None of the line items that are included in the following outline are meant to be links.
The outline itself represents the material that is to be covered in the upcoming book known by the above title (available after June 2032).

Foreword by Jason Hamilton

1. Introduction to The History: Cornwall, Wales, and France (Saxons, Romans, Picts, Scots, and The Irish)
2. Chronologies, Timelines, Calendars, and Timekeeping
1. Introduction to Chronologies, Timelines, Calendars, and Timekeeping
1. The study of history
1. — and above all, of deep history —
2. is inseparable from the study of how time has been measured
2. Before any sequence of events may be established,
before any cause may be said to precede any effect,
1. and before any civilisation may be said to have risen or fallen,
2. a framework of temporal reckoning must already be in place
3. Yet this seemingly self-evident prerequisite conceals a profound complexity,
for there has never been a single, universal system by which human beings have
1. counted years,
2. marked epochs,
3. or anchored the present moment to the distant past
4. Every civilisation has devised its own apparatus for the measurement of time,
1. and each of those apparatuses encodes,
2. whether explicitly or implicitly,
3. a cosmological vision:
1. a conception of what time is,
2. of where it began,
3. and of where, if anywhere, it is going
5. Distinction between a chronology, a timeline, a calendar, and a system of timekeeping is not merely terminological
1. These are four genuinely distinct intellectual endeavours,
1. related but not identical,
2. and the conflation of one with another has been responsible
3. for a great deal of confusion in the historiography of the ancient world
2. Chronology is an ordering of events in temporal sequence
1. It makes no necessary commitment to absolute dating
2. — that is, to the assignment of specific numerical years to specific events
3. Ancient annals, king-lists, and genealogies are chronological instruments in this sense:
• they establish that one reign followed another,
• that one dynasty succeeded a preceding one,
• without invariably specifying how many solar years elapsed between them
4. The Sumerian King List, the Turin Royal Canon, and the Irish Lebor Gabála Érenn are all, at their core, chronological documents
• — sequences of succession and event —
• even when the regnal years they assign appear, to modern eyes, fantastical
3. Timeline, by contrast, attempts to anchor chronological sequences to an absolute framework
1. — typically, to a fixed point of origin,
• whether that origin be the creation of the world,
• the founding of a city,
• the birth of a prophet,
• or the commencement of a calendrical cycle
2. The Roman reckoning ab urbe condita (from the founding of the city),
• the Hebrew Anno Mundi,
• the Christian Anno Domini,
• the Islamic Anno Hegirae,
• and the various Hindu yugas
• are all attempts to provide such an absolute anchor
3. The difficulty is immediately apparent:
• these anchor-points are themselves matters of
• tradition,
• interpretation,
• and sometimes calculation
• — not of empirical verification
4. When the present work sets different ancient timelines in comparison with one another,
• it does so in full awareness that each is coherent on its own terms
• and that the act of synchronisation is itself an act of interpretation
4. Calendar is a practical system for the organisation of time into named and numbered units
1. — days, months, years, and larger cycles —
• so as to permit the coordination of
• agricultural,
• liturgical,
• political,
• and social life
2. The history of calendrical systems is of extraordinary antiquity and complexity
• The Mesopotamian lunisolar calendar,
• the Egyptian civil calendar of 365 days,
• the Julian and Gregorian solar calendars,
• the Hindu Panchanga,
• the Mayan Haab’
• and Tzolk’in,
• the “Celtic” Coligny calendar,
• and the Chinese sexagenary cycle
• represent only the most prominent examples of a global phenomenon:
• the human compulsion to impose intelligible structure
• upon the otherwise undifferentiated flow of time
3. Crucially, every calendar reflects a cosmological commitment
4. A calendar that begins its year at the winter solstice encodes a solar theology
5. A calendar that is governed by the phases of the moon encodes a lunar one
6. A calendar that is organised
• around the heliacal rising of Sirius,
• as the Egyptian civil calendar was,
• encodes an astronomical relationship of profound religious significance
7. The choice of calendar is never merely administrative; it is always also confessional
5. Timekeeping, finally, refers to the instrumentation and methodology
