <em>pwnco</em> before the group is finally invited into the house and offered food and drink.</p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/AcvvWcDLagY?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The Mari Lwyd goes from door to door but would you let her in?</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Several explanations have been proposed as to the origin of the custom. Some argue that its roots lie in a pre-Christian fertility <a href="http://www.folkwales.org.uk/mari.html">ritual</a>. Others have argued that the <em>Mari Lwyd</em> has associations with the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2791759">Virgin Mary</a>. </p>
<p>The custom is clearly connected to the practice of <a href="https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/discover/history/art-collections/wassailing-ritual-and-revelry#">wassailing</a>, where groups of merrymakers go from one house to another asking for food and drink. It may be linked to other folk performances found elsewhere in Britain and Ireland, including the <a href="https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100300697">hobby-horse</a> tradition. </p>
<h2>Plygain</h2>
<p>Further north, a tradition celebrated in Montgomeryshire, where I was brought up, is much less colourful and firmly located within a religious context. Deriving from the Latin “pullicantio” (cock crow), the <em><a href="https://museum.wales/articles/1185/Christmas-Traditions-Plygain-Singing/">plygain</a></em> (pronounced “plug-ine”), was an early-morning service originally held on Christmas Day in parish churches and then also in nonconformist chapels, beginning in candlelight and continuing into daylight. </p>
<p>It is now mainly an evening service, although some stalwarts still adhere to the early morning tradition. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">A trio singing plygain.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>After a congregational hymn, a reading and a prayer, the vicar or minister will announce, “<em>Mae’r blygien yn awr yn agored</em>” (the plygain is now open). There is no programme; rather, a party of singers will get up and make their way to the chancel or the <em>sêt fawr</em> (the elder’s pew in a chapel), and sing a carol, unaccompanied and with no conductor. </p>
<p>These are often from the same family and with an ancient pedigree, their frayed carol books (usually old notebooks) having been passed down through the generations. A tuning fork is often used to pitch the tune – I’ve even seen it struck against a singer’s tooth. </p>
<p>The carols would often have been composed by local poets and sung to popular tunes of the time. They do not describe solely the birth of Christ and frequently focus on the crucifixion. Often very long, they are usually sung in three-part harmonies. </p>
<p>The <em>plygain</em> ends with the spine-chilling sound of <em><a href="http://daibach-welldigger.blogspot.com/2020/12/welsh-carols-15-carol-y-swper.html">Carol y Swper</a></em> (the Supper Carol), when all the men in the congregation come forward to sing. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Carol y Swper performed at a church in Montgomeryshire.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Revival and reinvention</h2>
<p>In the 1960s, the <a href="https://museum.wales/stfagans/">St Fagans National Museum of History</a>, or the Welsh Folk Museum as it was then known, began <a href="https://museum.wales/collections/folksongs/?action=background">collecting</a> different genres of Welsh folk songs. These included <em>plygain</em> carols and <em>Mari Lwyd</em> verses. This has helped to renew interest in both traditions. </p>
<p>The museum hosts annual <em>Mari Lwyd</em> <a href="https://museum.wales/stfagans/whatson/12104/Christmas-Traditions-The-Mari-Lwyd-Performances">performances</a>, while many a Cardiff pub-goer will likely be startled by the sudden appearance of a snapping horse’s skull. The practice has evolved over time – visits can be pre-arranged, participants will sing from song sheets, the <em>Mari</em> may even be made of cardboard. In fact, anything goes.</p>
<p>Today, the <em>Mari</em> (in various guises) is thriving, and can be found as far afield as the USA and <a href="https://www.facebook.com/welshzombiechristmashorse/">Australia</a>. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1477386261761564672"}"></div></p>
<p>The <em>plygain</em> is still going strong in Montgomeryshire and, indeed, all over Wales and beyond. Around 50 <a href="https://plygain.org/dyddiadur.htm">services</a> are held during December and January. </p>
<p>And this tradition, too, has undergone many changes. Several collections of <em>plygain</em> songs have by now been published enabling new carollers to participate. </p>
<p>In 2020 and 2021, a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yifxPBea1f0">virtual</a> <em>plygain</em> took place during the pandemic. A bilingual <em>plygain</em> <a href="https://www.plygain.org/home.htm">website</a> has also been set up and a new carol composed specifically for women’s voices, so that women, too, have their <em>Carol y Swper</em>. </p>
<p>Purists would argue that traditions should not be revived and re-invented. But it is in the nature of traditions to change and constantly evolve – they must do so in order to survive. </p>
<p>We should continue to celebrate the modern-day versions of the <em>Mari Lwyd</em> tradition and the <em>plygain</em> because they contribute to a shared sense of identity and instil in participants a sense of belonging.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/210941/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sioned Davies does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The Mari Lwyd and the plygain are two prominent Welsh traditions celebrated over Christmas and the new year.Sioned Davies, Emeritus Professor of Welsh, Cardiff UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2119402023-11-27T13:48:37Z2023-11-27T13:48:37ZBooker prize: rediscovering the first female winner, the often-forgotten Bernice Rubens<p>One of the most captivating and enigmatic novelists of the 20th century, Bernice Rubens remains largely unknown despite her remarkable literary achievements. She was the <a href="https://thebookerprizes.com/the-booker-library/books/the-elected-member">second recipient</a> of the Booker prize in 1970 for her novel <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/The_Elected_Member/V1vODwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0">The Elected Member</a> and its first female winner. </p>
<p>She remains the only Welsh winner in the history of the prize – a fact that perhaps speaks volumes for the way Welsh writing in the English language is perceived and recognised outside of Wales. </p>
<p>Rubens was born in the working class area of Adamsdown in Cardiff in 1923, to Polish and Lithuanian Jewish immigrants. She attended the University College of South Wales and Monmouthshire, Cardiff (now Cardiff University), where she received a BA in English in 1947. Having taught English and worked on documentary films early on in her career, she only started writing at the age of 30. </p>
<p>Rubens went on to publish more than 20 novels and one work of non-fiction before her death in 2004, but still <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/2004/oct/14/guardianobituaries.books">referred</a> to her own writing as merely “better than most, not as good as some”. </p>
<p>This wry view underplays just how versatile her style and subject matter was, however. And while Rubens was well known and applauded during her lifetime, her work, like so many other Welsh women, is often unknown outside of Welsh university circles, some English literature degrees and more adventurous book clubs. </p>
<p>Some of this relates, perhaps, to the fact that she never really fitted into the Cardiff literary scene and was often overshadowed by some of her contemporaries, especially Welsh poet, <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/dannie-abse">Dannie Abse</a>. </p>
<p>But as a working class Welsh-Jewish writer, her ability to unflinchingly explore the traumas and legacies of her own cultural heritage makes her writing especially memorable and haunting. </p>
<h2>Cultural background</h2>
<p>In The Elected Member, Rubens looks at how the façade of a respectable Jewish family crumbles when their beloved son plunges into the depths of drug addiction.</p>
<p>Her 1983 novel, <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Brothers/eM_fD3_TOuAC?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=Brothers+Bernice+Rubens&dq=Brothers+Bernice+Rubens&printsec=frontcover">Brothers</a>, explores the experiences of four generations of a family as they face the Tsarist army in Russia in the 1830s, the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/20101343">1871 Odessa pogrom</a> in Ukraine, emigration (to both Wales and Germany) and concentration camps. </p>
<p>The novel exemplifies the worst of human behaviour in relation to marginalised and persecuted people. But it also underlines the need for human connection and, ultimately, hope. No one who reads Brothers could walk away from the experience unchanged. </p>
<p>From a Welsh perspective, her 1975 novel, <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/I_Sent_a_Letter_to_My_Love/tBP9DwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=I+Sent+A+Letter+to+My+Love+Bernice+Rubens&printsec=frontcover">I Sent A Letter to My Love</a>, is one of Rubens’ most disturbing and strangely poignant works. Set in the “one-eyed” seaside town of Porthcawl, the novel follows the struggles of unmarried, middle-aged Amy and her disabled brother, Stan, and their close friend, Gwyneth, as they live out their tedious existences. </p>
<p>Much of the novel’s action revolves around the drama that ensues from Amy placing an advert in the personal column of the local newspaper under the pseudonym “Blodwyn Pugh”. Instead of receiving an overwhelming postbag of suitors, Amy receives a single reply –- from her brother, Stan.</p>
<p>Their letter writing becomes increasingly sexual, until Stan starts to develop feelings for Gwyneth. This willingness to confront the quasi-incestuous nature of the siblings’ relationship (albeit unknowing, at least on Stan’s side), is one of the reasons Rubens’ work is so discomfiting. It refuses to be easily labelled or contained in a genre or style. </p>
<p>The novel was later made into a French film, <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082182/">Chère Inconnue</a>, in 1982, starring Simone Signoret and Jean Rochefort, which also plays on the novel’s disturbing central plot. </p>
<h2>Defying genre</h2>
<p>Overall, Rubens’ fictions are hybrid and sit between different cultural identities. They are impossible to neatly pigeonhole. Indeed, critics like <a href="https://www.encyclopedia.com/education/news-wires-white-papers-and-books/rubens-bernice-ruth">Hana Sambrook</a> have referred to the “maddening” refusal of her writing to fit neatly into a single category. </p>
<p>However, this refusal to fit is exactly why Rubens is so important. Why should she fit neatly into any category? Why do we put so much value on genre and style being so precisely categorised? </p>
<p>Readers today will find much of Rubens’ back catalogue available second hand. But only a single novel, I Sent A Letter to My Love, has been incorporated into the <a href="https://www.parthianbooks.com/collections/library-of-wales">Library of Wales</a> series from publisher Parthian Books, which aims to republish significant works of classic Welsh literature in English.</p>
<p>Rubens sits alongside a small handful of other women writers in the collection, including <a href="https://www.parthianbooks.com/collections/library-of-wales/products/in-and-out-of-the-goldfish">Rachel Trezise</a>, <a href="https://www.parthianbooks.com/collections/library-of-wales/products/rhapsody">Dorothy Edwards</a>, <a href="https://www.parthianbooks.com/collections/library-of-wales/products/the-battle-to-the-weak">Hilda Vaughan</a> and <a href="https://www.parthianbooks.com/collections/library-of-wales/products/turf-or-stone">Margiad Evans</a>. </p>
<p>Perhaps the way we immortalise our own cultural history in Wales is part of the reason why working-class women writers such as Rubens are yet to reach a wider audience, beyond the popularity of their day. </p>
<p>However, even more importantly in my view, it lies with the failure of prominent prizes to fully recognise Welsh women’s contribution to literary history. Sadly, it’s a failure that seems unlikely to be overturned any time soon.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/211940/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michelle Deininger is a member of the Green Party. </span></em></p>Bernice Rubens won the 1970 Booker prize for her novel, The Elected Member, and is the only Welsh person to have ever won the prize.Michelle Deininger, Senior Co-ordinating Lecturer in Humanities, Cardiff UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2109392023-10-30T12:11:30Z2023-10-30T12:11:30ZNos Galan Gaeaf: the traditional Welsh celebration being eclipsed by modern Halloween<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555331/original/file-20231023-27-3fyhsc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C6016%2C3998&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Nos Galan Gaeaf on October 31 is followed by Calan Gaeaf on November 1 in Wales. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/sheep-cow-animal-skull-on-abandon-2353014109">PBabic/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Children throughout Wales will be dressed in witch or ghost costumes come October 31, going from door to door, chorusing “trick or treat” in the hope of receiving sweets. In other words, the scene will be very much like that encountered at Halloween in the rest of the UK. </p>
<p>On posters advertising Halloween events in Wales, the word Halloween is rendered in Welsh as <a href="https://museum.wales/blog/1857/Halloween-Traditions/"><em>Nos Galan Gaeaf</em></a>. A <a href="https://nation.cymru/news/call-to-ditch-anglo-american-halloween-and-restore-welsh-traditions/">common complaint</a> is that traditional customs at this time of year have been eclipsed by an increasingly homogenised and commercialised event imported from the USA. </p>
<p>But how would Welsh people have celebrated <em>Nos Galan Gaeaf</em> in former centuries? What is its origin? And has it always been intrinsically linked to Halloween?</p>
<h2>October 31 celebrations</h2>
<p>Halloween has its <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/All-Saints-Day">origins</a> in AD609 or AD610 when the Pantheon in Rome was converted to a place of Christian worship and dedicated to Mary and to all the martyrs by Pope Boniface IV, who ordered an anniversary to be celebrated. </p>
<p>In the eighth century, the date of the celebration at the Basilica of St. Peter was fixed on November 1. This was extended by Gregory IV in the early ninth century to the whole church. </p>
<p>This celebration was known in English as “All Hallows Day”, and thus the eve is Halloween. It is quite plausible that there was already a seasonal festival of some sort at this date and that some of the features of this festival were transferred to Halloween.</p>
<p>A common <a href="https://blogs.loc.gov/headlinesandheroes/2021/10/the-origins-of-halloween-traditions/#:%7E:text=Yet%2C%20the%20Halloween%20holiday%20has,costumes%20to%20ward%20off%20ghosts.">claim</a> is that Halloween is essentially Celtic. It is true that Gaelic-speaking places (Ireland, Gaelic Scotland and the Isle of Man) celebrated, at this time, a festival called <em><a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Samhain">Samhain</a></em>, references to which abound in early medieval Irish <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=tXEyEAAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PT8&dq=medieval+irish+samhain&ots=7srml1iSDo&sig=cZXC5ybD81Yu1vJAreNFi34Q1RI&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=medieval%20irish%20samhain&f=false">literature</a>. It was presented as a time of uncanny events and otherworldly visitations. </p>
<p>The name <em>Samhain</em> is often mispronounced by non-Gaelic speakers as “Sam Hain”. But it is actually closer, in modern Irish pronunciation, to “sow won” (sow as in female pig). </p>
<p>However, while Welsh is also a Celtic language, there is no evidence for <em>Samhain</em> having been celebrated in Wales – so, it could well be a Gaelic rather than a Celtic institution. The oft-repeated <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/halloween-owes-its-tricks-and-treats-celtic-new-years-eve-180960944/">claim</a> that it signifies the start of the Celtic year is based on the speculation of comparative mythologists.</p>
<p>The name <em>Nos Galan Gaeaf</em> certainly does not go back to a prehistoric period of Celtic linguistic unity. The word <a href="https://geiriadur.ac.uk/gpc/gpc.html"><em>calan</em></a> is borrowed from the Latin <em>calends</em>, meaning “the first day of the month”, while <em>gaeaf</em> means “winter”. </p>
<p>So we can think of it as “the winter calends”, or “the first day of winter”. <em>Calan</em> was one of hundreds of Latin loan words that entered the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Brythonic-languages">Brittonic</a> language, the ancestor of the Welsh language, during the period in which Britain was part of the Roman Empire. </p>
<p>There is, however, an element of the name which does have Celtic ancestry. <em>Calan Gaeaf</em> on its own is November 1, but <em>Nos Galan Gaeaf</em> (the “night of the winter calends”), is the night before. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.02.0001">Julius Caesar</a> said of the Celtic-speaking Gauls (who inhabited what is now France and Belgium), that they counted the day to begin on the previous evening. This is reflected in <a href="https://celt.ucc.ie">medieval Irish</a>, where the term <em>aidche Lúain</em> means “the night before Monday” – what we would call Sunday night. This is merely a linguistic fossil, however, and does not prove anything about the antiquity of <em>Nos Galan Gaeaf</em>.</p>
<p>There are medieval references to it, for example, in poetry from the <a href="https://www.library.wales/discover-learn/digital-exhibitions/manuscripts/the-middle-ages/the-black-book-of-carmarthen">Black Book of Carmarthen</a>, a collection of early Welsh poems and manuscripts. <em>Calan Gaeaf</em> is also mentioned in the <a href="https://www.library.wales/discover-learn/digital-exhibitions/manuscripts/the-middle-ages/laws-of-hywel-dda#:%7E:text=The%20%27Laws%20of%20Hywel%20Dda,quarter%20of%20the%2013th%20century.">early Welsh laws</a>, detailed in 13th-century manuscripts, but those references are disappointingly prosaic. </p>
<p>And, it is only in the modern period that we have <a href="https://archive.org/details/in.gov.ignca.29074/page/n5/mode/2up">references</a> to <em>Nos Galan Gaeaf</em> customs, exhaustively catalogued in the 20th century by the historian, Trefor M. Owen.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A spooky black and white forest with twisted trees." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555615/original/file-20231024-23-xeucjm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555615/original/file-20231024-23-xeucjm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555615/original/file-20231024-23-xeucjm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555615/original/file-20231024-23-xeucjm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555615/original/file-20231024-23-xeucjm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555615/original/file-20231024-23-xeucjm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555615/original/file-20231024-23-xeucjm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Beware the lurking Hwch Ddu Gwta and the Ladi Wen.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/spooky-wooodland-scene-twisted-trees-black-619428050">bearacreative/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Spooky customs</h2>
<p>How people <a href="https://museum.wales/blog/1857/Halloween-Traditions/">celebrated</a> varied significantly from region to region. Many, such as bobbing for apples, and various types of divination to determine who will marry who, are far from unique to Wales. Nonetheless, some have an unfamiliar twist. </p>
<p>In south Wales, parties of young people would maraud from door to door like modern trick or treaters. In Glamorgan, boys would wear women’s clothing. Much more sinister were the <em>gwrachod</em> (meaning “witches” or “hags”) of Powys though. These were men who would go about in pairs, dressed as an old man and old woman, or in gangs dressed in sheep skins and masks, drinking heavily and demanding gifts.</p>
<p>The lighting of a bonfire, or <em>coelcerth</em>, was a notable feature too. Close to the fires, people would be safe from wandering spirits, but the return home could be a fraught business. In the darkness lurked the <em><a href="https://www.peoplescollection.wales/items/606778">Hwch Ddu Gwta</a></em> (tail-less black sow) accompanied by the <em><a href="https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100047409">Ladi Wen</a> heb ddim pen</em> (the white lady without a head). </p>
<p>If you want to stand out from the crowd of mummies and vampires this October 31, you could do worse than dressing as one of these gruesome characters instead.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/210939/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Simon Rodway does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Nos Galan Gaeaf on October 31 in Wales is steeped in folklore and tradition.Simon Rodway, Lecturer in Celtic Studies, Aberystwyth UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2125632023-10-26T16:41:46Z2023-10-26T16:41:46ZFive works of Welsh gothic literature you should read this Halloween<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555845/original/file-20231025-21-tg409h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=60%2C0%2C6720%2C4446&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Celebrate Nos Galan Gaeaf with some Welsh gothic fiction. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/stack-old-books-vintage-book-on-1870101415">zef art/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Wales has sought to rediscover its identity and autonomy since the <a href="https://senedd.wales/how-we-work/history-of-devolution/">devolution</a> referendum of 1997. Authors and publishers have embraced the gothic genre as a means of exploring Welsh language, culture and heritage – reflecting on the anxieties Welsh society has experienced since becoming a devolved nation. </p>
<p>Halloween (or <em><a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/articles/zbkdcqt">Nos Galan Gaeaf</a></em>, as we say in Wales) presents the perfect opportunity for us to explore these social tensions through the macabre.</p>
<p>Here are five eerie works of Welsh literature for you to catch up with this spooky season. </p>
<h2>Ghostbird by Carol Lovekin (2016)</h2>
<p>In a little Welsh village filled with magic, Cadi Hopkins is on a mission to find herself and learn the truth about what happened to her father and sister. But it’s not long before ghosts appear, and Cadi and her mother learn they have to confront their fears. </p>
