J.R.R. Tolkien once remarked: “Welsh is of this soil,
this island, the senior language of the men of Britain; Welsh is beautiful.” Today, Wales
is seen as the sleepy, rural periphery of the United Kingdom, but deeply rooted in its idyllic
rolling hills is the vibrant history of the Celtic Britons, a people who have had as many mighty
warlords as they have pages of beautiful poetry. Even today, in a world so thoroughly dominated by
a Globalized English language, Wales retains its ancient culture, folklore, and unique tongue.
Welcome to our second series on the Celtic peoples of Europe, where we will explore the
Medieval History of the land where Dragons roam. If, like Tolkien, you want to preserve
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The Celtic peoples have inhabited the British
isles since antiquity, but for the first four centuries of the common era, they did so
under the overlordship of the Roman Empire. After Imperial authority collapsed, and the
last legions departed from the island in 410 AD, a new form of occupier would take root in Britain. Throughout the 5th and 6th centuries AD,
Germanic tribes like the Angles, Saxons, Jutes, and Frisians began making increasing headway into
the isle. Whether this was defined by large-scale invasion or by relatively peaceful assimilation
is still up for debate. However, it is in this murky era that the legend of King Arthur is
historically rooted. In any case, by 600 AD, the eastern lowlands of Britain were dominated
by the Germanic ancestors of the English, while Celtic-speaking polities, the ancestors of
the Welsh, were pushed into the western highlands. Throughout medieval history, there was never
a single Welsh state, but rather, a multitude of smaller kingdoms united culturally, through a
shared corpus of folklore and similar languages. These small polities were not just localized to
what is now modern Wales, but also in parts of what is now England and the Scottish Lowlands,
where proto-Welsh Kingdoms endured well into the middle ages. It also bears mentioning that the
Welsh, who we will refer to interchangeably as the Britons, Brittonic, Brythonic, or Cumbric peoples,
were not the only Celtic-speaking polities in the middle ages. In Ireland, the Gaels predominated,
from where they spread to the Scottish Highlands, competing with the local Pictish tribes for
dominance. Another medieval Celtic land of note is the French peninsula of Brittany. Culturally
and linguistically closely related to the Welsh, the Bretons maintained their political
autonomy from their Frankish and Norman neighbors for centuries, while maintaining regular
contact with their cousins across the channel. Before we get into the history of Medieval Wales,
let us briefly explore their culture and society. In the overall landscape of early Britain in the
middle ages, the cultural achievements of the Celtic Britons are often sidelined in order to
focus on those of the Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms or, later, the Norse invaders. Undeservedly so,
for in contrast to the common narrative which portrays them as the poorest periphery of
Britain, the Welsh possessed as much high culture as anywhere else in Europe at the time.
Old Welsh poetry, for example, is extremely extensive and complex. Any fans of modern
western fantasy will likely be familiar with the archetype of the “Bard”, which was originally
an ancient Celtic, and later Medieval Welsh word. Throughout the Brythonic world, Bards were
highly respected, and often invited to the courts of Kings to compose grand epics which
would glorify that monarch. Some Bards would themselves become legends of great renown, such
as Aneirin and Taliesin, two sixth century poets whose wide corpus of works include everything
from epic poems of great battles, to children’s lullabies. Their works survive to this day,
albeit not in their original forms. Editorially, it can be said that what Homer was to the
Greeks, Aneirin and Taliesin were to the Welsh. Another accomplished pillar of medieval Welsh
society was its Church. Christianity had taken root in Britain during the Late Roman Empire, and
by the 6th century AD had become the predominant faith among the Celtic Britons. Welsh Christianity
had its own local flavour, by virtue of its home-bred saints. Originally, these saints were
Britons who had lived during Roman rule and had been martyred by the Augusti for their faith, such
as St. Alban. However, after the Roman departure, British Saints often took on the form of
pious royalty, such as St. Cybi, a Prince of Cornwall who supposedly went on pilgrimage
all the way to Jerusalem, and upon his return, turned down his rightful throne to instead preach
and build Churches throughout the realm. Holy sites to various Celtic Saints dotted the lands of
the Medieval Cumbric peoples, and pilgrimages to them were regularly made by the common people.
Between the 6th and 8th centuries, Celtic Christianity was fairly isolated from its
mother Church in Rome, and thus developed certain schismatic beliefs, such as a different method in
calculating the date of Easter. However, by the 9th century, these schisms had largely been healed
due to kings like Cyngen ap Cadell of Powys who were recorded to have made pilgrimages to Rome. It
should also be noted that, between the 5th and 7th centuries AD, interactions between the Britons
and their Anglo-Saxon neighbours were often tinged with religious tension, for the former were
largely Christian, while the latter still held to a pantheon of Pagan Gods similar to the ones made
famous by the Norse Vikings in later centuries. However, by the 700s AD, the forebears of
the English had embraced Roman Christianity. What we have thus far covered of early
Welsh society barely scratches the surface of its depth and complexity, and
there is much more that can be explored, such as their nuanced legal codes, refined
artwork, and sophisticated court culture, but for brevity's sake, we will now have to move on.