1. by which the passage of time is detected and recorded at a granular level
2. — from the shadow of a gnomon upon a sundial to the oscillations of an atomic clock
3. In the context of deep history,
• this category encompasses the evidence provided by astronomical observation:
• the precession of the equinoxes,
• the cyclical return of comets,the recording of solar and lunar eclipses,
• and the slow drift of stellar configurations across the sky
4. These astronomical phenomena constitute a form of timekeeping that is,
• in principle, recoverable across enormous spans of time,
• and it is precisely this recoverability that makes them so valuable to researchers
• who seek to correlate ancient mythological and calendrical traditions with datable astronomical events
5. Where an ancient text records a specific planetary alignment,
• a solar eclipse,
• or the rising of a particular star at a particular season,
• modern computational astronomy can, in principle,
• assign an absolute date to that record
6. It is with all four of these dimensions in mind
1. — chronology, timeline, calendar, and timekeeping —
2. that the present work approaches the ancient sources
3. No single tradition is privileged as the sole custodian of accurate temporal reckoning
1. The Sumerian king-lists,
2. the Hindu yugas,
3. the Egyptian Sothic cycles,
4. the Aztec Suns,
5. and the Zoroastrian cosmic calendar
6. are all interrogated as serious historical witnesses,
• each internally consistent,
• and each capable,
• when placed alongside the others,
• of yielding insights that no single tradition could provide alone
4. Where they converge, that convergence is treated as significant
5. Where they diverge, the divergence itself becomes a datum requiring explanation
7. The chapters that follow are not, therefore,
1. a simple narrative of British and Arthurian prehistory
2. arranged upon a conventional timeline
3. They are, rather, an exercise in comparative chronology
4. — an attempt to triangulate, across multiple ancient systems of temporal reckoning,
5. the deep-time context within which the sovereignty lineage of Logres must ultimately be situated
2. The “idea of a so-called ice age, with enormous glaciers covering vast areas of the northern hemisphere,
   has conclusively and repeatedly been shown to be erroneous by numerous scientific studies
   in the fields of geology, paleontology, biology, zoology, climatology, anthropology, and mythology.”
1. This statement is not offered as a provocation for its own sake,
1. nor as a dismissal of the genuine scientific labour
2. that has been devoted to the study of Quaternary climate
2. It is, rather,
1. a considered methodological position,
2. the implications of which ramify throughout the entirety
3. of the chronological framework presented in this work
3. To understand why this claim is made,
1. and what it demands of the reader,
2. it is necessary to examine both the history of the glaciation hypothesis itself
3. and the nature of the evidence that has been advanced against it
4. History of the Glaciation Hypothesis
1. The idea that vast continental ice sheets once covered much of the northern hemisphere
1. was first systematically proposed in the early nineteenth century,
2. most influentially by the Swiss naturalist Louis Agassiz,
3. who in 1837 presented to the Helvetic Natural History Society his theory of a global Eiszeit
4. — an ice age —
5. in which glaciers had extended far beyond their present limits across Europe and North America
2. Agassiz’s theory was initially controversial,
1. and it was not without vigorous opposition from his contemporaries,
2. including some of the most eminent geologists of the day
3. Over the course of the following decades, however,
1. it achieved the status of scientific orthodoxy,
2. and by the late nineteenth century the existence of multiple Pleistocene glaciations
3. was treated as an established fact
4. upon which the reconstruction of prehistoric human and animal life was to be based
4. It is important to note that this consensus was formed primarily upon the basis of geomorphological evidence
1. — the interpretation of landscape features such as
• drumlins,
• moraines,
• erratic boulders,
• striated bedrock,
• and U-shaped valleys
• as products of glacial action
2. These interpretations were made in the absence of many of the analytical tools that later became available:
• isotopic dating methods,
• deep-sea core analysis,
• ice-core chemistry,
• palynological reconstruction of past vegetation,
• and computational climate modelling
5. The glaciation hypothesis, in other words,