<p>Inspired by <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Mabinogion">Welsh mythology</a>, <a href="https://www.honno.co.uk/books/ghostbird">Ghostbird</a> by Carol Lovekin has the perfect balance of ghost story and magical realism. Lovekin explores themes of identity, mother-daughter relationships, female empowerment and Welsh culture. Think the fantasy film <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120791/">Practical Magic</a> meets Wales.</p>
<h2>Dead Relatives and Other Stories by Lucie McKnight Hardy (2021)</h2>
<p>In the opening story of this <a href="https://deadinkbooks.com/product/dead-relatives/">collection</a> of short stories, Iris, a young girl, resides in a big country house with her mother and their servants. But when the Ladies arrive, Iris’ dead relatives begin to stir.</p>
<p>This latest work by Lucie McKnight Hardy deals with themes of motherhood, small town anxieties and weird traditions. It’s the perfect option for those who may not have time to read a whole novel. </p>
<h2>The Great God Pan by Arthur Machen (1894)</h2>
<p>Hoping to unlock the secret of seeing the spiritual world, Clarke witnesses Dr Raymond’s experiment on a young girl’s mind, which leaves her insane. Years later, Clarke realises that similar strange events seem to be happening and a young woman, Helen Vaughan, appears to be at the centre of it. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555858/original/file-20231025-30-djpq8s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555858/original/file-20231025-30-djpq8s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=966&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555858/original/file-20231025-30-djpq8s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=966&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555858/original/file-20231025-30-djpq8s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=966&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555858/original/file-20231025-30-djpq8s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1214&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555858/original/file-20231025-30-djpq8s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1214&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555858/original/file-20231025-30-djpq8s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1214&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Title_page--The_great_god_Pan.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
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<p>Originally published in 1894, Arthur Machen’s novella may be one that you’ve previously read. Nevertheless, its connection with Wales has historically been overlooked, possibly due to the author’s own internal conflict with his Welsh identity. </p>
<p>Edited and re-released in 2018, <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/The_Great_God_Pan_and_Other_Horror_Stori/CMBEDwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=The+Great+God+Pan+by+Arthur+Machen&printsec=frontcover">The Great God Pan</a> explores themes of the occult, sexuality, insanity and experimentation. It’s an ideal read for people who like traditional 19th-century horror. </p>
<h2>The Library Suicides by Fflur Dafydd (2023)</h2>
<p>Lost and grieving their mother’s death, twins Ana and Nan plan their revenge against the man they believe is responsible: the literary critic Eben. Trapped within the National Library of Wales, Ana and Nan have Eben exactly where they want him, until the plan starts to go awry. </p>
<p>This novel is an English language re-visioning of Fflur Dafydd’s 2009 Welsh language novel, <a href="https://www.ylolfa.com/products/9781847711694/y-llyfrgell">Y Llyfrgell</a>, which was also made into an award-winning <a href="https://ffilmcymruwales.com/our-work/y-llyfrgell-library-suicides">film</a> in 2016. </p>
<p>The Library Suicides is part psychological thriller and dystopian gothic fiction, which deals with themes of literature, complex identities and bereavement. And all this is set against the backdrop of the grand library in Aberystwyth.</p>
<h2>Stranger Within The Gates: A Collection of Short Stories by Bertha Thomas (1912)</h2>
<p>This collection opens with a young Englishwoman arriving in Wales. Soon, she meets her new landlady, Mrs Trinaman, who recalls the extraordinary tale of her former life as the local madwoman, Winifred Owen.</p>
<p><a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Stranger_Within_the_Gates.html?id=hWgfAQAAIAAJ&redir_esc=y">Stranger Within The Gates</a> was re-published in 2008 as part of a classics series by <a href="https://www.honno.co.uk">Honno Welsh Women’s Press</a> that aims to rediscover lost Welsh women writers. Bertha Thomas’ short stories examine social changes, women’s rights, hybridity and the significance of “the other”. This is a great read for those who love both satire and the gothic. </p>
<p>The collection also includes Thomas’ pro-suffrage article from 1874, Latest Intelligence from the Planet Venus.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><em>Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/newsletters/something-good-156">Sign up here</a>.</em></p>
<hr><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/212563/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sophie Jessica Davies does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>These five works of Welsh gothic literature will not only help you explore Wales through the macabre but are likely to give you a good scare too.Sophie Jessica Davies, PhD Candidate and Part-time Teacher, Aberystwyth UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2039512023-04-19T13:53:15Z2023-04-19T13:53:15ZThe long history of Bannau Brycheiniog – the true name of the Brecon Beacons for centuries<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/521633/original/file-20230418-1223-oh543t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=38%2C0%2C4273%2C2827&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Brecon Beacons National Park is now officially only known by its native Welsh name. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/brecon-beacons-sun-rising-over-pen-210410398">Mel Manser Photography/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>You can also read <a href="https://theconversation.com/hanes-cyfoethog-bannau-brycheiniog-203964">this article in Welsh</a>.</em></p>
<p>On its 66th birthday, <a href="https://bannau.wales">Bannau Brycheiniog National Park</a> launched a new <a href="https://bannau.wales/the-authority/press-and-news/press-releases/april-2023/brecon-beacons-national-park-reclaims-its-welsh-name/">management plan</a> seeking to combat its greatest challenges: the nature and climate emergencies. This plan includes projects to plant trees, protect endangered species and their habitats, and improve the quality of its rivers. </p>
<p>But despite the best efforts of a promotional video featuring the actor Michael Sheen, another aspect of the plan has <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-65274952">generated most interest</a>. From now on, the national park will use only its Welsh name, Bannau Brycheiniog, rather than Brecon Beacons. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/CLP3yh_XSo4?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Michael Sheen describes Bannau Brycheiniog as ‘a name from our past, to take us into our future’.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In reality, little has changed. Bannau Brycheiniog was always the Welsh name for the park, used since it was established in 1957. Indeed, the first person to refer to Bannau Brycheiniog in writing was the poet and antiquary <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/John-Leland">John Leland</a>, who lived during the first half of the 16th century.</p>
<p>Leland was an avid traveller and undertook several trips around Wales and England. He took detailed notes of what he saw, heard and learned. One of his trips took him to the mountains of south Wales and he described the mountain, Pen-y-Fan, in his notes. Leland wrote that that there were many “diverse hilles” and together they were called “Banne Brekeniauc” (sic).</p>
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<img alt="A stone with a plaque on it which reads " src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/521640/original/file-20230418-20-6j3u4h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/521640/original/file-20230418-20-6j3u4h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521640/original/file-20230418-20-6j3u4h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521640/original/file-20230418-20-6j3u4h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521640/original/file-20230418-20-6j3u4h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521640/original/file-20230418-20-6j3u4h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521640/original/file-20230418-20-6j3u4h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Pen-y-Fan is the highest summit in south Wales.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/sign-marking-peak-pen-y-fan-1707274690">Edd Mitchell/Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>In Welsh, <em>bannau</em> is the plural of <em>ban</em>, which means “summit” or “peak”, and is a common name for “mountain”. We can see several mountains so-named in the national park today, including Pen-y-Fan, Fan Fawr and Fan Hir. Around Leland’s time, we often see references to <em>Y Fan</em> (a single mountain) and <em>Y Bannau</em> (a collection of mountains). These names are common and it is often difficult to know precisely which mountains are being described. </p>
<h2>Poetry</h2>
<p>For other examples, we can turn to the work of the Welsh poets. In the 15th century, Ieuan Llawdden composed <a href="https://adnoddau.s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/Beirdd/31+Gwaith+Llawdden.pdf"><em>Moliant Brycheiniog</em></a> (In Praise of Brycheiniog). As its title suggests, the poem is a celebration of Brycheiniog’s rivers, trees, saints, inhabitants and mountains. The poem encompasses the region “<em>o’r Fan hyd ar Y Fenni</em>” (“from the Fan as far as Y Fenni”). </p>
<p>In an elegy composed in the 16th century, Lewys Morgannwg writes that everywhere is sad <a href="https://adnoddau.s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/Beirdd/27+Gwaith+Lewys+Morgannwg.pdf">“<em>o Hafren i’r Bannau</em>”</a> (“from the Severn to the Bannau”). </p>
<p>And a poem by a bard known as Y Nant (the Stream) from the 15th century includes a reference to <a href="https://adnoddau.s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/Beirdd/40+Gwaith+y+Nant.pdf"><em>“tu yma i’r Banne”</em></a> (“this side of the Bannau”). We don’t know the poet’s real name or anything about them, but their poems are full of references to the people and places of Brycheiniog. </p>
<p>These were poets not cartographers, of course, writing poems not designing maps. We shouldn’t expect them to have described the location of each and every name they mention specifically. But there is clearly a tradition of referring to the mountains of Brycheiniog as <em>Y Bannau</em>.</p>
<h2>A medieval kingdom</h2>
<p>Brycheiniog was a medieval kingdom in south-east Wales. It was common to add <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/25509590?saml_data=eyJzYW1sVG9rZW4iOiIyOTU1ZDhhZi1hMmY4LTRmN2YtODkwYi1jMGZkNGY0N2RkODciLCJpbnN0aXR1dGlvbklkcyI6WyI5OTE5YmNmYi1mOWYwLTRlYTktYmEzNi0wNzMwOTQxODcyMzciXX0">suffixes such as <em>-iog</em> or <em>-ion</em></a> to a personal name to indicate “the people of”, “the descendants of”, or “the territory held by”. We see this in the contemporary county of Ceredigion, which is the personal name Ceredig with the suffix <em>-ion</em>, and in Brycheiniog, with the personal name Brychan and the suffix <em>-iog</em>. </p>
<p><a href="https://biography.wales/article/s-BRYC-APA-0419">Brychan</a> was a 5th- or 6th-century king who, according to medieval lore, came from Ireland. He was also allegedly the father of tens of children, many of them saints, including the Welsh patron saint of love, <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-st-dwynwen-wrongly-became-known-as-the-welsh-valentine-71520">Dwynwen</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Mist hangs over a calm lake. On the other side of the shore is a triangular construction." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/521674/original/file-20230418-26-l2sxgr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/521674/original/file-20230418-26-l2sxgr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521674/original/file-20230418-26-l2sxgr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521674/original/file-20230418-26-l2sxgr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521674/original/file-20230418-26-l2sxgr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521674/original/file-20230418-26-l2sxgr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521674/original/file-20230418-26-l2sxgr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A view of Llyn Syfaddan and its crannog, built by the king of Brycheiniog.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/llangorse-lake-crannog-island-morning-mist-1947174256">Robert Harding/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It must be stressed that these are later stories – we don’t know anything for sure about the historical Brychan. But there is evidence of Irish influence on the land of Brycheiniog in the middle ages. For example, there are a number of stones inscribed with <a href="https://www.historytoday.com/story-ogham">ogham</a>, an alphabet used for writing Irish, and these include Irish names.</p>
<p>In the 10th century, the king of Brycheiniog constructed a <em>crannog</em> (artificial island) on <a href="https://museum.wales/articles/1350/The-Palace-in-the-Lake/">Llyn Syfaddan (Llan-gors Lake)</a>. This is the only example of a medieval crannog in Wales, but they are common in Ireland and Scotland. Whatever Brychan’s history, it is likely that real connections with Ireland inspired the stories about his Irish background.</p>
<h2>Reclamation</h2>
<p>The loss of Welsh place-names is a matter of <a href="https://theconversation.com/welsh-place-names-are-being-erased-and-so-are-the-stories-they-tell-197832#:%7E:text=The%20decision%20to%20use%20Eryri,to%20use%20the%20Welsh%20names.">increasing concern</a>. As early as the 12th century, the cleric, historian and traveller <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Giraldus-Cambrensis">Gerald of Wales</a> complained that the place name Llanddewi Nant Honddu was being corrupted to Llanthony. </p>
<p>More recently, groups such as the <a href="https://www.cymdeithasenwaulleoedd.cymru/en/">Welsh Place-Name Society</a> have been working tirelessly to protect Welsh names. Bannau Brycheiniog follows <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-63649930">Eryri</a> as the second national park to commit to using only its Welsh version. </p>
<p>And it isn’t just a matter of language either. The park feels the name Bannau Brycheiniog is “more in keeping with its Welsh heritage”. But amid both nature and climate emergencies, much more must be done to protect this precious place and its rich history.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/203951/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rebecca Thomas is Bannau Brycheiniog National Park's Welsh writer in residence (2022/3). </span></em></p>The mountain range in south Wales is now officially only known by its native Welsh-language nameRebecca Thomas, Lecturer in Medieval History, Cardiff UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1978282023-02-13T16:37:25Z2023-02-13T16:37:25Z100 years of the BBC in Wales: an uneasy start and unclear future<p>Three months after the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/historyofthebbc/timelines/">BBC’s first transmission from London</a>, public service broadcasting in Wales began at 5.00pm on February 13 1923. The small studio above a cinema in the centre of Cardiff also served audiences in the west of England. This may explain the very limited amount of Welsh language material broadcast at the outset.</p>
<p>To ensure the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/British-Broadcasting-Corporation">British Broadcasting Company</a>, as it was then known, was in no doubt about the existence of the native language and culture of Wales, <a href="https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/search/archives/755550d6-e5e4-3448-a161-d220d4a48103">Cylch Dewi</a> (a group of cultural nationalists) <a href="https://academic.oup.com/manchester-scholarship-online/book/24026/chapter-abstract/185414557?redirectedFrom=fulltext">arranged</a> the first wireless broadcast of a Welsh-language religious service from Swansea on February 22 1925. By the mid-1920s, they were producing programmes of their own for the BBC, following consultations with E.R. Appleton, Cardiff’s station director. </p>
<p>Concerns about the effect of the wireless on life in Wales, however, were widespread in the early years of broadcasting. In 1927, a report commissioned by the Welsh Board of Education, entitled <a href="http://www.educationengland.org.uk/documents/wales1927/index.html#03%E2%80%8B">Welsh in Education and Life</a>, was published. It contained a damning attack on the BBC:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Wireless is achieving the complete Anglicisation of the intellectual life of the nation. We regard the present policy of the British Broadcasting Corporation as one of the most serious menaces to the life of the Welsh language.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The BBC’s regional scheme had been devised by Peter Eckersley, the BBC’s chief engineer and Sir John Reith, the corporation’s director general. It included Wales as part of the so-called “west region”. This uneasy marriage with Bristol and the west of England from 1930 onward resulted in increased pressure from many parts of Welsh society (most notably the University of Wales and local authorities) for the BBC to recognise Wales as a nation with its own cultural and linguistic needs. </p>
<p>In 1932, one correspondent writing in the Plaid Cymru newsletter, Y Ddraig Goch, <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=mb2rDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT37&lpg=PT37&dq=%22The+majority+of+the+material+broadcast+is+alien+to+our+traditions,+damaging+to+our+culture,+and+is+a+grave+danger+to+everything+special+in+our+civilisation%22&source=bl&ots=t6XNYhV1im&sig=ACfU3U1Ew_mrw0xyThoW3AbtD9uKBU3SAA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiJnYHkx5L9AhX6QUEAHSueDlkQ6AF6BAgJEAM#v=onepage&q=%22The%20majority%20of%20the%20material%20broadcast%20is%20alien%20to%20our%20traditions%2C%20damaging%20to%20our%20culture%2C%20and%20is%20a%20grave%20danger%20to%20everything%20special%20in%20our%20civilisation%22&f=false">stated</a>: “The majority of the material broadcast is alien to our traditions, damaging to our culture, and is a grave danger to everything special in our civilisation.”</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1625074882877825024"}"></div></p>
<p>With the opening of the Penmon transmitter on Anglesey in the north of Wales in February 1937, the corporation fully acknowledged Wales as a separate “region”. The <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Broadcasting_and_the_BBC_in_Wales/R7kVAQAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0&bsq=broadcasting%20and%20the%20bbc%20in%20wales">historian John Davies argued</a> the establishment of the “Welsh region” was an important concession to nationalist sentiment. He compared it with the <a href="https://law.gov.wales/ecclesiastical-law-and-church-wales">disestablishment of the Church in Wales</a> from the Church of England in 1920. These events enhanced a sense of nationhood and a belonging to an entity called “Wales”.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="A graphic featuring the text " src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509749/original/file-20230213-3390-uhtmw5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509749/original/file-20230213-3390-uhtmw5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509749/original/file-20230213-3390-uhtmw5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509749/original/file-20230213-3390-uhtmw5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509749/original/file-20230213-3390-uhtmw5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509749/original/file-20230213-3390-uhtmw5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509749/original/file-20230213-3390-uhtmw5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Amgueddfa Cymru/National Museum Wales</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>John Davies <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Broadcasting_and_the_BBC_in_Wales/R7kVAQAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0&bsq=broadcasting%20and%20the%20bbc%20in%20wales">also argued</a> the establishment of the Welsh region had wider repercussions: “In the history of BBC broadcasting in Wales, the importance of the victory won in sound radio can scarcely be exaggerated. All the subsequent recognition of Wales in the field of broadcasting (and, it could be argued, in other fields also) stemmed from that victory.” </p>
<p>From this point onward, the BBC played a major part in Welsh life. It informed, educated and entertained in Welsh and English, initially on radio and then, from 1952, on television. </p>
<p>The creation of BBC Cymru Wales came in February 1964 as a result of the <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/37146240_%27You_Say_A_Minority_Sir_We_Say_A_Nation%27_The_Pilkington_Committee_on_Broadcasting_1960-2_and_Wales">report of the Pilkington committee</a> on broadcasting. This was a government-appointed committee that considered the future of broadcasting in the UK. It laid the foundation for a regular television service in Wales. Ultimately, it led to the creation of national radio stations Radio Wales and Radio Cymru in the late 1970s, which continue to broadcast to this day. </p>
<h2>Future</h2>
<p>In December 2022, the <a href="https://museum.wales/cardiff/whatson/11771/BBC-100-in-Wales/">BBC 100 in Wales exhibition</a> opened at the National Museum Cardiff and will run until April. The exhibition to celebrate the corporation’s 100th anniversary was developed in conjunction with a group of young people to examine how the future may look for the corporation. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Igq8UtvqjIU?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">BBC 100 in Wales opened at the National Museum Cardiff in December 2022.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/bbc-at-100-the-future-for-global-news-and-challenges-facing-the-world-service-192296">global</a> broadcasting landscape is ever-changing and the BBC is having to adapt to this. Challenges come from streaming services, other broadcasters and, not least, from a government that has called the very nature of <a href="https://theconversation.com/bbc-licence-fee-could-scrapping-it-be-the-end-of-public-service-broadcasting-in-the-uk-175292">public service broadcasting and the licence fee</a> into question. </p>