Let us now take a tour of western Britain in the sixth and seventh centuries, and examine how
the Cymric peoples from Somerset to Lanarkshire interacted with the various Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms
to their immediate east. In doing this, we must consider the nature of the surviving textual
evidence from this era. Although English monks like the venerable Bede and Welsh chroniclers and
poets like Nennius and the aforementioned Aneirin provide us with invaluable insights into the
events of their age, their accounting of events is often clouded by the biases of their time,
and should be examined through a critical lens. With that covered, let us begin with Yr
Hen Ogledd: the old North, a region home to major Brittonic Kingdoms like Elmet, Gododdin,
Rheged, and Strathclyde, who by the 6th century, shared an eastern border with the Anglic Kingdoms
of Bernicia and Deira. During their natal years, these proto-English Kingdoms appear to have been
smaller and weaker than their Briton neighbours, and Bernicia may even have intermittently
been a tributary state to the Cumbric Kings of Gododdin. This, however, would change with
the ascension of Æthelfrith, king of Bernicia, who according to Bede was ‘a most powerful king,
who, more than all the leaders of the English, harried the people of the Britons.’ This
is seemingly corroborated in Aneirin’s old Welsh poem, Y Gododdin: an elegy to
king Mynyddog Mwynfawr of Gododdin, who around 600 AD lost his Kingdom to the Angles,
who were probably aided by the Kingdom of Rheged. Æthelfrith’s successor, Edwin, shared
his predecessors’ expansionist ambitions, and both Bede and Nennius seem to agree that he
conquered Elmet, the second of the four major northern Brittonic Kingdoms. However, this
ambition would provoke retaliation in the form of Cadwallon ap Cadfan, King of Gwynedd. In
response to Edwin’s encroachment on his territory, Cadwallon forged an alliance with Penda, a Prince
of Mercia, and with his help, led the Britons of the north into open rebellion against Edwin. At
the Battle of Hatfield Chase in October of 633, Cadwallon crushed Edwin’s armies, then conquered
the entirety of Northern England. Cadwallon’s ascendancy would be short-lived, for he would be
killed in the Battle of Heavensfield by Oswald, son of Æthelfrith, allowing the Bernician royal
line to once more assert dominance in the North of England in the ensuing decade, unite with
Deira to form of the Kingdom of Northumbria. The legacy of Cadwallon ap Cadfan of Gwynedd is
seemingly divided along ethnic lines. English commentators like Bede portray him as the
most tyrannical despot the English ever faced, while Welsh poems portray him as the greatest hero
among the Briton warrior-kings. If we, as modern observers, can draw any takeaways from Cadwallon’s
reign, it is that his cooperation with Penda of Mercia tells us that there was never a binary
struggle between Celtic Briton and Anglo-Saxon, but rather a deeply complex political landscape
where cooperation often extended beyond religious, ethnic and linguistic lines. Indeed, the frequent
cross-pollination of Picts, Gaels, Angles, Saxons, and Britons in the old North often blurred the
lines where one culture ended and another began. By 731, most of the Brythonic lands of Yr Hen
Ogledd were once more under Northumbrian lordship, save for Strathclyde, which would survive as a
distinct political entity into the 11th century. However, textual evidence suggests that in lands
ruled by the Northumbrians, the Celtic language of the Northern Britons survived for centuries
even after their Kingdoms had been extinguished. Let us now move from the northern end of the
medieval Brythonic world to the very south of it. For much of history, the peninsula of Cornwall
was distinctly a Celtic land. In the early middle ages, Cornwall, alongside Devon, were part
of the Kingdom of Dumnonia. In times past, Dumnonia had been joined by land to
its sister-Kingdoms in Wales proper, but this connection was severed after
the Battle of Deorham in 577, wherein Worcester and Gloucester became part of the Saxon
Kingdom of Hwicce, later a Mercian client-state. Whereas the histories of the northern
Celtic Britons were defined primarily by their relationship to the Northern
Angles, their southern cousins were defined by their relationship with the
West Saxons, and as a general trend, the 8th century saw the Dumnonii gradually
pushed westwards by the Kingdom of Wessex. The exact nature of these conflicts is obscured by
a lack of detailed surviving sources. For example, the Annales Cambriae, a medieval Latin anthology
of Welsh history, notes that in 722, the southern Britons won a victory at the Battle of Hehil,
located somewhere in Devon. The Annales do not specify who this victory was won against, but most
historians agree it was likely against Wessex, thereby allowing the Britons to successfully
stymie West Saxon expansion for a time. This, however, would be temporary, and by the
reign of Alfred the Great, Devon had long since been absorbed into the Kingdom of Wessex, and
the Cornish peninsula, while maintaining some form of Brittonic autonomy, would be under the
political domination of the West Saxon Kings. With that said, although Cornwall would eventually
become an integral part of the Kingdom of England, the Brythonic language spoken there
survived for nearly a millennia afterwards. Let us now shift our focus to central Britain,
where Kingdoms like Gwent, Dyfed, Powys, and the aforementioned Gwynedd thrived. Throughout
