Medieval Welsh History

This essay provides an analysis of how and when St Winefride’s cult became popular; how personal and political motives lead to the promotion of the cult (particularly at Holywell, Shrewsbury and Basingwerk) and also how her popularity extended beyond Wales. It includes interesting discussions of cures at the well, royal visitors and the post-reformation cult, and traces the origins of the cult and its development in a chronological fashion.

This essay highlights the main characteristics of the architecture of the Welsh house and provides an analysis of the influences on its design over the centuries. The various terms involved in the field are clearly explained before the discussion is expanded, and pertinent examples are used of different forms of architecture in Wales and their locations, demonstrating effectively the factors that influenced design and its development over the years.

This article uncovers the origins of one of the major famous and important literary motif in Welsh literature - Blodeuwedd. It describes its journey from Mesopotamia to Wales through the ages accompanied by its Christian devaluation and modern revival. In the last decades, this Welsh motif has become a successful literary Welsh motif export.

Understanding medieval Welsh history means understanding the literary works as well, because quite often there is a blending of history with folktale or mythology.  One of the best examples of this blend of history and mythos is the story of King Arthur, because, during the Middle Ages, he was an important Welsh historical figure, though it is now widely understood that he did not actually exist.  Nevertheless, he was a cultural icon, a leader worthy of emulation, and a champion of justice and piety. 
Llywelyn ap Gruffudd and Owain Glyndŵr are two examples of princes of Wales attempting to, or appearing to emulate King Arthur. Llywelyn was the last prince of an united, independent Wales in the mid to late thirteenth century and Owain Glyndŵr was a fourteenth century rebel prince with nationalistic intentions.  These princes were influenced by and attempted to mimic Arthur’s abilities as a leader of men and a liberator of Wales.  Unlike Arthur, Llywelyn and Owain were not successful at keeping Wales independent, but they were successful in becoming prominent Welsh literary figures similar to Arthur.  In 1921, the Welsh historian Owen M. Edwards said, “not on the battlefield but in literature a Llywelyn and a Glyndŵr are needed.”  Therefore Edwards claims that these two princes are just as important, if not more important, as literary figures than they were as leaders.

One recent early-modern historian has gone so far as to say that, 'To speak of urban history in Wales before the nineteenth century is perhaps to misuse the term'. 2 This dominant perspective of pre-industrial Wales as being overwhelmingly rural reflects both the general paucity of research into medieval Welsh towns, and the comparative lack of familiar documentation for their study. Important collections of studies and gazetteers of Welsh medieval towns, and useful archaeological works, are available, 3 although there has been a tendency -conditioned by the sources -to emphasize the topographical and political at the expense of the social and economic. To say this is not to undermine the work already done, but to make the case for building upon it. 1 I wish to thank Ralph Griffiths for sharing his insights into medieval Welsh towns with me, and for substantially improving the style of this text. I am also grateful to Christopher Dyer for his helpful comments regarding population estimates for England and Wales.

This is a short essay, 1,098 words; about how the Mabinogi is presented in John Davies’ widely known and respected History of Wales.  The History represents a well informed person’s view of the Mabinogi, not a Mabinogi specialist, placing the work in historical context. Davies’ History is a major national chronicle  but not a literary history: literary matters are covered as one historical theme among others. He makes nine references to the Mabinogi: none to the Mabinogion. These nine are fully quoted below the essay together with copious helpful footnotes and a bibliography.

This book introduces a new theoretical framework for the examination of medieval Western European perceptions of the Orient. Through the application of the medieval concept of translatio studii et imperii, it proposes the identification of three distinct conceptions of the Orient in medieval sources: Biblical, Classical, and Contemporary. Welsh textual material from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries is used as a case-study to develop and illustrate this theory.

This study brings historical sources to bear on previously unexplained literary phenomena and it examines the evolution of texts and ideas in the process of transmission and translation. The sources analysed here include vernacular and Latin texts produced in Wales, as well as material that has been translated into Welsh such as Imago mundi and legends about Charlemagne. It thus combines an important and much-needed account of the development of Welsh attitudes to the East with a unique analysis of Oriental references across an extensive literary corpus.