<p>In December 2021, the Welsh Labour government and Plaid Cymru announced a new <a href="https://www.gov.wales/co-operation-agreement-full-policy-programme-html">co-operation agreement</a>, which outlined several policy commitments over the next three years. Among them was the creation of a new shadow broadcasting and communications authority, which would draw up plans for the devolution of broadcasting and communications powers to the Senedd. A <a href="https://www.gov.wales/expert-panel-devolution-broadcasting-announced">panel</a> has been established to consider the way forward in this area. </p>
<p>How this might work in reality is, as yet, undetermined. Which aspects of broadcasting would be devolved remains unclear, as are the possible implications for the BBC and other broadcasters. There is also uncertainty over whether the Welsh government would even be able to persuade the UK government’s Department of Culture, Media and Sport to devolve such powers.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1625072297156677634"}"></div></p>
<p>There are many factors which have played a part in creating, defining and maintaining a feeling of “Welshness” in Wales, as well as a sense of belonging. There is no doubt about the part the BBC has played. </p>
<p>Penblwydd hapus, BBC Cymru.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/197828/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jamie Medhurst receives funding from Arts and Humanities Research Council; The Leverhulme Trust</span></em></p>The BBC is celebrating 100 years of broadcasting in Wales.Jamie Medhurst, Professor of Media and Communication, Aberystwyth UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1978322023-02-02T17:20:53Z2023-02-02T17:20:53ZWelsh place names are being erased – and so are the stories they tell<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506659/original/file-20230126-14416-c3e4mq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=17%2C8%2C5964%2C3952&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Welsh name Yr Wyddfa is now used for the mountain instead of Snowdon by the national park authority. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Malgosia Janicka/Shutterstock.</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The <a href="https://authority.snowdonia.gov.wales/news/article/?id=14460">decision</a> to use Eryri rather than Snowdonia, and Yr Wyddfa instead of Snowdon by the national park authority last autumn reignited a longstanding debate over the protection of place names in Wales.</p>
<p>The switch to Eryri and Yr Wyddfa was made following <a href="https://www.thebmc.co.uk/snowdon-petition-to-use-welsh-name-for-snowdonia-national-park">a petition</a> calling for the park authority to use the Welsh names. But campaigners have been pushing for better protections and use of <a href="https://www.welshlanguagecommissioner.wales/policy-and-research/welsh-place-names/why-standardise-place-nameseur">Welsh place names</a> for decades. </p>
<p>One of the most significant examples of this was the campaign in favour of <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0305748808000960">bilingual road signs</a> in Wales, which started in the 1960s. Before then, there were only English-language road signs in Wales. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Black and white image of people in scarves, hats and coats carrying Welsh language signs saying 'defnyddiwch yr iaith Gymraeg'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/507353/original/file-20230131-4694-12yugh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/507353/original/file-20230131-4694-12yugh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=597&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507353/original/file-20230131-4694-12yugh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=597&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507353/original/file-20230131-4694-12yugh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=597&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507353/original/file-20230131-4694-12yugh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507353/original/file-20230131-4694-12yugh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507353/original/file-20230131-4694-12yugh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The first protest by Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg – Welsh Language Society took place in Aberystwyth on February 2 1963.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Geoff Charles/Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg & The National Library of Wales</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>According to protesters at the time, such signs were a way of indicating that Wales was an English and British territory. For the same campaigners, bilingual signs would signify Wales was a different country – one which had its own unique language and identity. </p>
<p>Not surprisingly perhaps, <a href="https://www.itv.com/news/wales/2022-04-29/anger-as-caravan-park-replaces-100-year-old-welsh-name-with-english-alternative">some recent examples</a> of English names being adopted in place of old Welsh place names and toponyms (names for geographical features such as hills), have been viewed with consternation by some. </p>
<p>That list is already long but it is one that grows from year to year, as English versions of place names and toponyms are coined. Porth Trecastell on Anglesey being referred to as <a href="https://discovernorthwales.com/cable-bay-anglesey/">Cable Bay</a>, or <a href="https://nation.cymru/opinion/its-llyn-bochlwyd-not-lake-australia-why-we-should-protect-our-welsh-place-names/">Llyn Bochlwyd in Eryri replaced by Lake Australia in tourist guides</a>, are just two examples. </p>
<p>This has <a href="https://www.cymdeithasenwaulleoedd.cymru/en/">led to a campaign</a> to protect, re-emphasise and, in some cases, rediscover Welsh place names.</p>
<h2>Connection</h2>
<p>The situation is exacerbated by the fact that English versions of place names being coined often bear little or no relation to the original Welsh meaning. As such, there is a danger that important elements of the cultural landscape, such as local histories and legends, are being lost.</p>
<p>For example, the original name of the farmhouse <a href="https://coflein.gov.uk/en/site/402856/"><em>Faerdre Fach</em></a> (which translates as “little Reeve’s settlement”), near Llandysul in Ceredigion, points to its role as a local administrative centre during the Middle Ages. With the change to <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03dk6wm">“Happy Donkey Hill”</a> more than a decade ago, a name meant to appeal to tourists, all sense of historical or local context was lost. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Old map featuring Welsh place names" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/507080/original/file-20230130-14-a9cjhk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/507080/original/file-20230130-14-a9cjhk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=288&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507080/original/file-20230130-14-a9cjhk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=288&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507080/original/file-20230130-14-a9cjhk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=288&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507080/original/file-20230130-14-a9cjhk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=362&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507080/original/file-20230130-14-a9cjhk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=362&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507080/original/file-20230130-14-a9cjhk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=362&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Bank Cornicyll, the Carmarthenshire farm, as seen in the List of Historic Place Names. It is now registered as ‘Hakuna Matata’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">List of Historic Place Names/Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Similarly, <em><a href="https://historicplacenames.rcahmw.gov.uk/placenames/recordedname/d9607c69-a917-4675-880b-375de3712c1e">Banc Cornicyll</a></em>, the former name of a farm in Carmarthenshire translates as Lapwing Bank, thus giving an indication of the local landscape and fauna where the farm is located. Its <a href="https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/outrage-historic-welsh-farm-renamed-22917409">replacement name of Hakuna Matata</a> (a Swahili phrase and title of the song from The Lion King), is divorced from the cultural landscape of the area. The owner <a href="https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/owner-defends-hakuna-matata-house-22948727">last year defended the change</a>, saying it was a decision made 25 years ago and that the Swahili term has meaning. </p>
<h2>Authority</h2>
<p>Place names are also important because they indicate patterns of power within society. The right to give places and landscape features names reflects the authority of individuals, groups and institutions. This leads us to question who has the right to decide whether a Welsh name or an alternative English name is used. Which institutions and agencies act as gatekeepers for the naming of places in Wales? </p>
<p>Criticism <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-61811395">has been levelled</a> at the Ordnance Survey (OS), in this respect, for being slow to correct the misspellings of Welsh toponyms on its current maps. The OS cited historical precedent, namely that these are the names that have appeared on its maps since the late 19th century. </p>
<p>But such a defence does not recognise the <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Map_of_a_Nation/q57yDwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0">problematic nature</a> of the creation of early maps in places like Wales and Scotland. Native place names were often misspelled on the basis of erroneous information received from English landowners.</p>
<p>Conversely, the farm name Hakuna Matata already appears on OS maps of Carmarthenshire. Despite differences in the contexts of these two examples, they both illustrate the significant, and arguably, arbitrary power of an institution such as the OS in the naming of places in Wales.</p>
<p>Organisations such as the <a href="https://www.cymdeithasenwaulleoedd.cymru/en/">Welsh Place-Name Society</a> and prominent individuals such as <a href="https://www.dailypost.co.uk/news/north-wales-news/bbcs-huw-edwards-wades-row-17525565">newsreader Huw Edwards</a> and <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-44481950">comedian Tudur Owen</a> have sought to draw attention to the Anglicisation of place names. </p>
<figure>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Comedian Tudur Owen presents an item about Welsh place names being lost on the BBC programme Wales Live in 2018.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>To date, however, the Welsh government <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-politics-39281369">has resisted</a> calls to introduce legislation which would protect place names. That said, it is examining ways of stopping people from using English alternatives for Welsh place names, stating it has an “impact on the visible presence of the language in our communities”. </p>
<p>Jeremy Miles, the minister for education and the Welsh language, further stated in November 2022 that the <a href="https://www.gov.wales/welsh-language-communities-housing-plan-html">Welsh Language Communities Housing Plan</a> would conduct research into feasible ways of stopping Welsh place names from being changed. </p>
<p>All of this points to a <a href="https://www.dailypost.co.uk/news/north-wales-news/fascinating-welsh-place-names-being-25206390">growing appetite</a> to address this issue. Whether it can be solved through legislation is open to debate, however. Many of the changes discussed in this article are taking place in the context of popular usage, by residents and visitors who, for whatever reason, choose to use English versions of Welsh place names. As such, it is a challenge that will be difficult to address, let alone resolve, in practice.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/197832/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rhys Jones does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Welsh place names often reflect local legends, fauna and topography. The coining of English names to replace them has sparked an ongoing campaign to protect them.Rhys Jones, Professor of Human Geography, Aberystwyth UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1971572023-01-12T13:06:15Z2023-01-12T13:06:15ZHen Galan: why one Welsh community celebrates the new year on January 14<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/504238/original/file-20230112-20-7i4e1g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=8%2C5%2C1908%2C1072&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The children of Cwm Gwaun go door to door singing and collecting calennig in 1961. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Geoff Charles/National Library of Wales</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>A small community in Pembrokeshire will be holding its annual new year celebrations on January 14, or <em>Hen Galan</em> as it is known in Welsh. </p>
<p>But the residents of Cwm Gwaun near Fishguard are not a fortnight late. Rather, the people of this small wooded hamlet still observe the dates of an old calendar, which was dispensed with by the rest of Britain more than 250 years ago. </p>
<p>The origins of Cwm Gwaun’s new year festivities can be traced back to 1752, the year of <a href="https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/Give-us-our-eleven-days/">calendar reform in Britain</a>. Much of Europe had long since adopted the revised calendar introduced by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Very old manuscript containing Latin text" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/503877/original/file-20230110-18-5gfj0h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/503877/original/file-20230110-18-5gfj0h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=920&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/503877/original/file-20230110-18-5gfj0h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=920&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/503877/original/file-20230110-18-5gfj0h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=920&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/503877/original/file-20230110-18-5gfj0h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1156&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/503877/original/file-20230110-18-5gfj0h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1156&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/503877/original/file-20230110-18-5gfj0h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1156&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The first page of the papal bull ‘Inter Gravissimas’ by which Pope Gregory XIII introduced his calendar.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Gregorian calendar modified the use of leap years in order to keep more accurately to the revolution of the Earth around the Sun. <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/25025653">Catholic countries were naturally more inclined to accept this reform</a>. Protestant Britain, however, clung to the traditional way of calculating the year until the middle of the 18th century. That’s when parliament decided enough was enough. </p>
<p>Since the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/science/Julian-calendar">Julian calendar gains a day every 128 years</a>, by the mid-18th century, Britain was eleven days ahead of its neighbours on the continent. That created all sorts of <a href="https://worldview.stratfor.com/article/geopolitics-gregorian-calendar">complications for trade and diplomacy</a>. It’s just as well there was no Eurovision or World Cup to organise at the time.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.legislation.gov.uk/apgb/Geo2/24/23/contents">The Calendar Act</a> ensured Britain would come into line with its neighbours in western Europe by simply abolishing eleven days. As a result, in 1752, September 2 was immediately followed by September 14. This caused <a href="https://www.history.co.uk/article/the-calendar-riots-of-1752-when-britain-lost-11-days">controversy as well as confusion and unease</a> for those with birthdays falling during that period. </p>
<p>The Act also had a significant impact on the celebration of the new year, which from 1752 onwards was to start on January 1, rather than March 25, as had been the custom. For some time afterwards, dates between January 1 and March 24 appeared as “1752/3” or “1752 Old Style/1753 New Style”, as confusion continued between those who embraced the new practice and those who preferred to carry on as before. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="The front page of The London Gazette in September 1752" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/503980/original/file-20230111-16-kkxytp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/503980/original/file-20230111-16-kkxytp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1121&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/503980/original/file-20230111-16-kkxytp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1121&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/503980/original/file-20230111-16-kkxytp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1121&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/503980/original/file-20230111-16-kkxytp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1409&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/503980/original/file-20230111-16-kkxytp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1409&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/503980/original/file-20230111-16-kkxytp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1409&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Issue 9198 of The London Gazette, covering the calendar change in Britain. The issue spans the change, with the date reading: ‘From Tuesday September 1, O.S. (old style) to Saturday September 16, N.S. (new style) 1752’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.thegazette.co.uk">The Gazette</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://www.taxadvisorypartnership.com/tax-compliance/why-does-the-uk-tax-year-start-on-6-april-each-year/#">One side-effect is the tax year beginning on April 6</a>, which is the old date for the new year of March 25, with the missing 11 days added on. </p>
<p>It is not hard to see why some people would have shaken their heads at such upheaval and carried on marking the days as they had always done. The legislation mainly applied to the civil calendar rather than the religious one.</p>
<p>Although Catholic and Protestant churches largely came to accept the Gregorian calendar, the Orthodox church kept to the Julian calendar and <a href="https://www.timeanddate.com/holidays/common/orthodox-christmas-day">celebrates Christmas later than other Christian churches</a>. </p>
<p>Of course, the difference between the followers of the two different calendars grows gradually, and more than eleven days now separate them. </p>
<h2>Tradition</h2>
<p>Cwm Gwaun is one place that has tackled such uncertainty head on. The first day of January was already commonly celebrated as New Year’s Day or <em>Dydd Calan</em> in much of Wales before these official changes. But in Cwm Gwaun, the 11 lost days of 1752 were maintained, so their new year fell in line with the Orthodox new year.</p>
<p>Thus, the tradition of <em>Hen Galan</em>, or old New Year’s Day, was born and <a href="https://www.westerntelegraph.co.uk/news/19847697.watch-gwaun-valley-cwm-gwaun-hen-galan-new-year-traditions/">is adhered to in this Welsh-speaking area</a>. The customs associated are very much in line with January 1 celebrations in Wales, so it is mainly the timing that is unique. </p>
<p>Among the old traditions that continue in Cwm Gwaun is the <a href="https://www.thenational.wales/news/19818055.calennig-wales-new-year-traditions-celebrations/">collecting of <em>calennig</em></a>, or a new year’s gift, usually by children. Groups circulate from house to house, knocking on doors and offering new year’s greetings, usually in song and verse. </p>
<p>Each home would be sure of good luck for the coming year if they responded with gifts, originally of food to help sustain families through the difficult months of winter, but in more recent years of money or sweets. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The children of Cwm Gwaun go door to door singing and collecting calennig.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Anyone who did not welcome and reward visitors would receive a year of bad luck (<a href="https://www.gweiddi.org/rhifynnau/rhifyn-2-dathlu/blwyddyn-newydd-dda/"><em>llond y tŷ o fwg</em></a>, which means “a house full of smoke”), according to one verse. Calennig collectors knocking on doors after midday on Dydd Calan, however, could safely be refused as they were out of time. </p>
<p>And time is, of course, the crucial element in all of this. Agreeing on how we decide to calculate and mark its passing has been a <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-we-make-sense-of-time/">complicated element in human history</a>. <em>Hen Galan</em> in Cwm Gwaun is a yearly reminder of that.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/197157/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Eryn White does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Britain may have ditched the Roman calendar in 1752 but Cwm Gwaun continues to cling on to its old traditions.Eryn White, Reader, Aberystwyth UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/735822019-02-28T14:25:32Z2019-02-28T14:25:32ZThese four frequently-used Welsh English words link Wales to the rest of the world<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/261282/original/file-20190227-150702-im812.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/wales-flag-waving-on-wind-154844444?src=ez1nYlWanK7cYmtwDZy9qg-1-22">Jiri Flogel/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>It will likely come as no surprise that the large majority of – if not all – people in Wales can speak English. While Welsh is one of the <a href="https://theculturetrip.com/europe/united-kingdom/wales/articles/a-brief-history-of-the-welsh-language/">oldest living languages</a> in Europe, English, along with Flemish, first rooted itself in <a href="http://www.thisisgower.co.uk/learn/gower-life/gower-dialect/gower-dialect-history/">small enclaves in southwest Wales</a> as far back as the 12th century. By the late medieval period (1250 to 1500 AD), <a href="http://www.encyclopedia.com/places/britain-ireland-france-and-low-countries/british-and-irish-political-geography/welsh-marches">the Welsh Marches</a> (or borders) had a multilingual character, with Anglo-Norman French, Middle English, and Welsh being spoken in towns. </p>