the 7th century, these Brittonic polities bordered the Mercians, who for the most part, they
enjoyed amiable relations with. As it was in the old north, the ethnic boundaries between
these lands were blurred, with plenty of cultural cross-pollination and intermarriage occurring
across ethnic lines. Moreover, both Briton and Mercian Kings had a common enemy, the Angles of
Northumbria. We have already covered how Cadwallon of Gwynedd and Prince Penda of Mercia teamed up
to defeat Edwin of Deira. However, this would not be the last time that Britons and Mercians
fought side by side. In 642, Penda, now King of the Mercians, would once more meet the Northern
Angles in battle alongside an alliance of Briton warriors from Powys and Gwynedd, the latter of
whom had been sent by King Cadwaladr, son of the infamous Cadwallon. With Welsh aid, Penda was able
to slay the Bernician King, Oswald, in battle. Penda’s victories over the Northumbrians made him
the most powerful Anglo-Saxon ruler in Britain, laying the foundations for an era of Mercian
supremacy. Thus, the Early Medieval Welsh Kingdoms not only were masters of their own destiny,
but, through their role in elevating Penda, crucial power players in the politics
of their Anglo-Saxon neighbours as well. Over time, the relationship the Britons enjoyed
with Mercia began to sour. The catalyst for this occured in 685, when the Picts crushed the army
of the Northumbrian King Ecgfrith at the battle of Dun Nechtain. This defeat was the capstone
in the collapse of Northumbria’s expansionist ambitions. In its place, Mercia became
the most imperialistic Kingdom in Britain, expanding its dominance throughout the midlands
and the south of England throughout the 700s AD, and looking to Wales for further territorial
gains. In the modern parish of Llantysilio-yn-Iâl is a stone column known as the pillar of Eliseg.
Erected during the reign of King Cyngen ap Cadell of Powys [808-854 AD], the stone is inscribed in
Latin with the deeds of that King’s ancestors. Among these, are the victories of Cyngen’s
great grandfather, Elise ap Gwylog, who “seized the inheritance of Powys from the power of the
English by force.” Through this, we can deduce that around the mid-700s, Powys had come under
Mercian domination, but Elise ap Gwylog launched a successful rebellion to reclaim his realm. This
may have occurred in 757, when the murder of King Æthelbald threw Mercia into a succession crisis.
After this succession crisis, King Offa would ascend to the throne of Mercia, and rule from late
757 to 796. The Annales Cambriae records that Offa frequently campaigned against the Britons on his
western frontier, with his most likely enemy being the resurgent kingdom of Powys, if we take the
inscriptions on the Pillar of Eliseg into account. Evidently, the Welsh became troublesome enough
that, late in his reign, Offa sponsored the creation of a massive earthen ditch-and-wall
to be dug out along the frontier lands between his domain and the Kingdom of Powys. This
132-kilometer-long fortification, known titularly as Offa’s Dyke, indents the landscape to this
day, although historians still debate its true nature and purpose. Ostensibly, a giant border
ditch seems like an antagonistic act. However, at certain points, the path of the dyke veers
eastwards to leave key fortresses and fertile valleys in Welsh hands, indicating that the
dyke was a mutually agreed upon boundary rather than an act of Mercian territorial aggression.
Moreover, while the previously blurred ethnic boundaries between Briton and Anglo-Saxon became
more strictly defined after the erection of Offa’s Dyke, some, but not all historians assert
that cross-border movement, for trade and other purposes, continued in a more tightly controlled
manner even after the Dyke’s construction. The erection of Offa’s Dyke did not affect the
Mercian desire to establish a zone of hegemony over the Welsh Kingdoms, as they had with
other periphery zones like Kent and Wessex. According to the Annales Cambriae, Offa’s
successor, King Coenwulf, waged war on Dyfed and Gwynedd in 798, during which the latter’s
king, Caradog ap Meirion, perished in battle. However, the gains Coenwulf achieved through
these victories did not seem to be major, or particularly permanent. Ultimately, surviving
historical evidence from this era is scant, but the existence of Offa’s dyke and the inscriptions
on the Pillar of Eliseg come together to form a basic historical narrative where, throughout the
700s and 800s AD, Mercia would intermittently use political or military force to establish
supremacy over various Welsh border Kingdoms, but the Welsh would usually manage to reassert their
sovereignty, and re-establish civil political relations with their Anglo-Saxon neighbours.
In 865 AD, the balance of power in Britain was severely disrupted as a new player entered
the game, in the form of a great heathen army, and it is here that we will end the first episode
of our history of the Welsh. The story of the Vikings in Britain has been told exhaustively
from the perspective of the Anglo-Saxons and the Norsemen, but in our next episode, we will
tell that era of history from the perspective of the Celtic Britons, as dynamic rulers like Rhodri
the Great and Hywel Dda unite the Welsh Kingdoms, fend off the incursions of the Danes and
usher in an age of learning and prosperity while Strathclyde, the last Briton Kingdom of
the old North, experiences its twilight years. Thanks again to our sponsor, Established
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