1. was constructed upon a narrower evidential foundation than is sometimes appreciated,
2. and it was subsequently extended and elaborated
3. — often quite uncritically —
4. as successive generations of researchers worked within its assumptions
5. rather than subjecting those assumptions to radical re-examination
5. Nature of the Counter-Evidence
1. The fields invoked in the statement above are not chosen arbitrarily
1. Each has produced bodies of evidence that sit uneasily with the conventional glaciation model,
2. and in some cases directly contradict specific claims made within it
2. Geology has produced evidence of temperate and even subtropical conditions at latitudes that the standard model assigns to deep glacial coverage
1. The presence of ancient shorelines,
• river systems,
• and weathering patterns inconsistent with prolonged glaciation
• has been noted by a number of researchers working outside the mainstream consensus
2. The interpretation of certain landscape features as glacial in origin has been contested,
• with alternative mechanisms
• — including catastrophic flooding, tectonic activity, and cometary or meteoritic impact —
• proposed as explanations for the same phenomena
3. Palæontology has long grappled with the so-called Pleistocene megafaunal extinction event,
1. in which the mammoth,
• the woolly rhinoceros,
• the cave bear,
• the giant deer,
• and numerous other large animals
• disappeared from the northern hemisphere
2. The conventional account attributes these extinctions to a combination of climate change
• (the ending of the last glacial maximum)
• and human hunting pressure
3. However,
• the pattern of extinction is geographically and temporally uneven
• in ways that are difficult to reconcile with a straightforward glacial-retreat model,
• and a growing body of palæontological opinion has moved towards catastrophist explanations
• — most notably, cometary or meteoritic impact events —
• as the primary cause
4. Biology and zoölogy together contribute the evidence of biogeographical distribution:
1. the fact that many species,
2. including species requiring temperate or warm conditions,
3. were present at northern latitudes during periods that the glaciation model assigns to conditions of extreme cold
• The survival and indeed the flourishing of diverse flora and fauna
• in regions supposedly covered by kilometres of ice presents a persistent anomaly
• The concept of glacial refugia
• — small pockets of ice-free terrain in which species survived the glacial maximum —
• has been invoked to explain these anomalies,
• but critics have argued that such refugia, as conventionally defined,
• are neither large enough nor biologically plausible enough
• to account for the diversity of life demonstrably present in northern regions
5. Climatology, particularly in its more recent computational and palæoclimatological forms,
1. has produced increasingly nuanced models of past climate
• that do not always align straightforwardly with the crude picture of vast,
• monolithic ice sheets advancing and retreating across continents
2. The relationship between
• atmospheric carbon dioxide,
• solar output,
• orbital parameters (the Milankovitch cycles),
• ocean circulation,
• and terrestrial albedo is now understood to be extraordinarily complex,
• and some researchers have argued that
• the standard glaciation narrative oversimplifies this complexity
• in ways that distort our understanding of prehistoric climate
6. Anthropology contributes evidence that is perhaps the most directly challenging to the conventional model:
1. the demonstrable presence of anatomically modern human beings,
• and indeed of complex cultural behaviour,
• at dates and locations that the glaciation hypothesis renders effectively uninhabitable
2. The evidence for human occupation of northern Eurasia at the height of the supposed last glacial maximum,
• the sophistication of Upper Palæolithic art and technology,
• and the geographical range of early human dispersal
• all suggest conditions rather less inimical to human life than the standard model implies
1. the status of evidence
2. The mythological traditions of peoples across the globe
• — from the Vedic literature of the Indian subcontinent to the Norse Eddas,
• from the Aztec accounts of the successive Suns to the Welsh traditions preserved in the Mabinogion and the Triads —
• contain accounts of catastrophic events:
• of fire from the sky,
• of great floods,
• of prolonged darkness,
• of the sudden disappearance of entire peoples and ways of life
3. These accounts do not, in their overwhelming majority, describe the slow, gradual advance of glaciers