<p>But it was the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/topics/industrial_revolution_wales">industrial revolution</a> of the 18th century that created a phenomenal <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/history/sites/themes/society/language_industrialrevolution.shtml">language shift in Wales</a>, one that saw the beginnings of decline in the Welsh language in favour of English. Although for the large part the language shift developed through population movements throughout Wales and the UK, overt government efforts – including language policies like the 1847 Inquiry into the State of Education in Wales (less affectionately known as <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/wales/entries/72d77f69-72a7-3626-9c19-469c91f45753">the Treachery of the Blue Books</a>) – also played their part in placing emphasis on English usage over Welsh. </p>
<p>Ultimately, a new “<a href="http://www.encyclopedia.com/humanities/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/contact-variety">contact variety</a>” of English developed: Welsh English. Today, you can still hear a lot of the Welsh language influence within this English dialect’s sounds and structure. There’s no shortage of <a href="http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2014/03/borrowed-words/">borrowed words</a> in this dialect that have come straight from the Welsh language. Bach (small), cariad (love), and twp (stupid) are just a few. But some of the most commonly known “Welsh” words aren’t Welsh at all. Though they have fast become part of the Welsh English dialectal language, they actually have very different origins. </p>
<h2>1. Cwtch or cwtsh /kʊtʃ/</h2>
<p>Today, cwtch is arguably one of the most recognised “Welsh” words. Meaning an affectionate cuddle, or a small storage space, it has overtaken “lush” or “tidy” to be the most championed word of Welsh English speakers today. </p>
<p>The word is a perfect example of what sociolinguists call an <a href="http://americanspeech.dukejournals.org/content/84/2/115.full.pdf">enregistered word</a>, where the linguistic feature has risen from unconscious obscurity. It has gone from being barely acknowledged, even if it was used frequently, to a point where speakers acknowledge the feature as being unique to themselves, and one that defines the dialect. </p>
<p>It’s become <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/6521971.stm">socially enshrined in modern Wales</a>, and yet it is <a href="https://theconversation.com/cwtch-what-the-most-famous-welsh-english-word-reveals-about-global-dialects-98333">not strictly a Welsh language word</a>. Although it was adopted from the Welsh “cwts” (the noun for both “kennel” and “cuddle”) into Welsh English, cwts found its way into Welsh from the Middle English “couche”, which meant “to put in place”. Where did the English speakers get it from? Well, from the French “coucher”, a descendent of the Latin “collocāre”.</p>
<h2>2. Scram /skræm/</h2>
<p>Usually said of cats and children, the sharp word “scram” (to scratch with nails) is the perfect example of the opposite of enregisterment – speakers simply aren’t aware that it is a feature associated with their region.</p>
<p>Scram likely first found its way to Wales through the Flemish Dutch speakers once present throughout the Welsh Marches, who would have used the word “schrammen”, which means to graze. In 1898, Joseph Wright’s <a href="https://stancarey.wordpress.com/2016/05/01/english-dialect-dictionary-online/">English Dialect Dictionary</a> noted a small enclave of usage in the English county of Derby (with Northerners using scram in the sense “to rake”).</p>
<p>The word wasn’t recorded in Harold Orton’s <a href="http://sounds.bl.uk/Accents-and-dialects/Survey-of-English-dialects">Survey of English Dialects (1950-1961)</a>, but when David Parry surveyed Welsh English in his <a href="https://www.swansea.ac.uk/crew/research-projects/the-archive-of-welsh-english/">Survey of Anglo-Welsh Dialects (1968-1982)</a>, the term was very frequent. It was used through most of south Wales from Swansea to Cardiff, up to Brecon and eastwards towards Tintern. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/WI0ITLpGRQg?wmode=transparent&start=59" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<h2>3. Drive, the /dreɪv, ðə/</h2>
<p>Referring to a bus or taxi driver as “drive” is something that many associate with modern Welsh English culture, and it is even regarded as a necessity by some to say <a href="https://www.walesonline.co.uk/lifestyle/fun-stuff/35-things-english-people-wont-9480333">“Cheers, drive” when alighting a vehicle</a>. This certainly suggests that it’s an enregistered word. However, this linguistic shortening of “driver” also appears to have <a href="http://www.bristolpost.co.uk/23-phrases-bristol-understand/story-26058369-detail/story.html">notable currency in Bristol</a>, with a similar degree of enregisterment. </p>
<p>Sociolinguistically, this is not too surprising. The English city is in close proximity to southern Welsh urban centres, and easily accessible via transport routes. Studies have found dialectal language can “<a href="http://www.reading.ac.uk/acadepts/ll/app_ling/internal/wp6/kerswill.pdf">geographically diffuse</a>” to urban locations from further afield, sometimes by these inter-city links, and occasionally unbeknown to one another.</p>
<h2>4. Brammer or blemmer /brɑːmə/ /blemə/</h2>
<p>Parry’s 1968-1982 dialect survey first recorded brammer and blemmer being used in urban centres such as Abergavenny and Newport. An adjective meaning fantastic or excellent, it has an appropriately fantastic origin. </p>
<p>The word likely derives from the Hindu god of creation, Brahma. And its adoption may be paired with another term that has been recorded in south Wales in the 1960s – “head sherang” meaning “the boss”, which derives partly from Urdu. Both of these phrases derive from the Indian subcontinent. The most likely explanation for how they ended up in south Wales – and <a href="https://www.scotsman.com/lifestyle/scottish-word-of-the-day-brammer-1-2184588">other parts of Britain</a> – points towards the 19th century, when <a href="http://www.ourmigrationstory.org.uk/oms/the-lascars-britains-colonial-era-sailors">Indian sailors settled in dock towns</a> such as Cardiff. Much like the sailors themselves, a few borrowed words likely hopped ship and nestled within the English-speaking Welsh communities.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/73582/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Benjamin A. Jones does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Cwtch, drive and brammer are all commonly thought of as Welsh dialect terms, but they have actually come from all over the world.Benjamin A. Jones, PhD Researcher, Swansea UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1100632019-02-26T11:22:10Z2019-02-26T11:22:10ZFour women poets who will take you on an alternative journey through Welsh history<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/260407/original/file-20190222-195861-xtfh9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/woman-sits-white-dress-leather-journal-1092022793?src=GDEvLIslU7P3C8kU3G6yeg-8-27">Alexander Gold/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Poetry has played an important role in the history of Wales. <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-welsh-developed-their-own-form-of-poetry-73299">From the medieval courts</a>, to the ongoing National Eisteddfod (the largest music and poetry festival in Europe), writers have used verse to document the land’s culture. But while male writers, such as the 12th century <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/arts/sites/early-welsh-literature/pages/poets-princes.shtml">poets of the princes</a> and more recently <a href="https://www.poetryarchive.org/poet/dylan-thomas">Dylan Thomas</a>, have presented one perspective of Welsh history and culture, female poets have documented a very different take on Wales through the centuries. Here are four who bring a different perspective.</p>
<h2>1. Gwerful Mechain (est.1462-1500)</h2>
<p>Gwerful Mechain is one of the few Welsh medieval poets from whom a <a href="https://broadviewpress.com/product/the-works-of-gwerful-mechain/?ph=9aca224f1207703b2563bc35#tab-description">substantial body of work</a> has survived to this day. One of the loudest voices speaking up for women of the time, Mechain was also one of the first poets in Wales to write about domestic abuse. <a href="http://www2.lingue.unibo.it/acume/acumedvd/Essays%20ACUME/AcumeGramichfinal.pdf">To Her Husband for Beating Her</a> is a poignant and powerful poem full of enraged language and energetic imagery. </p>
<p>Born <a href="https://biography.wales/article/s-GWER-MEC-1462">into a noble family</a>, Mechain was free to explore her own poetic interests without the pressure of securing patronage, unlike many of her male contemporaries. She became a prolific writer who was not restricted to one style. Her work includes religious, humorous and socially conscious poetry. One of her most well-known works, <a href="http://www2.lingue.unibo.it/acume/acumedvd/Essays%20ACUME/AcumeGramichfinal.pdf">To the Vagina</a>, chastises her male counterparts for praising a woman’s body from her hair to her feet but ignoring one hidden feature. She was bold and did not shy away from what some may consider crude imagery, as in her poem, To the Maid as she Shits.</p>
<p><a href="https://broadviewpress.com/product/the-works-of-gwerful-mechain/?ph=9aca224f1207703b2563bc35#tab-description">This extract</a>, in Welsh then English, is from <a href="https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/cywydd-y-cedor/">Cywydd y cedor</a> (<a href="https://allpoetry.com/The-Female-Genitals">The Female Genitals</a>):</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Pob rhyw brydydd, dydd dioed,<br>
Mul frwysg, wladiadd rwysg erioed,<br>
Noethi moliant, nis gwarantwyf,<br>
Anfeidrol reiol, yr wyf</p>
<p>Every poet, drunken fool,<br>
Thinks he is just the king of cool,<br>
(Everyone is such a boor,<br>
He makes me so sick, I’m so demure)</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>2. Katherine Philips (c.1632 - c.1664)</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/katherine-philips">Born in London</a>, Katherine Philips – who later wrote under the moniker “The Matchless Orinda” – moved to Wales when she was around 15 years old. From her home in Cardigan she became a significant female British poet, as well as the first woman to <a href="https://www.bl.uk/restoration-18th-century-literature/articles/print-and-perception-the-literary-careers-of-margaret-cavendish-and-katherine-philips">have a commercial play staged</a>, <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/398748/pdf">Pompey</a>. </p>
<p>Despite the stigma against women <a href="https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/%7E/link.aspx?_id=7EBD2EA9A970488AADCBB32636FC0886&_z=z">publishing their work</a>, Philips <a href="https://www.bl.uk/restoration-18th-century-literature/articles/print-and-perception-the-literary-careers-of-margaret-cavendish-and-katherine-philips">succeeded by</a> circulating handwritten letters and volumes, as her male contemporaries did, while upholding supposedly feminine virtues such as humility and chastity <a href="https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/poems-by-mrs-katherine-philips-the-matchless-orinda">in her works</a>.</p>
<p>Though she was married with two sons, much discussion around Philips’ poetry and life concentrates on <a href="https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2013/03/was-katherine-philips-a-lesbian-love-poet/">whether she was or was not a lesbian</a>. The <a href="https://parallel.cymru/poets/?lang=en#katherine=philips">emotional focus of her poetry</a> was often on women and the passionate relationships she had with them. Regardless of Philips’ own sexual orientation, her work was the first British poetry to <a href="https://www.serenbooks.com/productdisplay/forbidden-lives">express same-sex love between women</a>.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/1HgnQ2Qj9zM?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<h2>3. Sarah Jane Rees (“Cranogwen”) (1839–1916)</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/profiles/5NBLyP27sktHGm6ljTG9h6J/cranogwen-sarah-jane-rees">Sarah Jane Rees</a> (also known by the <a href="https://parallel.cymru/poets/?lang=en#sarah-jane-rees">bardic name Cranogwen</a>) is perhaps one of the most pioneering poets in this list. <a href="http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-48648">Born in Llangrannog</a>, west Wales, she spurned all attempts to enforce gender stereotypes – her family wanted her to work as a dressmaker – and instead joined her father on board his ship for two years after leaving school. She continued her education, eventually gaining her master mariner certificate. Returning home by the age of 21, Cranogwen fought against opposition to run her old school, and taught children as well as providing navigation and seamanship education to young men.</p>
<p>In 1865 she entered the Eisteddfod festival as Cranogwen with
Y Fodrwy Briodasal (The Wedding Ring), a satirical poem about a married woman’s destiny. When she was announced as the <a href="http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-48648">first woman to win the prize</a>, there was <a href="https://newspapers.library.wales/view/3413322/3413327/44/Cranogwen">disgust from the established and renowned male writers</a> who had been competing. Cranogwen became famous overnight and a <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Caniadau_Cranogwen.html?id=xF1xOwAACAAJ&redir_esc=y">collection of her poems</a> was released in 1870.</p>
<p>The following lines are taken from <a href="https://parallel.cymru/poets/?lang=en#sarah-jane-rees">My Friend</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Ah! Annwyl chwaer, ‘r wyt ti i mi,<br>
Fel lloer I’r lli, yn gyson;<br>
Dy ddilyn heb orphwyso wna<br>
Serchiadau pura’m calon </p>
<p>Oh! My dear sister, you to me<br>
As the moon to the sea, constantly,<br>
Following you restlessly are<br>
My heart’s pure affections</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>4. Lynette Roberts (1909-1995)</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/obituary-lynette-roberts-1603243.html">Lynette Roberts</a> was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina to parents of Welsh origin. A friend of Dylan Thomas, during World War II Roberts moved to Carmarthenshire with her then husband, <a href="https://www.walesartsreview.org/the-van-pool-the-collected-poems-of-keidrych-rhys/">journalist and poet Keidrych Rhys</a>, and stayed in Wales for the rest of her life. </p>
<p>Although now <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/search?query=Lynette%20Roberts&refinement=poems">her work</a> is seeing a resurgence, for a long time Roberts has been overlooked. <a href="https://theconversation.com/lynette-roberts-welsh-poet-who-fused-touch-and-sight-into-sound-105703">She was a poet ahead of her time</a> and her use of language is refreshing. Roberts was influenced by the rich colours and landscape of her childhood, which she entwined with the rural landscape and culture of Wales during a time of upheaval – World War II. </p>
<p>Roberts’s poem <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Collected_Poems.html?id=FJ9uBgAAQBAJ&redir_esc=y">Swansea Raid</a> is perhaps one of her most powerful and insightful works. It depicts a snapshot of a relationship between herself and fellow villager Rosie and the tension between war and home. The changing technological world of war brought out warm, colourful language in her work, setting the colloquialisms of quiet, rural Wales against the starkness of bombing and constant threat of loss. Her most influential work has to be the heroic poem <a href="https://msu.edu/course/eng/362/johnsen/roberts.pdf">Gods with Stainless Ears</a>, on the war’s disruption of domestic life. </p>
<p>This verse is from Roberts’ 1944 <a href="http://www.blueridgejournal.com/poems/lr1-llanybri.htm">Poem from Llanybri</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Then I’ll do the lights, fill the lamp with oil,<br>
Get coal from the shed, water from the well;<br>
Pluck and draw pigeon, with crop of green foil<br>
This your good supper from the lime-tree fell.</p>
</blockquote><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/110063/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rhea Seren Phillips is affiliated with Parallel.Cymru on a short-term development project looking into the history of Welsh poets, available to read at <a href="https://parallel.cymru/poets/">https://parallel.cymru/poets/</a>. </span></em></p>From speaking out over domestic abuse in medieval times to telling the realities of war, these female poets present a very different version of Welsh life.Rhea Seren Phillips, PhD Researcher in Welsh Poetry, Swansea UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1017442018-08-23T10:01:59Z2018-08-23T10:01:59ZHumphrey Llwyd: the Renaissance scholar who drew Wales into the atlas, and wrote it into history books<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233149/original/file-20180822-149490-1ueyhja.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Abraham Ortelius's 1570 world map.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:OrteliusWorldMap1570.jpg">The Library of Congress/Wikimedia</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>As a small country with less than 5% of the UK population, Wales faces major challenges in making its presence felt in the wider world – but this is something that scholars, politicians and the people themselves have been concerned about for centuries.</p>
<p>August 2018 marks the 450th anniversary of the death of Humphrey Llwyd, a remarkable Renaissance scholar who believed that Wales was fundamental to the history and identity of Britain. Llwyd not only drafted the <a href="https://www.library.wales/discover/digital-gallery/maps/maps-of-wales/cambriae-typus/">first published map of Wales</a> – which literally set the country on a global stage – but was the first person to write a history of Wales and a topographical account of Britain. </p>
<p>Born to a gentry family in Denbigh in 1527 and educated at Oxford, Llwyd went on to make his career in England, being employed in the household of the cultured and book-loving Henry Fitzalan, the 12th Earl of Arundel. This gave Llwyd the opportunity to develop his interest in learning. It also led to his marriage to Barbara, sister of the earl’s son-in-law, Lord Lumley (who himself was another enthusiastic book collector). </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233136/original/file-20180822-149490-ihx0ww.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233136/original/file-20180822-149490-ihx0ww.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=720&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233136/original/file-20180822-149490-ihx0ww.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=720&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233136/original/file-20180822-149490-ihx0ww.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=720&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233136/original/file-20180822-149490-ihx0ww.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=905&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233136/original/file-20180822-149490-ihx0ww.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=905&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233136/original/file-20180822-149490-ihx0ww.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=905&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Humphrey Llwyd, as depicted in the 1799 book The Royal Tribes of Wales.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Philip Yorke/Wikimedia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>By 1563 Llwyd had set up home back in Denbigh, within the walls of the town’s medieval castle. As MP for the borough, he reportedly facilitated the passage, through the parliament of 1563, of the bill <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=J90cWIBoAPcC&lpg=PA152&dq=An%20Act%20for%20the%20translating%20of%20the%20Bible%20and%20the%20Divine%20Service%20into%20the%20Welsh%20tongue&pg=PA152#v=onepage&q&f=false">authorising the translation</a> of the Bible and Book of Common Prayer into Welsh.</p>
<p>In 1566–7 Llwyd joined Arundel on a journey to Italy. However, a little over a year after his return to Denbigh, he fell seriously ill, and died on August 21 1568. He was buried just outside the town at the church of Llanfarchell, where the fine monument erected to his memory can still be seen.</p>
<h2>Mapping Wales</h2>
<p>Like other Welsh Renaissance scholars, Llwyd welcomed the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/tudors/wales_tudors_01.shtml">so-called “union”</a> of Wales and England under Henry VIII. Yet precisely because the future of Wales lay in the wider orbit of Britain Llwyd was determined to promote its history and culture as integral parts of the island’s heritage. </p>
<p>That determination was sharpened by his experiences outside Wales. It is no coincidence that the first work conceived of as a history of Wales – Llwyd’s <em>Cronica Walliae</em> (“The Chronicle of Wales”) of 1559 – was written in England, very probably at Arundel’s palace of Nonsuch near London for antiquarian-minded members of the earl’s circle. (Despite its Latin title, the work was written in English.) </p>
<p>The chronicle struck a defiant tone: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I was the first that tocke the province [Wales] in hande to put thees thinges into the Englishe tonge. For that I wolde not have the inhabitantes of this Ile ignorant of the histories and cronicles of the same, wherein I am sure to offende manye because I have oppenede ther ignorance and blindenes thereby … </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Llwyd’s final works resulted from commissions by the great Flemish cartographer and “inventor” of the atlas, <a href="https://artsandculture.google.com/exhibit/eAISufJvjgUVJA">Abraham Ortelius</a>, whom Llwyd met at Antwerp on his way home from Italy in 1567. These included two maps, one of Wales, the other of England and Wales, which were eventually published in a supplement to Ortelius’s atlas, <em>Theatrum Orbis Terrarum</em> (“Theatre of the World”), in 1573. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233133/original/file-20180822-149469-b54zri.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233133/original/file-20180822-149469-b54zri.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233133/original/file-20180822-149469-b54zri.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=454&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233133/original/file-20180822-149469-b54zri.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=454&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233133/original/file-20180822-149469-b54zri.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=454&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233133/original/file-20180822-149469-b54zri.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=570&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233133/original/file-20180822-149469-b54zri.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=570&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233133/original/file-20180822-149469-b54zri.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=570&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The map of Wales printed as part of Theatrum Orbis Terrarum.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cambriae_Typus_NLW.jpg">National Library of Wales</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Llwyd sent drafts of these from his deathbed in Denbigh, along with notes on the topography of Britain – <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=IhY6AAAAcAAJ&source=gbs_similarbooks"><em>Commentarioli Britannicae descriptionis fragmentum</em></a> (“A Fragment of a Little Commentary on the Description of Britain”) – written in Latin and published in Cologne in 1572. This was soon followed by Thomas Twyne’s English translation, The Breviary of Britayne (1573). Significantly, about half of the work was devoted to Wales. </p>