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Following the devastating attacks by two Norman armies into south-western Cymru in 1093, the native British commotes of Cedweli, Gŵyr and Ystrad Tywi and likely much of northern Dyfed had withstood the Norman onslaught that had overwhelmed the south-western part of the kingdom of Deheubarth. From early 1106, in a new devastating phase of the conquest, the Normans came after the rest of Deheubarth. Native British resistance would all but be extinguished, and then by 1140, astonishingly, to have recovered to force Norman power to bow a knee to native power.
The four branches of the Mabinogi are thought by many historians to have been written down no earlier than the late twelfth or early thirteenth century. Yet there is no direct reference to any Norman presence in these tales of the rulers of Cymru told to a post-Norman native British audience. On the face of it, either the author is dealing with a pre-Norman past or has consciously written the Normans out of history. 
This paper argues that in fact the Normans are there in the Mabinogi, hiding in the third branch in plain sight, that the historical narrative, between 1106 and 1140, is represented in a mythologised form in the tales. That the struggle with the Normans is in fact the matter of the third branch of the Mabinogi, the tale of Manawydan fab Llŷr.

Martine Mussies, “Welshe weemoed”, in: Kelten: Mededelingen van de Stichting A. G. van Hamel voor Keltische Studies 69 (2016): 9.

Martine Mussies, “Welshe weemoed”, in: Kelten: Jaarboek van de Stichting A. G. van Hamel voor Keltische Studies 1 (2017): 17.

Dit artikel is een lexicografische uiteenzetting van het woord hiraeth en een verkenning naar de emoties de er mee worden geassocieerd. Allereerst wordt een overzicht gegeven van het woord in meerdere Keltische talen, vervolgens wordt gekeken naar het gebruik van het woord in de Welshe literatuur en tot slot wordt er gezocht naar mogelijke vertalingen in het Nederlands.

A 41,000 word Taxonomy of the Major Deities of the Brythonic Kelt and their Interface with the Human Organism based upon the Great Hero Gods and Goddesses of the major Kymraec Pantheon found in the 4th Branch of the Mabinogi.  Although a basic Kymraec exposition, I admit to adding Sanskrit as a stout ally in certain arguments in addition whatsoever aspects of Quantum Physics as are necessary.

It has long been recognised that distinctive apsidal towers were a prominent feature of thirteenth-century native castle-building in Gwynedd, combining accommodation and defensive functions. This article argues that castle-building by Llywelyn ap Gruffudd in his conquests in the March saw this building practice evolve, with a greater specialisation in building function, moving closer in some respects to Anglo-French practice.

Гильда Премудрый -одна из самых загадочных личностей в истории Британии. Время, место и обстоятельства его жизни точно не известны, однако история Британских островов не может без него обойтись. Ведь он -автор прославленного сочинения «О погибели Британии». Этот трактат из 110 главединственный рассказ о падении римской власти в Британии и завоевании ее в V в. англосаксами, который исходит почти от современника -ведь Гильда создал его приблизительно в начале VI столетия. Гильда кратко рассказывает всю историю Британии до своего времени; он дает ценные сведения и по церковной истории -рассказывает о первом британском мученике Альбане, критикует своих современников -епископов и пресвитеров.

This article uncovers the origins of the famous Welsh literary motif Blodeuwedd locating them in Mesopotamia. Thereafter, it displays diverging trends in the use of this motif in the literatures of Wales and England on the one hand and in the continental literature of Germany on the other.

The article offers an intermedial reading of Lloyd Jones's novel "See How They Run", part of the series that comprises novels retelling eleven tales from the earliest extant British collection of prose fiction known as the Mabinogion. In the article I explore verbally transmitted explicit and implicit references to the visual medium which, as I demonstrate, are used to repackage some of the most archaic aspects of the original text. By employing a theoretical framework developed by Boris Uspensky in his "A Poetics of Composition. The Structure of the Artistic Text and Typology of a Compositional Form", I argue that the novel's pictorial dimension mirrors perspectival systems of Renaissance and pre-Renaissance painting. I conclude that the transfer from the former to the latter, together with other visual elements, constitutes a significant component in Jones's strategy to transcribe the mythological and religious substratum of the medieval original.