<h2>Defending history</h2>
<p>One aim of the Breviary was to defend the traditional British history <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/wales/entries/a7346096-d405-348c-9c45-413df250ed57">popularised by Geoffrey of Monmouth</a> – which traced the earliest kings of Britain to the Trojan exile Brutus – against the Italian humanist historian <a href="https://thehistoryofengland.co.uk/resource/polydore-vergil-and-historia-anglia/">Polydore Vergil</a>, “who sought not only to obscure the glory of the British name, but also to defame the Britons themselves with slanderous lies”. Like his compatriot <a href="http://yba.llgc.org.uk/en/s-PRIC-JOH-1502.html">Sir John Prise of Brecon</a>, Llwyd not only cited numerous classical sources but stressed the importance of sources in Welsh, which Vergil could not read. </p>
<p>The <em>Cronica Walliae</em> also took the truth of British history for granted. The work drew heavily on the medieval Welsh chronicles known as <a href="https://www.library.wales/discover/digital-gallery/manuscripts/the-middle-ages/chronicle-of-the-princes/">Brut y Tywysogyon</a> (“The Chronicle of the Princes”), which were designed as continuations of Geoffrey’s history, though Llwyd also used other sources and imposed his own shape on the whole. In particular, he divided the history by the reigns of the kings and princes whose deeds he related, from <a href="http://yba.llgc.org.uk/en/s-CADW-APC-0615.html">Cadwaladr the Blessed</a> in the late seventh century to the failed <a href="http://yba.llgc.org.uk/en/s-MADO-APL-1294.html">revolt of Madog ap Llywelyn</a> in 1294–5. This allowed Llwyd to present the history of medieval Wales as an unbroken succession of legitimate rulers. It also allowed him to insert the first account of Prince Madog’s alleged discovery of America in the 12th century. </p>
<p>His final sentence made clear, however, that a separate Welsh history was long over: after 1295 “there was nothinge done in Wales worthy memory, but that is to bee redde in the Englishe Chronicle”. Nevertheless, by commemorating their ancient and medieval history, Llwyd insisted that the Welsh could boast a unique pedigree and status as “the genuine Britons” in the Tudor realm.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/101744/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Huw Pryce receives funding from the AHRC for his contribution to the major project, "Inventor of Britain: The Complete Works of Humphrey Llwyd", led by Professor Philip Schwyzer (Exeter University), in collaboration also with Professor Keith Lilley (Queen’s University Belfast), which will publish new critical editions of Llwyd’s works and throw fresh light on their significance.</span></em></p>Humphrey Llwyd quite literally put Wales on the map.Huw Pryce, Professor of Welsh History, Bangor UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/983332018-08-15T11:44:38Z2018-08-15T11:44:38Z‘Cwtch’: what the most famous Welsh-English word reveals about global dialects<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/232065/original/file-20180815-2921-mz6b0z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/illustration-world-map-drawn-out-realistic-231214228?src=h40lu15uS56YyHcs0dVaFg-1-0">Arthimedes/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>“What is your favourite dialect word?”</p>
<p>This was a question that I should really have anticipated, but it took me by surprise. I had just talked to a packed marquee at the 2018 Hay Festival about why dialects of English are of such enduring interest to the language’s speakers. </p>
<p>“Cwtch,” I lied.</p>
<p>To be honest, as a south Walian living in south Wales, I am approaching the point where I will have had a gutful of the word cwtch. The Welsh-English word, meaning a <a href="http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20180624-cwtch-the-hug-invented-by-the-welsh">“hug” or “cuddle”</a>, is everywhere. You can find it on mugs, cushions, greetings cards, ornaments, t-shirts, and even in the names of cafes and festivals. But that’s why, trying to keep cool in my desperation, I chose cwtch – or “cwtsh”. </p>
<p>One thing I like about dialect words is that you can’t always rely on them to have a consistent spelling, because they are <em>dialect</em> words, not Standard English words. By definition, Standard English words’ spellings have been standardised down the centuries, while dialect words have not been subject to the same pressures. </p>
<p>Dialect words are local, regional words and cwtch is particularly associated with the Welsh-English dialect of south Wales. It has become something of a local symbol, a symbol of local-ness and a symbol of Welsh-English-ness – especially because it is perceived as having been borrowed into south Wales English from the Welsh language.</p>
<p>But there is more to cwtch than this. It can be a noun or a verb. It can also mean a small storage place used for food or odds and ends, or used as a hiding place, or it can mean to squat down or crouch. The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) dates its earliest use in English to the late 19th century, but its history goes back further than that. And, on looking into it, one can find a wonderful example of why dialects are a fascinating characteristic of language.</p>
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<p>The OED has not always been interested in dialect words. These were once only to be found in their own dictionaries and glossaries. The earliest dialect dictionary of English on a national scale was John Ray’s <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=njdWAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false">Collection of English Words Not Generally Used</a>, published in 1674. The biggest and best known of these great scholarly works is Joseph Wright’s six-volume <a href="https://archive.org/details/englishdialectdi01wriguoft">English Dialect Dictionary</a>, published between 1898 and 1905. As its title page puts it, it was “the complete vocabulary of all dialect words still in use, or known to have been in use during the last two hundred years”. </p>
<p>Wright recorded the dialect word “couch”, meaning “to lie down or crouch”, in use in many parts of England and Scotland, including the west of England, at the time. It is likely that cwtch is a Welshing of couch, which itself was a medieval adoption of French “coucher”, ultimately coming from Latin “collocāre” – “to lay in its place, lay aright, lodge”. So it turns out that this seemingly most local word has quite an international story, travelling from Latin down into French across into English then Welsh and then back into English. </p>
<p>It’s a good example, cwtch. It shows us that even the most socially symbolic local words can have an international ancestry and the same can be said of dialects and of languages in general. We think of them as distinct and unique entities, but they connect up like the branches of a tree. In fact, the notion of a family tree is a metaphor that has framed the study of dialects, languages and their features for the last two centuries. </p>
<p>In 1786, the Welsh philologist William Jones put forward the hypothesis that many of the languages of Europe and Asia belong to the same family, originating in one source language, which scholars named <a href="https://www.archaeology.org/exclusives/articles/1302-proto-indo-european-schleichers-fable">Proto-Indo-European</a>. It is thought that Proto-Indo-European was a collection of associated dialects spoken about 7,000 years ago in the region to the northwest of the Caspian Sea. </p>
<p>In the following millennia, according to the most accepted theory, the Indo-Europeans migrated in a sequence of waves westwards and eastwards, taking with them their dialects, which over time transmuted into separate languages, consisting of their own dialects, which also diversified into separate languages, and so on. Eventually, some of these migrants even reached the British Isles, giving us the beginnings of (most of) the Celtic languages and, a little later, English – though it took a few centuries of Anglo-Saxon settlement in Britain for these Germanic dialects to acquire the collective name “Englisc”. </p>
<p>Linguistic history is intimately and undeniably bound up with diversity and population movement, whether we focus on an individual word or a dialect or a language. Several centuries of work by dialect scholars has made this basic point clear. Though cwtch may be the Welsh-English word of the moment, as Wales, the UK and the rest of the world changes who knows how far it will travel in the future?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/98333/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rob Penhallurick’s history of dialect research, Studying Dialect, is published by Palgrave Macmillan.</span></em></p>Probably the most famous ‘Welsh’ word, ‘cwtch’ is the perfect example of a dialect term.Rob Penhallurick, Reader in English Language, Swansea UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1012722018-08-14T09:44:17Z2018-08-14T09:44:17ZWales’s tourism problem is down to a disconnect with its own people<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/231704/original/file-20180813-2912-6rdaar.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Harlech Castle, Gwynedd, north Wales.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/harlech-wales-united-kingdom-september-20-598753838?src=VU0-UnSFgt6PEXEiw236zQ-1-0">Valery Egorov/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Wales is a country bursting with ancient culture and beautiful landscapes. It is home to a vibrant people, who are intensely proud of their heritage. It sounds like the perfect place for many a traveller to visit – so why then, has it long struggled to attract foreign tourism? </p>
<p>In 2017, <a href="https://gov.wales/docs/statistics/2018/180802-wales-tourism-performance-2017-revised-en.pdf">more than one million trips</a> were taken to Wales by overseas visitors. This very modest 0.5% increase on 2016 was accompanied by a steep drop in international tourists’ spending – down by 17% from £444m to £369m. These figures were <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-45060541">in sharp contrast</a> to London (up 14% to £13,546m) and Scotland (up 23% to £2,276m). </p>
<p>Dwelling too much on this disparity – when both London and Scotland are better connected and internationally more visible – would be a self-flagellating enterprise. But Wales may have expected better after a £5m Welsh government spend on a “<a href="http://www.visitwales.com/legends">Year of Legends</a>” marketing campaign. Putting the heritage of Wales – its legends, landscapes and castles – at the fore was meant to highlight some of its unique selling points. </p>
<p>But while the nation tried to market its “Welshness” abroad, at home it was confused as to what this even meant. Proposals including a <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-north-east-wales-40732061">giant “iron ring” sculpture at Flint Castle</a> and a nostalgic flirtation with <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-politics-42412341">marketing Wales internationally as a “principality”</a> were met with anger and accusations that the devolved government had forgotten the very history it was trying to sell.</p>
<p>Sadly, however, none of this is a new problem – Wales has been struggling with foreign tourism for decades – and it is largely down to this disconnection.</p>
<h2>Years of failed promises</h2>
<p>During the 1970s and 1980s, Wales’s share of the total amount spent by international visitors to the UK never hovered much higher than about 2%. Then as now, focusing on heritage and culture was seen as a way of addressing the changing tastes and trends which had eaten away at the traditional rural and coastal resort market. </p>
<p>Much has been made of the <a href="http://walesthebrand.com/themed-years">series of themed years</a> which began in 2016 with the “Year of Adventure”. But Wales has also done this before: 1976 was the “Welcome America Year” while 1983 was the “Year of the Castles”. What was intended as an unproblematic tourist promotion, the year of castles actually became a matter of some controversy in Wales – the castles were mainly built by invaders leading some to criticise it as a celebration of the 1282-3 <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/middle_ages/wales_conquest_01.shtml#five">conquest of the native principality of Wales</a>, and its subjection to the crown of England. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/231688/original/file-20180813-2903-1ogle82.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/231688/original/file-20180813-2903-1ogle82.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=343&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/231688/original/file-20180813-2903-1ogle82.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=343&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/231688/original/file-20180813-2903-1ogle82.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=343&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/231688/original/file-20180813-2903-1ogle82.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=431&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/231688/original/file-20180813-2903-1ogle82.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=431&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/231688/original/file-20180813-2903-1ogle82.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=431&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Conwy castle, built by Edward I during his conquest of native Wales, between 1283 and 1289.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://pixabay.com/en/castle-wales-tower-uk-welsh-1863724/">Pixabay</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Nevertheless, the plan went ahead, with a year-long festival – Cestyll ’83 (Castles ‘83) – at its heart. Though directed and publicised from above, it largely relied on the action of local authorities and voluntary organisations. The only directive was that any activities – from charity pram pushes to medieval pageants – should “take place in or near a Welsh castle”. The Wales Tourist Board would eventually claim that some 200 events in Wales during 1983 were inspired by the festival.</p>
<h2>Festival of shame</h2>
<p>Using a castle-shaped stand, the festival was launched at the World Travel Market in London in December 1982. This was followed, at the end of February 1983, with a domestic and royal launch attended by Charles and Diana, the Prince and Princess of Wales, at Caerphilly Castle. Like all commemoration it had a whiff of self-congratulation and a gratuitous swagger. It was also all too easy for the Wales Tourist Board to slip in that the festival was a celebration of the seventh centenary of the building of some of Wales’s most famous castles – such as Conwy, Caernarfon and Harlech – all of which were <a href="http://www.castlewales.com/edwrdcas.html">built by Edward I</a> to secure his conquests.</p>
<p>As a result, the festival was dubbed a “<a href="http://cofiwn.blogspot.com/2007/01/great-battle-gwyl-y-cestyllfestival-of.html">festival of shame</a>”. Modern grievances were transferred onto Edward’s castles. Weren’t these, questioned some, the first English holiday homes in Wales?</p>
<p>That’s not to say it wasn’t a success – on the commercial side, the increase in visitors and buzz it created played a key role in the establishment of the government’s historic environment service CADW to maximise the tourist potential of the country’s heritage. On the cultural side, it highlighted that the medieval heritage of Wales could not be treated as unproblematic. While making mistakes and forgetting its history might be an indicator that Welsh nationhood is alive and kicking – under French historian Ernest Renan’s famous definition of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Is_a_Nation%3F">what makes a nation</a> – the castles of Wales remain saddled, it would seem, with a heritage which is both a blessing and a curse. In the present as in the past, Welsh castles have been a source of conflict and cultural exchange. </p>
<p>Tourism may be about commodifying locations – but if Wales wants its own people on board it needs to ask itself what it wants from the country’s heritage beyond potential economic gain. Locals and long-distance travellers might pay more attention to the country if its public history was known for its debate and controversy – and not as a bland footnote to English and British history. </p>
<p>Either way, Wales needs to come up with a solution that both the Welsh agree with and foreign visitors can engage with. The ongoing disconnect is evidently doing nothing to sell the nation to the world.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/101272/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Euryn Rhys Roberts does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Since the 1970s, Wales has been marketed as a footnote to British history.Euryn Rhys Roberts, Lecturer in Medieval and Welsh History, Bangor UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/963032018-05-14T08:56:53Z2018-05-14T08:56:53ZWhy racism against Welsh people is still racism<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/218622/original/file-20180511-34009-vx7xwl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/welsh-flag-against-blue-sky-motion-104240900?src=t9vxHKf5ywwxcLWf3--peg-1-90">Alistair Scott/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>While racist invective is offensive if it is targeted against other groups of people – particularly those who have a <a href="https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/section/4">protected characteristic</a> for the purposes of the <a href="https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/contents">Equality Act 2010</a> – if it is made against people from Wales it is <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/mar/15/anti-welsh-bigotry-eddie-jones-england-brexit">apparently funny</a>. </p>
<p>Welsh people are subjected to national pronouncements of offensiveness, and recently Sunday Times columnist Rod Liddle, sparked <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-politics-43699083">controversy</a> after voicing his views on the debate over <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-43691081">renaming the Severn Bridge</a>.</p>
<p>“The Welsh … are moaning,” he said. I’m a Welsh person and yet again, we’re moaning. Other people complain, other people have a grievance. Welsh people moan. Liddle’s article stated that the Severn Bridge is a means of connecting “their” – our – “rain-sodden valleys with the first world”. The name of the bridge is unimportant, he wrote, “so long as it allows people to get out of the place pronto”. </p>
<p>“They would prefer it to be called something indecipherable with no real vowels, such as Ysgythysgymlngwchgwch Bryggy,” Liddle added. They. Always they, with the implication being that “we” would know better, and name places with such easily pronouncable names as Meopham and Theydon Bois. For the record, Ysgythysgymlngwchgwch Bryggy has eight vowels. All of them are real.</p>
<p>None of this is new behaviour. From television presenter <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2001/apr/16/race.world">Anne Robinson’s</a> query: “What are they for? I’ve grown to dislike them more and more,” to the late writer A.A. Gill’s description of Welsh people as “loquacious, dissemblers, immoral liars, stunted, bigoted, dark, ugly, pugnacious little trolls”, the prejudice against Welsh people has continued.</p>
<p>And when complaints are made, they are rarely upheld. “It was <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2001/apr/24/broadcasting.bbc">comedy</a>”. “It was not racist,” are the findings – validating and perpetuating the idea that racism, hatred, is not hatred if it is about Welsh people.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/218625/original/file-20180511-34015-1tpkfxv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/218625/original/file-20180511-34015-1tpkfxv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/218625/original/file-20180511-34015-1tpkfxv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218625/original/file-20180511-34015-1tpkfxv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218625/original/file-20180511-34015-1tpkfxv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218625/original/file-20180511-34015-1tpkfxv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218625/original/file-20180511-34015-1tpkfxv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218625/original/file-20180511-34015-1tpkfxv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Severn Bridge.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/new-severn-bridge-sunrise-118414807?src=NJmbuRcpQVp3uf82Wvv8bQ-1-1">stocker1970/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Equality, finally?</h2>
<p>Would people publish what they publish about the Welsh if one word was changed? If the subject was women, black people, Muslims, wheelchair users. No. Absolutely not.</p>
<p>Then comes the invective – how dare we compare the situation of Welsh people to those who have to confront real prejudice? Because that is the prejudice. The prejudice is allowing someone to say “I’ve grown to dislike them more and more” about one group, but making it unacceptable to say it about another group.</p>
<p>But what can Welsh people do when such behaviour is so pervasive? In light of Liddle’s comments, MP Liz Saville-Roberts has called for language (including Welsh) to be added as a protected characteristic under the Equality Act 2010.</p>
<p>If the law were to be amended it would mean that the “long establishment tradition of decrying, belittling and mocking” of Welsh and Welshness – <a href="https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/politics/plaid-am-bids-make-attacks-14569057">as Saville-Roberts put it</a> – would no longer be permissible.</p>
<p>This leads us to the problematic issue of equality. Linguistic equality makes us confront that uncomfortable truth that in order to allow someone else the freedom to choose their language, there must be an acceptance that it is something in which we cannot participate. We are able to tolerate religious equality if it means that people are allowed to go to their mosque without hindrance, but it is more difficult to accept that a person may speak <a href="https://www.newamerica.org/education-policy/edcentral/multilingualismmatters/">a language that we do not understand</a>. We are able to accept gender equality if women are entitled to equal pay, but we do not wish to acknowledge that we must <a href="https://thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/volume-19/edition-2/institutional-sexism-academia">modify patterns of behaviour</a> that dismiss women’s contributions as being less valuable, authoritative, praiseworthy.</p>
<p>This is the inequality that makes Welshness so problematic, so disliked. That a fifth of the population choose to speak a language that another person would have to endeavour to learn in order to be able to participate.</p>
<p>Is language different? A person cannot choose their gender. However, they may choose to reveal or conceal that identity. That is what the bilingual person does, and so effectively that the monolingual fails to realise that what they are doing in their first language, the bilingual is doing in his or her second language, with considerably more effort. It is not choice. It is perseverance.</p>
<p>Would you dare to say that a person who is Black, or Jewish, or female is moaning if he or she complains about being called a “dark, ugly, pugnacious little troll”? If the answer is no, but you consider Liddle, Gill and Robinson’s comments about Welsh people to be acceptable, then you are still prejudiced. Perhaps it is best to simply dismiss it as someone who is moaning. Or perhaps it is time to realise that the dislike of a group of people on the basis of where they live, because some of those people may sometimes speak a different language from you when they speak to each other is still racism. It is prejudice against Welsh people just as if it were racism against any other group.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/96303/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Catrin Fflur Huws does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A linguistic equality expert argues the case for protecting the Welsh from prejudice.Catrin Fflur Huws, Senior Lecturer, Aberystwyth UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/869482018-04-12T10:42:44Z2018-04-12T10:42:44ZHow ancient poetry could help Wales understand its modern cultural identity<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/214049/original/file-20180410-566-i6xwfb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/welsh-flag-1035643738?src=qAYzE7NNrYrQVYgqO_GG5g-1-16">itomevans/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>What does it mean to be Welsh today? Is it being born in Wales, having Welsh family, or simply a matter of living there? It can be hard for a person of any culture to specifically define what makes up their identity but, for the Welsh – who have hundreds of years as well as multiple layers of culture to work through – it can be particularly tricky.</p>
<p>One defining aspect of Welsh culture that all would agree on is the country’s strong relationship with its literature. Wales’s rolling, lyrical language is one that has lent itself well to song and poetry for centuries – so much so that it has become interwoven with the people’s identity, whether they realise it or not. </p>
<p>Historians can point to a lot of the events that have made the country what it is today. But defining what has led to the contemporary Welsh cultural identity is not quite so simple. So, to explore this idea, I am using Welsh poetic forms and metre. </p>
<p>Poetry has been at the heart of Welsh culture since medieval times, with the earliest known examples dating back to the fifth and sixth century. Poets of the medieval period earned their respect in blood and words – and the Welsh writers <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/wales/entries/179daa23-8adf-3c10-93b8-bb597ed30278">Aneirin and Taliesin</a> were no different. Their poetry chiefly depicted glory and defeat in battle, as they followed their royal patron to war.</p>
<p>Take, for example this line from from <em>Marwnad Owain ab Urien</em>, by Taliesin, which <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Singing-Chains-Mererid-Hopwood/dp/1848519990/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1521729759&sr=1-3&keywords=mererid+hopwood">roughly translates to</a>, “The wide host of England sleeps with the light in their eyes”. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Cysgid Lloegr llydan nifer<br>
a lleufer yn eu llygaid.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Now, Wales is going through a less embattled time, but the lasting legacy of the <a href="http://poetscollective.org/poetryforms/welsh-forms/">24 Welsh poetic forms</a> still connects the country to the past. A line of <em>cynghanedd</em>, for example, – a poetic metre unique to Welsh which <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-welsh-developed-their-own-form-of-poetry-73299">uses the language’s consonantal repetition and syllabic stress</a> – is a living history, and not just in terms of the words that are set to it. </p>
<h2>Translating metre</h2>
<p>Each of the Welsh poetic forms and metre is notoriously difficult to write in the English language – in fact <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Singing-Chains-Mererid-Hopwood/dp/1848519990/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1521729759&sr=1-3&keywords=mererid+hopwood">many believe</a> that writing these forms and metre in English is almost impossible to accomplish well or accurately. They would have a sound argument, but accuracy is not the most important thing here. Rather, it is engagement with the learning of the craft and the characteristics of Welsh poetic forms and metre which identify them as Welsh. </p>
<p>Anglo-Welsh poetry is an established part of Welsh poetic history and includes contributions from English poets as well as international writers who have settled in Wales. Lynette Roberts, for example, was an Argentinian poet who used Welsh poetic forms and metre in her poetry. Perhaps one of the more well known examples of Welsh poetics in the English language, is <a href="https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/fern-hill">Dylan Thomas’s Fern Hill</a>: </p>
<p>“<strong><em>Th</em></strong>ough I <strong><em>s</em></strong>ang in my chains like <strong><em>th</em></strong>e <strong><em>s</em></strong>ea.”</p>
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<p>Like the poets who have used <em>cynghanedd</em> in English poems, I strongly believe that it is possible to use variations of Welsh poetic forms and metre to create poetry in the English language, and that it is important that we start encouraging more English poems using <em>cynghanedd</em>. </p>
<p>The craft of Welsh poetic forms and metre has the potential to take the listener on a journey through the history, landscape, culture and mythology of Wales. By using it in English poems, it is possible to redefine a contemporary national Welsh poetic voice that can be used in several languages. It is not about developing a singular poetic voice that is considered to be Welsh, but giving poets a lens which links them to the country’s collective roots through which they can focus their experiences of Welsh cultural identity.</p>
<p>Exploring Welsh cultural identity using this type of poetry could potentially facilitate a new, national conversation about cultural identity. By promoting the forms and metre, we can begin to address <a href="https://theconversation.com/populism-is-splitting-britain-but-it-could-herald-change-for-wales-80972">the cultural disengagement</a> and isolation which exists within certain individuals and groups who live in Wales. It could help to create a platform where different perspectives could contribute to a discussion on cultural identity that is more in keeping with a modern, multicultural Wales.</p>
<p>These kinds of discussions have the potential to challenge our ideas of cultural identity by nurturing roots outside of the Welsh language in order to embrace those who exist on its borders. By melding modern Welsh culture with the ancient traditions of rhyme and verse, Wales can embrace its changing national identity while still honouring its past.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/86948/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rhea Seren Phillips does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Rolling, lyrical Welsh poetry could be just what Wales needs to engage with its own culture.Rhea Seren Phillips, PhD Student, Swansea UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/889822018-02-26T11:57:46Z2018-02-26T11:57:46ZHow the Welsh outside Wales kept St David’s day alive<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/207647/original/file-20180223-108119-17rgah.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/daffodil-leek-on-welsh-flag-573033688?src=b8wYLwS9WZmy3tWMz9K_oQ-1-2">JurassicPaul/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>On March 1, St David is commemorated in Wales for his role as patron saint of the country and its people. From Abertawe to Ynys Mon, the Welsh use the day as one to celebrate their culture and heritage. But there was a time when St David’s popularity waned in Wales, and it was only thanks to the Welsh who had left the land of their fathers that St David’s day was revived.</p>
<p>St David’s role as leader of the Welsh was established in the 10th century when the Welsh (together with the Scots, Irish and Cornish) were urged to fight against <a href="http://www.athelstanmuseum.org.uk/people_king_athelstan.html">Athelstan of England</a> under the spiritual protection of David. The poem asking them to fight, <a href="http://www.maryjones.us/ctexts/t06.html">Armes Prydein Vawr</a> (the Great Prophecy of Britain), called St David their leader whose prayers would help defeat the English.</p>
<p>His fame was reinforced in the 1120s when Pope Calixtus II declared that English pilgrims who went to <a href="http://www.stdavidscathedral.org.uk/?id=760">St David’s cathedral</a> in Pembrokeshire twice would have the same spiritual reward as if they went to Rome once. This honour was not extended to any other place in Britain. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/205117/original/file-20180206-88803-iiqwff.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/205117/original/file-20180206-88803-iiqwff.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/205117/original/file-20180206-88803-iiqwff.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=997&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/205117/original/file-20180206-88803-iiqwff.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=997&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/205117/original/file-20180206-88803-iiqwff.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=997&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/205117/original/file-20180206-88803-iiqwff.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1253&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/205117/original/file-20180206-88803-iiqwff.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1253&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/205117/original/file-20180206-88803-iiqwff.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1253&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">St David, depicted in stained glass at Castell Coch, Cardiff.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_David#/media/File:Castell_Coch_stained_glass_panel_2.JPG">Hchc2009/Wikimedia</a></span>
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<p>The cathedral became Wales’ premiere pilgrimage site, visited by English kings like Henry II and Edward. Meanwhile St David’s day on March 1 became the most important date in the Welsh calendar of worship. It was so universal that when men from Wales settled in Ireland after its conquest in 1169, they still used St David’s day to date documents. </p>
<p>Henry VII, first of the Tudor kings of England, also revered St David. <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/tudors/wales_tudors_01.shtml">Born in Wales</a> but largely brought up in exile in Brittany and France, when Henry returned to take the crown from Richard III in 1485, he called on the Welsh to go with him in the name of God and of St David. Once he was king, Henry celebrated St David’s day with the royal court each year.</p>
<p>However, during the <a href="http://www.history.com/topics/reformation">16th-century Reformation</a>, St David, his cult, and his cathedral came under attack from reformers. When Englishman William Barlow was appointed bishop of St David’s in 1536, he stripped the cathedral of its relics and tried to get the office of bishop moved around 45 miles east to Carmarthen. He also wrote to Thomas Cromwell, outraged that the Welsh thought David good enough to be a patron saint. </p>
<h2>Welsh diaspora</h2>
<p>There is little evidence that St David was enthusiastically worshipped as a patron saint in Wales in the following two centuries. His memory was kept alive, however, in England, though in a much altered form, that was far removed from his earlier image as a holy man.</p>
<p>In the late 1590s, <a href="https://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=eebo;idno=A46926.0001.001">a book</a>, written by Londoner Richard Johnson, described David as patron of Wales, but showed him as a man who (along with the other patron saints in the book) went on fantastical adventures, killing monsters and rescuing ladies.</p>
<p>By the 18th century, St David was again being celebrated as the patron saint of Wales, but only really thanks to the Welsh who had left the land. Interest began in 1704 in Dublin, with the publication of a work praising the saint, and was followed in London where the “Honourable and Loyal Society of the Antient Britons” celebrated with a sermon on St David’s day. So too did the Welsh of Philadelphia, where <a href="http://www.philadelphiawelsh.org/?p=2228">the Welsh society</a> was founded in 1729.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/207648/original/file-20180223-108116-1xb572m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/207648/original/file-20180223-108116-1xb572m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/207648/original/file-20180223-108116-1xb572m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/207648/original/file-20180223-108116-1xb572m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/207648/original/file-20180223-108116-1xb572m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/207648/original/file-20180223-108116-1xb572m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/207648/original/file-20180223-108116-1xb572m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/207648/original/file-20180223-108116-1xb572m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">St David’s Cathedral, Pembrokeshire.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/st-davids-cathedral-wales-685938832?src=b8wYLwS9WZmy3tWMz9K_oQ-1-46">jax10289/Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>Though many of these celebrations involved singing and sermons, not all did. When the Antient Britons developed into the <a href="https://www.cymmrodorion.org/the-society/our-history/">Honourable Society of the Cymmrodorion</a> in 1751, they held their regular meetings in taverns. Such meetings must have been popular, as by 1762, St David was the only patron saint in Britain whose day was a public holiday.</p>
<p>This formal recognition, coupled with the elevation of saints of England, helped St David find popularity once again in Wales. In the 19th century, St David’s day was celebrated with sermons and dinners in Wales. A number of educational establishments were dedicated to him, including St David’s College, Wales’ <a href="http://www.uwtsd.ac.uk/history/">first university</a>, founded in 1828 by Bishop Burgess of St David’s.</p>
<p>In 1923, the story of St David’s medieval life was translated from Latin and published <a href="https://archive.org/details/MN5136ucmf_5">in English</a> for the first time, and Welsh poets like <a href="http://yba.llgc.org.uk/en/s10-LEWI-SAU-1893.html">Saunders Lewis</a> took an interest in St David as Welsh patron. Lewis portrayed David as a man who aided miners in the coalmines of Wales. He was also the subject of modern sculpture, and considerable effort was put into restoring the cathedral of St David’s. When the Church of Wales produced its first hymnbook in 1941, no fewer than five of the hymns were to David.</p>
<p>Today, thanks in part to the early survival of St David’s day celebrations outside Wales, St David’s day is once again celebrated widely in his homeland. It is also enjoying something of a resurgence overseas. Since 2011, Los Angeles has hosted a St David’s day festival, and Welsh communities from Patagonia to Denver fittingly celebrate St David as patron saint <a href="http://www.coloradowelshsociety.org/mainpages/events.htm%3Cu">with song</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/88982/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kathryn Hurlock does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Wales’s patron saint David was nearly lost to the Welsh.Kathryn Hurlock, Senior Lecturer in Medieval History, Manchester Metropolitan UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/866292017-11-01T09:28:38Z2017-11-01T09:28:38ZAfter 35 years of S4C, shouldn’t Wales have responsibility for the Welsh language channel?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192670/original/file-20171031-18735-1bbz869.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">S4C was one of the first minority language channels.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/tv-concept-turn-on-vertex-heap-503411425?src=QlQNTUNL0NPEavFuAVC67Q-1-30">Shutterstock/studiovin</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>November 1 2017 marks the 35th anniversary of the first broadcast by S4C, the Welsh language television channel. On the day it went live, S4C became the fourth channel available to Welsh television viewers, while its counterpart Channel 4 began broadcasting in England and Scotland the following day.</p>
<p>When UK television was still analogue, S4C carried rescheduled Channel 4 programmes as well as original Welsh language programming in peak hours. This was not the first time that television was broadcast in Welsh but S4C was to become the home for it. From the 1960s onwards, the BBC in Wales, Teledu Cymru/TWW and later HTV Wales broadcast Welsh language content regularly – but it wasn’t enough. </p>
<p>Setting the channel up was no easy task, to say the least. S4C was only established as a result of many years of protest, lobbying, reports and commissions. Once in office, the Conservative government of 1979 reneged on its manifesto promise to deliver a channel. But very soon it was forced to U-turn after former Plaid Cymru leader Gwynfor Evans threatened <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-12062288">to go on hunger strike</a> unless the government kept its word. </p>
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<p>Intended as an experiment, initially for three years, S4C soon found its place in contemporary Welsh life. Through television, the Welsh language was used to cover the fall of Communism and the Berlin Wall. Its focus on local, national and international sport drew new audiences to the language. It was used in world class animation and to create Oscar-nominated production <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104403/?ref_=nv_sr_1">Hedd Wyn</a> (1992). </p>
<p>As a channel for the whole of Wales, broadcasting its programmes in Welsh – a language spoken by just over <a href="http://www.comisiynyddygymraeg.cymru/English/Policy,%20research%20and%20data/Census%20Data/Pages/Census%20Data.aspx">500,000 people, around 20% of the population</a> – S4C became an early advocate of language technology to try to bridge the gap between Welsh and English. Programmes were shown with subtitles in English, and later in Welsh too, for adult learners of the language as well as casual viewers. </p>
<p>Whether this channel was a broadcaster or possibly a key Welsh institution in the wider language normalisation process was often a matter of debate. A false dichotomy, no doubt, as any public service broadcaster is part of a wider political context that brings with it economic, cultural, social and sociolinguistic benefits – and even more so in the case of a <a href="https://www.plataforma-llengua.cat/campanyes/llengua-minoritaria-o-minoritzada/">minority, or minoritised</a> language broadcaster.</p>
<h2>Trailblazing</h2>
<p>S4C was not alone in its plight as a minority language TV channel, though it was seen as the trailblazer. The Basque language channel <a href="http://www.eitb.eus/eu/telebista/programazioa/">ETB1</a> began broadcasting on December 31 1982, followed by the Catalan <a href="http://www.ccma.cat/tv3/">TV3</a> in 1983, and Galician <a href="http://www.crtvg.es/tvg/tvg-en-directo">TVG</a> in 1985. </p>
<p>But S4C was very much the misfit here. It was set up by parliament to serve a country that three years previously <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/special/politics97/devolution/wales/briefing/79.shtml">had rejected devolution</a>. The other channels were part of broadcasting corporations set up by the respective parliaments of the newly formed autonomous communities in Spain. There, regional autonomy and its broadcasting corporations mapped onto each other in a neat and corresponding pattern, although many speakers of the languages lived beyond these boundaries – including in France – and were often poorly served as a result. </p>
<p>Twenty years after <a href="http://www.assembly.wales/en/abthome/role-of-assembly-how-it-works/Pages/history-welsh-devolution.aspx">devolution was accepted</a> by referendum in Wales, broadcasting, including Welsh language broadcasting and S4C, continue to be matters for the UK rather than Welsh government. The Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition government fundamentally changed the funding mechanism of S4C without warning in 2010 – resulting in a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2010/oct/20/s4c-budget-cuts-bbc">cut to its budget</a> by a quarter and placing the main responsibility of funding it on the BBC <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-37300406">through the licence fee</a>.</p>
<p>These cuts have meant that S4C has been scaled back significantly, and prompted new concerns that key services <a href="http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/politics/s4c-could-lose-hd-service-12529754">like English subtitling</a> and its HD channel will have to be reduced if not dropped altogether. </p>
<p>The Catalan and Basque broadcasters, meanwhile, have mirrored the developments that most public service broadcasters have made in bringing on niche channels – such as dedicated children’s channels and 24-hour news channels – in order to be key digital players in the lives of their bilingual audiences, as well as to compete with Spanish language media services and connect with speakers living beyond their traditional territories. </p>