The article offers an intermedial reading of Lloyd Jones’s novel See How They Run, part of the series that comprises novels retelling eleven tales from the earliest extant British collection of prose fiction known as the Mabinogion. In the article I explore verbally transmitted explicit and implicit references to the visual medium which, as I demonstrate, are used to repackage some of the most archaic aspects of the original text. By employing a theoretical framework developed by Boris Uspensky in his A Poetics of Composition. The Structure of the Artistic Text and Typology of a Compositional Form, I argue that the novel’s pictorial dimension mirrors perspectival systems of Renaissance and pre-Renaissance painting. I conclude that the transfer from the former to the latter, together with other visual elements, constitutes a significant component in Jones’s strategy to transcribe the mythological and religious substratum of the medieval original.

The work of Gerald of Wales (1146-1223) is enjoying a small renaissance: a 2014 Harvard conference on the half-Norman half-Welsh Anglo-Latin writer resulted in the publication in 2018 of the first volume of collected essays on Gerald and his work.  Robert Bartlett's new edition of Gerald's De Instructione Prinicpis was also published last year.  This session seeks papers on any aspect of the life and works of Gerald of Wales.  We hope to build on the momentum generated by these recent publications and will especially encourage papers that view the Giraldian corpus in its intersection with current trends in medieval studies.  Please send proposals for 20-minute papers by September 15, 2019, to Michael Faletra, Professor of English and Humanities, Reed College: faletram@reed.edu.

A chapter (pp. 149-58) from Alice Blackwell (ed.), Scotland in Early Medieval Europe (Leiden: Sidestone Press, 2019). It discusses comparatively the ways in which the different ethnic groups in early medieval Scotland (the Gaels, Picts, Britons, Anglo-Saxons and Scandinavians (admittedly very briefly)) used texts about the past to reflect their own identities. The genres and contents of such sources shed light on how people perceived themselves, indicating what they regarded as important.
The book can be read online for free, or purchased in hard copy or as an Ebook.

The Chepstow 'Custom boke', transcribed below, was made at Michaelmas (29 September) 1535 and registered entries for the subsequent year. 2 The town and port of Chepstow formed part of the Marcher lordship of Chepstow administered by Henry Somerset, earl of Worcester from 1525. The book registers in detail the particular receipts or cockets, not only from customs and anchorage charges imposed on the merchandise of incoming and outgoing ships at the port, but also from prise on ale production in the town, tolls on merchandise and traffic passing through the town, tolls on boats passing up the River Wye, profits from visitors to fairs held at Chepstow, Monmouth and Bristol, and tolls from chensers (temporarily licensed traders or workers) in the town. In providing detailed evidence of trade for a significant Welsh port, it goes beyond both the contemporary royal customs accounts for the royal ports and staples in Wales, and the surviving ministers' accounts of Marcher lordships. The former record the merchandise of incoming and outgoing ships, and the latter record in a very limited fashion the summaries of tolls and prise of wine received from seignorial markets and ports. 3 It therefore appears to be a unique record for the March of Wales, and has come to light as a 1 I wish to thank Ralph Griffiths for his valuable comments on early drafts of this article, and for substantially improving the style of the text. 2 Public Record Office (hereafter PRO) E122/212/17. 3 For royal customs, see E. A. Lewis, 'A contribution to the commercial history of medieval Wales', Y Cymmrodor, 24 (1913);

In the summer of 1212, Llywelyn ab Iorwerth, prince of Gwynedd and de facto prince of Wales, sent a letter of alliance to Philip II, King of France. This letter confirmed a political relationship born out of a mutual enemy: King John of England. It records a promise made by the Welsh to not enter into any alliance with the English and the expectation that the French will neither without mutual consultation.

This letter and the alliance to which it alludes provide important historical context for an intriguing Latin poem recorded in a late-thirteenth-century Norman manuscript but long attributed to a Welsh author. The poem, which begins “Trucidare Saxones soliti Cambrenses,” has been little studied and deserves renewed attention for its implications regarding Welsh attitudes towards not just the usual English suspects, but also the expectations of alliance with France. My paper provides a new date for the poem’s composition and a fresh analysis of its purpose in responding to contemporary political events. By reexamining the language of the poem, I have found evidence of Welsh resentment towards the French that sheds light on the shifting political alliances of thirteenth-century Britain.