<p>S4C was an early adopter of online technology – webcasting in 2006 before the launch of the iPlayer – and it <a href="http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/s4c2-scrapped-in-cuts-1858179">had a second channel, S4C2</a> until 2010. Its strong brand, <a href="http://www.s4c.cymru/cyw/en/">Cyw</a>, is the go-to place for media content for pre-school and young children in Welsh. Similarly, high profile <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2013/jul/30/hinterland-tv-noir-wales">bilingual nordic noir drama</a> Y Gwyll/Hinterland has been sold to dozens of countries and is available on Netflix. Sport <a href="http://www.walesonline.co.uk/sport/rugby/rugby-news/s4c-only-broadcaster-uk-show-10764130">continues to attract</a> too. There is clearly an audience interested in the content produced by S4C – and yet repeat <a href="http://www.s4c.cymru/gwthiorffiniau/pdf/S4C-Review.pdf">levels have hit 58%</a> due to the budget cuts.</p>
<p>S4C and other public service media outlets are no longer solely competing with two or three terrestrial channels, but with a whole host of digital channels, social media, online content and gaming, both mainstream and niche. Welsh language content is not as visible as it was in 1982 and can be missed or avoided quite easily. So S4C needs to be able to reach and build its audiences, across all generations and platforms. Its presence should be felt – both visibly and emotionally – in the daily lives of the language communities that it serves.</p>
<p>S4C’s remit, governance, accountability, and its partnership with the BBC are <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/independent-review-of-s4c-launched">currently under review</a>. But questions still remain over whether it should be London or Cardiff making key decisions about the Welsh channel’s future.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/86629/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Elin Haf Gruffydd Jones led a research project (Compliance Unit) which received funding from the S4C Authority between 1998 and 2010. She is a member of Plaid Cymru. She is currently a member of the Council of Europe's Expert Working Group on the Media, in its review of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages</span></em></p>S4C was a trailblazer, now it’s being held back by politics.Elin Haf Gruffydd Jones, Professor of Media and Creative Industries, Aberystwyth UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/821922017-10-06T10:08:13Z2017-10-06T10:08:13ZHow the people of Wales became Welsh<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189143/original/file-20171006-25758-jp3ubh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Norman-built keep at Cardiff Castle.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/cardiff-castle-situated-within-beautiful-parklands-151136786?src=JKffQN7UpwFeWeuMh2dc4Q-1-52">Matthew Dixon/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Britain in the early Middle Ages was very different to the country it is now. Rather than England, Scotland and Wales, the island consisted of numerous kingdoms, the fate and fortune of which fluctuated, as some kings gained lordship over others, some smaller kingdoms were swallowed by their larger neighbours and others fell to foreign invaders – including Vikings, in the ninth and tenth centuries.</p>
<p>Today, many of the inhabitants of Britain identify primarily as <a href="http://www.scotlandscensus.gov.uk/ethnicity-identity-language-and-religion">Scottish</a>, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-24302914">English</a> or <a href="https://www.ethnicity.ac.uk/medialibrary/briefings/dynamicsofdiversity/code-census-briefing-national-identity-wales.pdf">Welsh</a>. But this was not always the case. In Wales, for example, there is no single defining moment when one can say the people became “Welsh”.</p>
<p>In the early middle ages, Wales was divided <a href="http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/the-lost-kingdoms-of-wales-13721585">into different kingdoms</a> – Gwynedd, Dyfed and Ceredigion, for example – whose relations with each other formed a central plank of native politics. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188978/original/file-20171005-9781-8xwxt9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188978/original/file-20171005-9781-8xwxt9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188978/original/file-20171005-9781-8xwxt9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=627&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188978/original/file-20171005-9781-8xwxt9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=627&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188978/original/file-20171005-9781-8xwxt9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=627&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188978/original/file-20171005-9781-8xwxt9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=788&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188978/original/file-20171005-9781-8xwxt9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=788&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188978/original/file-20171005-9781-8xwxt9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=788&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">The kingdoms of early medieval Wales.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wales.post-Roman.jpg">Wikimedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
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<p>In the ninth and tenth centuries the Merfynion, a dynasty <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=AK_yn7Q3_x0C&pg=PA554&lpg=PA554&dq=Merfynion&source=bl&ots=17TQ9JiRM_&sig=cwNZA8FISlhEyzaaCUQW6K63eqY&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiG5-OBpdLWAhXCbVAKHeYbCdAQ6AEIOzAD#v=onepage&q=Merfynion&f=false">named after its founder Merfyn Frych</a>, gained power in many of these areas, their authority spreading over both north and south Wales. </p>
<p>Even though we now label the medieval country as Wales, back then it didn’t exist as a politically united entity. This raises the question – did the inhabitants of Wales view themselves as “Welsh”?</p>
<h2>What’s in a name?</h2>
<p>The words “Wales” and “Welsh” come from the Anglo-Saxon use of the term “wealas” to describe (among other things) the people of Britain who spoke Brittonic – a Celtic language used throughout Britain which later developed into Welsh, Cornish, Breton and other languages. English writers viewed the inhabitants of Wales as different to themselves, but at the same time “wealas” wasn’t exclusively used to refer to the people of Wales. The same terminology was sometimes applied to the Cornish, for example, with “wealas” reflected in the last part of Cornwall, as “wall”.</p>
<p>We see a similar situation when we look at Welsh language words. In the tenth century, “Kymry” was used for the first time in <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=LN9DSKZfItcC&pg=PA161&lpg=PA161&dq=armes+prydein+vawr&source=bl&ots=CWC0VmxtCH&sig=c7qDDLQNzZPn7UoEBzKVEhWQY3g&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiW1u3q99bWAhVBKFAKHW9NDpMQ6AEIVzAJ#v=onepage&q=armes%20prydein%20vawr&f=false">Armes Prydein Vawr</a> (The Great Prophecy of Britain), a Welsh poem calling upon the Kymry to rise up against the English and evict them from Britain once and for all. </p>
<p>In modern Welsh, Kymry has become Cymru and Cymry, the former referring to the territory of Wales, the latter to its inhabitants. In Armes Prydein Vawr, however, Kymry doesn’t just refer to the inhabitants of Wales, but to multiple Brittonic-speaking peoples. So when Armes Prydein Vawr refers to the Kymry, as well as the inhabitants of Wales, the poet is also calling upon the Cornish, the Bretons, and the inhabitants of the Brittonic-speaking kingdoms of northern England and southern Scotland, commonly referred to then as the “Old North”.</p>
<h2>Layers of identity</h2>
<p>To explain the connection between the Brittonic-speaking peoples at the time, early medieval writers turned to history. The <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1972/1972-h/1972-h.htm">Historia Brittonum</a>, a history of the Britons composed in north Wales in 829–30, claims that the Britons were originally Trojans who travelled to Britain and became the first people to settle the island. The text also asserts that during the Roman period a group of Britons left the island and settled on the continent, becoming the Armorican Britons or <a href="http://www.everyculture.com/wc/Costa-Rica-to-Georgia/Bretons.html">Bretons</a> of Brittany, northern France. </p>
<p>The inhabitants of Wales, like those of Cornwall and the Old North, are depicted as the descendants of the original Britons who remained in Britain. But successive attacks by the <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/the-truth-about-the-picts-886098.html">Picts</a>, Irish and – especially – the Saxons had encroached upon their territory. They no longer ruled the entirety of Britain, just small corners of it. The identity based on this narrative presents the inhabitants of Wales as Britons, closely connected to the inhabitants of Cornwall, the Old North, and Brittany. </p>
<p>Ideas of identity were – and still are – complex and layered. The poet who wrote Armes Prydein Vawr may have viewed all the Brittonic-speaking peoples as Kymry, but the Cornishmen are also referred to as “Cornyw” and the inhabitants of Strathclyde as “Cludwys”. There was a distinction between the inhabitants of Cornwall and of Strathclyde, even though they were grouped as Kymry. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189144/original/file-20171006-25749-1565qen.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189144/original/file-20171006-25749-1565qen.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189144/original/file-20171006-25749-1565qen.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189144/original/file-20171006-25749-1565qen.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189144/original/file-20171006-25749-1565qen.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189144/original/file-20171006-25749-1565qen.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189144/original/file-20171006-25749-1565qen.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189144/original/file-20171006-25749-1565qen.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Offa’s Dyke near Clun, Shropshire.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Offa%27s_Dyke_near_Clun.jpg">Chris Heaton</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There is a similar sentiment in the <a href="http://mcllibrary.org/KingAlfred/">Life of King Alfred</a>, a biography of <a href="https://theconversation.com/new-research-indicates-that-alfred-the-great-probably-wasnt-that-great-74464">Alfred the Great</a> composed in 893. The writer, Asser, refers to Offa of Mercia <a href="http://www.historyextra.com/article/feature/brief-history-offas-dyke">building a dyke</a> – an earthwork denoting the border – between his kingdom and Britannia. Here Britannia clearly refers to Wales and presents it as distinct from other Brittonic-speaking areas. Likewise, Cornwall is called “Cornubia” rather than as part of one unified Britannia. </p>
<p>Nowhere is the complex nature of identity more evident than in early medieval Wales. Sources both from and outside what we would now view as Wales see the Welsh as Britons, who once ruled the entirety of Britain, and – according to Armes Prydein Vawr – would do so again in the future. But there are hints of an alternative identity being constructed. When Asser looks to Britannia, his gaze is turned to the west, across Offa’s Dyke. It is possible that the geographical unit of Wales, is beginning to play a role in ideas of identity. </p>
<p>We can’t point to exactly when the inhabitants of Wales became Welsh, but the works of writers and historians of the time provide tantalising glimpses of shifting and developing identities in the early medieval period.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/82192/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rebecca Thomas receives funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council. </span></em></p>At one point, the Welsh, Cornish, Scottish, Bretons and northern English were all “Kymry” - so what changed?Rebecca Thomas, Assistant researcher, University of CambridgeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/815782017-08-18T10:35:00Z2017-08-18T10:35:00ZIndependent music labels are creating their own streaming services to give artists a fair deal<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182560/original/file-20170818-30785-jesw1b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/young-woman-listening-music-while-lying-197145230?src=jPmNBIfkVknnyfIo1bmLeA-3-25">Kaspars Grinvalds/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Music streaming services are hard to beat. With millions of users – Spotify alone had <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/31/spotify-vs-apple-music/">60m by July 2017</a>, and is forecast to <a href="https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/spotify-is-set-to-end-2017-with-70m-subscribers-and-5bn-in-revenue-but-how-much-money-will-it-lose/">add another 10m</a> by the end of the year – paying to access a catalogue of more than 30m songs, any initial concerns seem to have <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/cd99b95e-d8ba-11e6-944b-e7eb37a6aa8e">fallen by the wayside</a>.</p>
<p>But while consumers enjoy streaming, tension is still bubbling away for the artists whose music is being used. There is a legitimacy associated with having music listed on major digital platforms, and a general acknowledgement that without being online you are not a successful business operation or artist. </p>
<p>Even the biggest stars are struggling to deny the power of Spotify, Apple Music and the like. Less than three years after pop princess Taylor Swift announced she would be removing her music from Spotify, the best-selling artist <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/jun/09/shaken-it-off-taylor-swift-ends-spotify-spat">is back online</a>, as it were. Swift’s initial decision came amid concerns that music streaming services were not paying artists enough for using their work – a view backed up by others <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2013/7/15/4523978/thom-yorke-pull-albums-from-spotify-and-rdio-calls-them-unfair-to-new-artists">including Radiohead’s Thom Yorke</a>.</p>
<p>But while Yorke and Swift can survive without the power of streaming, independent production companies with niche audiences may not be able to. </p>
<h2>Struggling artists</h2>
<p>Though the music industry is starting to get used to streaming – streamed tracks count towards chart ratings, and around 100,000 tracks are added every month to Spotify’s distribution list – it is still proving difficult for independent music companies to compete for exposure on these platforms. </p>
<p>Coping with diminishing sales of CDs and other physical copies of music, independent labels are already in a tough place. Independent labels and artists are also unable to negotiate with large digital aggregators such as Spotify or Deezer for more favourable rates, and are forced to accept the terms given. Independent labels lack the expertise, but mostly lack the catalogue size for bargaining power. Major record labels, backed by industry organisations, on the other hand can and have <a href="https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/major-labels-agree-to-better-streaming-deal-for-artist-group/">successfully negotiated</a> more favourable terms for their artists based on the share of the catalogue that they represent.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182561/original/file-20170818-30750-sdd7rj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182561/original/file-20170818-30750-sdd7rj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182561/original/file-20170818-30750-sdd7rj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182561/original/file-20170818-30750-sdd7rj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182561/original/file-20170818-30750-sdd7rj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182561/original/file-20170818-30750-sdd7rj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182561/original/file-20170818-30750-sdd7rj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Digital sounds.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/music-multimedia-sound-entertainment-concept-520914415?src=jPmNBIfkVknnyfIo1bmLeA-1-1">rawpixel.com/Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>There’s also been a shift in industry approach that some independent labels may find difficult to do. These days, major labels are focused less on the artists themselves and more on which music will do best on new platforms. This undermines the ethos for many culturally rich independent labels who work hard to safeguard niche areas of their market. For them, it is about building up different genres, not simply releasing songs that will generate the most money.</p>
<p>So if niche labels can’t get a strong footing on large services, what can they do?</p>
<h2>Independent streaming</h2>
<p>Where once there were free sites <a href="https://theconversation.com/soundcloud-survives-but-its-bad-news-for-musicians-82454">such as SoundCloud</a>, which gave emerging and niche musicians a place to share their music, indy labels are now developing their own streaming services to make sure their artists get the best exposure – and the best deal.</p>
<p>Wales in particular is leading the way for the minority language independent music scene. Streaming service <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwiNiJTTqN7VAhUrBcAKHf3rDi8QFggmMAA&url=https%3A%2F%2Fapton.cymru%2F&usg=AFQjCNH6xzRtnVTEfewm-c1jYKftGD_KPQ">Apton</a>, launched in March 2016, provides a curated service to its music fans. It operates at a competitive price point, with a more selective catalogue representing several Welsh labels. More importantly, it returns a much fairer price to its recording artists than Spotify’s reported <a href="http://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2017/01/spotify-pays-0-00429p-per-stream/">0.00429p per stream</a>.</p>
<p>By using a specialist, curated and targeted music service – such as Apton, or similar services <a href="https://theoverflow.compresents">The Overflow</a> and <a href="https://www.primephonic.com">PrimePhonic</a> – consumers are better able to find the music they are looking for. Listeners are also more likely to value the service, as they can access and experience a greater percentage of a label’s catalogue or remain within a niche genre of music, compared with mainstream mass-market streaming services, where mass market recommendations are generated via popular playlists. Users of these streaming sites and apps also value the knowledge that the money they spend is being used to support the artists they follow. </p>
<p>Though they are certainly doing well as is, streaming services at all levels need more work to become the default for music listening. In addition, it is vital that music publishers start using streaming as a gateway for consumers to engage with the music they want to hear, rather than what they want to sell. If the former strategy continues to be followed, it may have a devastating effect on budding artists.</p>
<p>Likewise, listeners need to feel that streaming offers a level of transparency, value and that there is a two-way relationship worthy of their time and attention – something the major players could certainly learn from the independents.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/81578/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Steffan Thomas was previously affiliated with Sain Records. ApTon is owned by Sain Records and was developed in response to research produced during his PhD. However, I have no ongoing role within the company and retain no commercial interest in the service. </span></em></p>Spotify, Apple Music and the like aren’t working for indy artists.Steffan Thomas, Lecturer in Film and Media, Bangor UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/776412017-05-12T16:30:59Z2017-05-12T16:30:59ZHow Gavin & Stacey won awards by poking fun at the Welsh-English rivalry<p>Watching the BBC comedy series <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007nf70">Gavin & Stacey</a> you learn as much about romance as you do about British cultural and political unity. Before the couple meet in person, they fall in love talking to each other over the phone. From the first episode, you notice they’re separated by both space and a half-language barrier, with local dialect, slang and strong accents playing off one other. </p>
<p>Gavin (played by Matthew Horne) and Stacey’s (Joanna Page) voices are all they have of each other before they consummate their relationship. It is a sitcom with an inbuilt ending – Gavin and Stacey are bound to end up together – the very first episode is about their meeting. But the series is about more than just their love, it is about the bringing together of two very different families, from either side of the Wales/England border.</p>
<p>Unlike other British sitcoms which have dealt with different cultures coming together – <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/11316397/Racist-1970s-comedies-would-be-banned-now-says-head-of-Ofcom.html">Love thy Neighbour</a> put race issues quite literally on the doorstep in the 1970s – Gavin and Stacey’s “commuting relationship” takes characters in and out of their homeland contexts. </p>
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<p>Characters are defined by their origin. The humour which arises is down to the fact that each character appears to another character as a stereotype. There are no “jokes” in Gavin & Stacey, unlike other plotted sitcoms, so humour arises in these exchanges between the characters. </p>
<p>The laughter short-cuts regional differences and brings both nations’ audiences together. Without traditional jokes, the funny moments in Gavin & Stacey are when these two opposed worlds, separated by the M4, become one.</p>
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<p>The differences between Welsh and English are key to the humour of the show, and still now, ten years on from when the first episode was broadcast, it manages to poke fun at “real” British culture.</p>
<h2>All equally stereotypical</h2>
<p>Gavin and Stacey, as a couple, act as a catalyst to bring together Anglo and Celtic cultures. The Welsh and English are traditionally historically fierce rivals. Though they are neighbours, both have certain stereotypes of one another: the Welsh are a less intelligent, silly people – while the English are stuck up, with no sense of fun.</p>
<p>In the show, these stereotypes clash with each other in the funniest way. The dry humour of the Welsh, silliness masquerading as seriousness, comes out as the English act as their victims. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Pam: And you must be Uncle Brine … uh, Brian.<br>
Bryn: Bryn.<br>
Pam: Bryn.<br>
Bryn: It means “hill” in Welsh.<br>
Pam: Does it really? Do you know, I’ve no idea what my name means in Welsh.
Nessa: Why.<br>
Pam: ‘Cos I don’t speak the lingo, darling.<br>
Nessa: No, in Welsh Pam means “why”.<br>
Pam: Oh.<br>
Nessa: [thinks] Or “brick”. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>English politeness is the foil for Welsh mischief. “Welsh humour” becomes translated by the English inability to “get it”. The perfect example is when Gavin is introduced to co-worker Owain Hughes.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Manager: Ah, there is somebody you haven’t met yet, Owain Hughes. Owain heads up the website.<br>
Gavin: Hi, nice to meet you, Gavin Shipman.<br>
Owain: Owain Hughes. And before you ask, no I don’t.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Said with a cheeky look, Owain and the manager laugh at the joke. Gavin, however, has no idea of what the joke “is” – and <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=8&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwj7ytX-1-rTAhXkK8AKHRhJC1UQtwIIVTAH&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DB0Ad9OAPGZg&usg=AFQjCNHIY7k53T2lzkomkgmvV2NwngpsMQ">neither did</a> a lot of the audience. </p>
<p>The absurdity of the Welsh characters only amuses against the straightness of Englishness. Alone, it might not do so well. But it is through our mutual affection for the Welsh characters who provide this absurdity (Uncle Bryn, played by Rob Brydon, and Nessa – played by the show’s co-writer Ruth Jones – especially) that both English and Welsh can laugh at the show.</p>
<h2>Before Brexit</h2>
<p>In May 2007, long before Brexit and the immigration issues of today, Gavin & Stacey could congratulate itself on exploring one of the last forms of prejudice between the British regions: an ironic regionalism. When character Nessa is disgraced at Smithy’s (James Corden) Englishness, she is accused of racism by Stacey. Nessa corrects her: “It’s xenophobic, Stace”. </p>
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<p>This kind of xenophobia is not something all audience members would feel or understand equally. This makes Gavin & Stacey’s humour of mutual prejudice, localised by Barry Island in Wales and Billericay in Essex, so pathetically absurd that far from being politically potent, its impotence says something about how British society felt itself beyond the politics of discrimination. </p>
<p>Gavin & Stacey made such an impression and has lasted so well because it brought two nations together – something which the country could do with in today’s political disarray.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/77641/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Daniel R. Smith does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Oh, what’s occurin’?Daniel R. Smith, Senior Lecturer in Sociology, Anglia Ruskin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/759492017-04-07T13:36:15Z2017-04-07T13:36:15ZCelebrated ‘English’ poet Edward Thomas was one of Wales’ finest writers<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/164477/original/image-20170407-29386-1hnancb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Edward Thomas used English to write about the spirit of Wales.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:For_remembrance,_soldier_poets_who_have_fallen_in_the_war,_Adcock,_1920_DJVU_pg_131.jpg">Arthur St John Adcock/Wikimedia</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Shortly after 7am on April 9 1917, 39-year-old writer Edward Thomas was killed by a shell <a href="http://ww1centenary.oucs.ox.ac.uk/unconventionalsoldiers/edward-thomas-the-journey-to-arras/">during the Battle of Arras</a> in northern France. He left a body of mostly unpublished work that has since cemented his place as one of <a href="http://www.westminster-abbey.org/our-history/people/poets-of-the-first-world-war">Britain’s greatest poets</a>. </p>
<p>All of <a href="https://www.spectator.co.uk/2004/02/the-war-and-a-sprained-ankle/#">Thomas’s 144 poems</a> were written in the two and a half years leading up to his death. Almost immediately on its posthumous publication, his poetry came to speak for a rural England whose surviving people and culture had been decimated by four years of war. In a foreword <a href="https://archive.org/details/collectedpoemswi00thomuoft">to the 1920 Collected Poems</a>, Walter de la Mare described Thomas’s poetry as “a mirror of England”, suggesting that it offered readers a portrayal of a rural nation that had been “shattered” by the catastrophic experience of World War I.</p>
<p>Thomas has become one of the most widely read English language poets of the 20th century. His Collected Poems has gone through numerous editions, and poems such as “<a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/53744">Adlestrop</a>” and “<a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/57210">Old Man</a>” have been widely anthologised.</p>
<p>Thomas has a deserved reputation as a poet with an unparalleled eye for the details of the natural world, managing through these observations to make some profound reflections on the human and <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14688417.2016.1246974?journalCode=rgrl20">environmental cost</a> of war. His influence on subsequent generations of English poets is hard to overstate: former poet laureate Ted Hughes famously called Thomas “<a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=tNymBgAAQBAJ&pg=PA243&lpg=PA243&dq=ted+hughes+edward+thomas+the+father+of+us+all&source=bl&ots=APKkUivaZR&sig=U5Ndi7YNcZtVc0Tq4xmcv5rNfE0&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiDi-CnlpLTAhVoDcAKHRvoBHoQ6AEIUjAJ#v=onepage&q=ted%20hughes%20edward%20thomas%20the%20father%20of%20us%20all&f=false">the father of us all</a>”.</p>
<p>There has been plenty of discussion of Thomas’s work over the past few decades and yet there is one major aspect that has remained largely unexamined: his association with Wales.</p>
<h2>An English poet?</h2>
<p>Calling Thomas an English poet belies his own complex national identity. Born in London to Welsh parents in 1878, Thomas made frequent trips back to Swansea and the Carmarthenshire areas of south Wales to stay with relatives. He had strong friendships with Welsh-language poets <a href="http://yba.llgc.org.uk/en/s-WILL-HEZ-1844.html">Watcyn Wyn</a> and <a href="http://yba.llgc.org.uk/en/s-JENK-GWI-1872.html">John Jenkins (“Gwili”)</a>, and later attended Lincoln College, Oxford from 1897 to 1900, where he was tutored by <a href="http://yba.llgc.org.uk/en/s-EDWA-MOR-1858.html">Owen M. Edwards</a>, one of the most significant figures in nonconformist Welsh culture. </p>
<p>Edwards awakened Thomas’s sense of Welsh national identity – after graduating he asked his former tutor “to suggest any kind of work … to help you and the Welsh cause”. Three years earlier, Edwards had called for “a literature that will be <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=VFyuBwAAQBAJ&pg=PA96&lpg=PA96&dq=%22a+literature+that+will+be+English+in+language+and+Welsh+in+spirit%22&source=bl&ots=zQgA98bqn3&sig=xEn5xO4RxWU20JqQhkCyC1n1LzA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiC5MLImJLTAhUrIMAKHQBpDcoQ6AEIHDAA#v=onepage&q=%22a%20literature%20that%20will%20be%20English%20in%20language%20and%20Welsh%20in%20spirit%22&f=false">English in language and Welsh in spirit</a>”, and it seems that Thomas took up his challenge, <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=E0WxDlKNAKsC&pg=PR24&lpg=PR24&dq=%22in+English+I+might+do+something+by+writing+of+Wales%22&source=bl&ots=kKtP5iLxgR&sig=OoY-2lb2qH_CNz0EJbBphT2gm-g&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjGmbfZmJLTAhWMJcAKHdLoAV4Q6AEIHDAA#v=onepage&q=%22in%20English%20I%20might%20do%20something%20by%20writing%20of%20Wales%22&f=false">declaring that:</a> “in English I might do something by writing of Wales”. </p>
<h2>Welsh in spirit</h2>
<p>The visits to Gwili and Watcyn Wyn became more frequent and both poets feature in Thomas’s 1905 travel book <a href="https://archive.org/details/beautifulwales00thomuoft">Beautiful Wales</a>. A description of Gwili fishing in a Carmarthenshire stream also features in one of three books of Wales-oriented sketches and short stories published by Thomas between 1902 and 1911: <a href="https://archive.org/details/horaesolitariae00thomrich">Horae Solitariae</a>, <a href="https://archive.org/details/restunrest00thomiala">Rest and Unrest</a>, and <a href="https://archive.org/details/lighttwilight00thomuoft">Light and Twilight</a>. These books are full of Welsh subject matter, including sketches, as well as adaptations of, and allusions to, Welsh folk material and literature. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/164468/original/image-20170407-29410-d5rjg2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/164468/original/image-20170407-29410-d5rjg2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=776&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164468/original/image-20170407-29410-d5rjg2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=776&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164468/original/image-20170407-29410-d5rjg2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=776&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164468/original/image-20170407-29410-d5rjg2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=976&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164468/original/image-20170407-29410-d5rjg2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=976&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164468/original/image-20170407-29410-d5rjg2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=976&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Edward Thomas in 1905.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Thomasportrait.jpg">Wikimedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In his review work for newspapers, Thomas lamented the lack of a widely circulated collection of Welsh folk tales, something that he himself put right in 1911 when he published <a href="https://archive.org/details/celticstories00thom">Celtic Stories</a>, an anthology of Welsh and Irish folk stories written “when Wales and Ireland were entirely independent of England”. </p>
<p>While Thomas’s reputation as a quintessentially English writer rests largely on his poetry, it is now clear that even this is not as English as we previously thought. Welsh subject matter clearly creeps into <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2013/feb/25/poem-of-the-week-edward-thomas">some of his poems</a>. The following verse from Words is a riddle-like reference to the tradition of Welsh bardic poetry:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Make me content<br>
With some sweetness<br>
From Wales<br>
Whose nightingales<br>
Have no wings…</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The lines below from <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/57265">Roads</a> allude to Sarn Helen, the mythical Roman road linking fortresses in the north and south of Wales:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Helen of the roads,<br>
The mountain ways of Wales<br>
And the Mabinogion tales,<br>
Is one of the true gods</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Recently, however, <a href="http://www.uwp.co.uk/editions/9780708326220">we have realised</a> that Thomas’s knowledge of <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-welsh-developed-their-own-form-of-poetry-73299">Welsh-language poetic metres</a> influenced his work too. Thomas’s poetry has long been regarded as innovative, but critics have tended to look for its origins in <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/jul/29/robert-frost-edward-thomas-poetry">his relationship with American poet Robert Frost</a>, the <a href="https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/text/brief-guide-imagism">Imagism movement</a>, or in the spoken voice. </p>
<p>What we have missed is the formal crossover between Welsh-language literary forms and Thomas’s use of intricate sound patterns. The opening lines of “<a href="https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/head-and-bottle/">Head and Bottle</a>”, for example, repeat the consonant sounds of “l”, “s” and “m” across the first line, and again in the second line. There is also the internal rhyme in “sun”, “sum” and “hum”:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The downs will lose the sun, white alyssum<br>
Lose the bees’ hum</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This is a clear example of cynghanedd, the intricate system of <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-welsh-developed-their-own-form-of-poetry-73299">consonantal repetition and internal rhyme</a> which is unique to Welsh-language poems. </p>
<p>Thomas certainly was one of the greatest English-language poets but, one hundred years on, it is becoming clear that he belongs just as much to an Anglophone Welsh literary tradition as he does to the literature of England.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/75949/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andrew Webb does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Poet Edward Thomas took from the traditions of Wales, and the beauty of the land to describe the horrors of war.Andrew Webb, Senior Lecturer in English Literature, Bangor UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/732992017-03-08T16:39:46Z2017-03-08T16:39:46ZHow the Welsh developed their own form of poetry<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/159780/original/image-20170307-14973-1v78r4d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/writer-writes-fountain-pen-on-paper-384631006?src=-JVwyeubfqkkAfw_UYmqvQ-1-11">Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>A world without poetry would be a dire thing indeed. From Dylan Thomas’s famous villanelle <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2cgcx-GJTQ">Do not go gentle into that good night</a> to Shakespeare’s famous love sonnet parody, <a href="http://www.shakespeare-online.com/sonnets/130detail.html">Sonnet 130</a>, the forms of these writings, just as much as the words and phrases, have become a large part of literary history and culture. </p>
<p>As well-known as these intricate styles may be, over many centuries the people of Wales developed a unique set of patterns all of their own. Unlike most English language forms, these focus on the sounds produced within a line and the echoes left after, rather than just on the words themselves.</p>
<p>In total, there are 24 Welsh poetic forms and four metres. The forms have a tendency to be quite short – an Englyn Milwr, for example, was a form used by soldiers to send short messages home during World War I. Sometimes referred to as <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2009/nov/27/poster-poems-englynion">a British haiku</a>, every verse is composed of three lines, each seven syllables long, all of which rhyme with each other. Though the expressive lines do lend it certain similarities to the Japanese style, the Englyn has a very Welsh identity. Rhyme is an integral aspect of Welsh poetic forms and so, unlike the haiku, each of a verse’s three lines is monorhymed, that is they end in the same rhyme.</p>
<h2>Harmonious lines</h2>
<p>To create and maintain harmony within a line, strict Welsh metres, known as “cynghanedd”, are used. The cynghanedd have more in common with music than traditional poetry, and like a piece of music it is made up of more than just one note. In fact, in order to fully appreciate a line of cynghanedd you should read it aloud and listen to the layers of sounds that roll off the tongue. </p>
<p>They achieve this lyrical metre by practising something called “consonantal harmony”. This is unique to Wales because the language effortlessly uses cynghanedd in everyday life: consonantal repetition is part of the landscape of the Welsh language. </p>
<p>A line of cynghanedd is written with an invisible break or caesura in the middle that divides the line, for instance: X X X | X X X X. The cynghanedd is traditionally made up of seven syllables, so here “X” represents each syllable in a line.</p>
<p>Welsh is a heavily syllabic language with the stress usually falling on the penultimate syllable. Take this line from <a href="https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/fern-hill">Fern Hill by Dylan Thomas</a> for example, where the “th” and “s” make up the harmony:</p>
<p>“<strong><em>Th</em></strong>ough I <strong><em>s</em></strong>ang in my chains like <strong><em>th</em></strong>e <strong><em>s</em></strong>ea.”</p>
<p>As Welsh can be a tricky language to master, this example is included despite the fact that Thomas’s knowledge of the cynghanned is debatable. Still, the line is a strong if unintentional example of the metre. A true Welsh language cynghanned example for comparison would be the following, from <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/sep/02/dic-jones-obituary">Dic Jones’s</a> poem Cefn Gwlad:</p>
<p>“I fyw yn glos wrth gefn gwlad”</p>
<p>Translated into English, the line reads, “To live close to nature”, which doesn’t have quite the same effect.</p>
<p>There are four types of cynghanedd or metres: lusg (echoing harmony), draws (bridging harmony), sain (sonorous harmony) and groes (criss-cross harmony). Although they achieve the metre in different ways, their principles are basically the same: the consonants that appear in the first part of the line must appear in the same order in the second, as shown above.</p>
<figure>
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</figure>
<h2>History through verse</h2>
<p>These forms remain widely popular in Wales, but to understand why such complexity is necessary, it is important to understand where the poetic forms and metres originate from: they are intrinsically intertwined with the Welsh language. As Welsh developed so did they, coming into their own particularly during the 12th century.</p>
<p>Poets who had mastered the cynghanedd during this century were hailed as “pencerdds”, chiefs-of-song. It would take approximately nine years to master the forms and metres required. In recognition of his position, the pencerdd was granted a special chair in the royal court. There were other poetic positions within the royal household, too, such as bardd teulu – poet to the household – an officer of the court tasked with the duty of performing his work to the queen. The lowest position was that of the musician, the cerddor.</p>
<p>All of these roles had one very important function: they were chroniclers and archivists. It was their responsibility to ensure that the great feats of the king and all his battles were remembered and recited long after he had passed. Reading and writing was enjoyed by a privileged few which made passing down stories a tricky profession. The repetition of sounds in the cynghanedd ensured the poetry was memorable.</p>
<h2>Continuing cynghanedd</h2>
<p>The way that the metre forms each poem connects it almost exclusively to the Welsh language: it would be very difficult to recreate the same harmony and balance between a line’s consonants in English or any other language in exactly the same way. </p>
<p>Welsh poetic forms and metres are grandiloquent, challenging and dense, which is great for praising a king and narrating stories. Modern poetry has moved beyond this form-led poetry to a more open style – after all, not many want to read a poem where they can guess the next rhyme – but these poetic forms and metre still have their place in the country. Each year, the words and lines of these poems are brought to life at the <a href="https://eisteddfod.wales/">National Eisteddfod music and poetry festival</a>, which remains a large part of Welsh culture. </p>
<p>The modern expectations of English poetry have changed, but the centuries-old Welsh poems emphasise that their writing is an ancient craft, and can bring life to the tales of times long ago in a way no other tongue ever could.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/73299/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rhea Seren Phillips does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Welsh poetry has more in common with music than Shakespeare’s sonnets or Keats’s Romantic verses.Rhea Seren Phillips, PhD Researcher, Swansea UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.