4. They describe
• sudden,
• violent,
• cosmically-scaled disruptions
• — events consistent with cometary or meteoritic impact,
• with massive volcanic eruptions,
• or with rapid geomagnetic and geophysical upheaval
5. The mythological record,
• treated as a repository of genuine historical memory rather than as mere metaphor or priestly invention,
• aligns rather more naturally with catastrophist models of prehistoric disruption than with the gradualist glaciation hypothesis
6. Chronological Consequence
1. The significance of this position for the present work is immediate and fundamental
2. If the conventional glaciation model is accepted, then the chronological framework of human prehistory is anchored to a set of dates
1. — the last glacial maximum circa 20,000 BC,
2. the Younger Dryas circa 10,900–9,700 BC,
3. the Holocene transition circa 9,700 BC —
3. which themselves constrain what kinds of human civilisation are deemed possible before those dates
4. A world covered by enormous ice sheets is, by definition, a world in which
1. large-scale,
2. complex,
3. organised human society
4. in the northern hemisphere
5. is impossible
5. If, however, the glaciation model is questioned
1. — if the northern hemisphere was not, in fact, covered by kilometre-deep ice sheets for tens of thousands of years,
2. but was rather subjected to a series of sudden, catastrophic disruptions of shorter duration and more local extent —
3. then the chronological space available for prehistoric human culture,
4. including the deep-time sovereignty lineages traced in the chapters that follow,
5. expands dramatically
6. The ancient calendrical traditions,
1. which assign dates to civilisational origins measured in hundreds of thousands or millions of years,
2. are no longer automatically rendered absurd by reference to a world supposedly uninhabitable by complex human society
7. They become, instead, testimonies to a past whose depth and complexity the conventional model has systematically obscured
8. It is in this light that the statement must be read:
1. not as anti-scientific polemic,
2. but as the clearing of chronological ground
3. — the removal of a methodological obstruction that has, for nearly two centuries,
4. prevented the ancient sources from being heard on their own terms
3. Grand Chronology [*speculative]
1. Introduction to Grand Chronology
2. Deep Origins of Logres: Lineage through Deep Time
1. Purpose and Scope of Deep Origins of Logres: Lineage through Deep Time
1. Establish Logres as a Sovereignty‑Lineage, not merely an Historical Kingdom
2. Situate Britain within Global Deep‑Time Chronology
3. Trace Ancestry of Arthurian Sovereignty through:
1. Cosmological Epochs
2. Species‑Memory Strata
3. Catastrophic Resets
4. Proto‑Civilisational Cultures
5. “Celtic” Mythic Inheritance
4. Provide Conceptual Bridge between III.A (Methodology) and III.C–J (Civilisational Clocks)
2. Cosmological Sovereignty Layer (100,000+ years)
1. First Memory‑Bearers
1. Proto‑Symbolic Ancestors
2. First Sky‑Watchers, Navigators, and Law‑Givers
3. Origins of Sacral Kingship as Cosmic Mediation
2. Proto‑Cosmological Kingship
1. World‑Age Rulers
2. Cycles of Renewal and Dissolution
3. Archetype of Returning King
4. Earliest Template for Rex Quondam, Rexque Futurus
3. Species‑Memory Layer (50,000–20,000 BC)
1. Encounters with Precursor Lineages
1. Giants → Denisovan/Harbin Memory
2. Small Folk → Homo floresiensis Echoes
3. Shining Ones → Cognitively Distinct or Hybrid Elites
4. Watchers → Nocturnal or High‑Altitude Archaic Populations
2. Hybrid Memory Structures
1. Liminal Beings (Merlin Archetype)
2. Interbreeding, Coexistence, Conflict
3. Symbolic Phenotypes preserved in “Celtic” and Brythonic Myth
3. Otherworld as Species‑Memory
1. Annwn
2. Tir na nÓg
3. Avalon
4. Memory of Parallel or Precursor Hominin Worlds
4. Catastrophic Layer (12,900–9,000 BC)
1. Younger Dryas Reset
1. Sky‑fall
2. Fire
3. Darkness
4. Freezing
5. Collapse of Earlier Cultures
6. Population Bottlenecks and Migrations
2. Survivors and Rebuilders
1. Origin of Wasteland Motif
2. Broken King and Dolorous Stroke
3. Grail as a Symbolic Technology of Restoration
3. Britain’s Role in Post‑Catastrophe World
1. Atlantic Refugia
2. Early Ritual Landscapes
3. Continuity of Sky‑Knowledge
5. Atlantic Megalithic Layer (6,000–3,000 BC)
1. Builders of Ritual Landscape
1. Stone Circles, Solstitial Alignments, Precessional Markers
2. Proto‑Grail Vessels (Stone Basins, Offering Pits)
3. Sword‑Stone Symbolism as Sky‑Axis Encoding
2. First Sovereigns of the Island
1. Megalithic Kingship as Cosmic Mediation
2. Earliest Form of Pendragon Role
3. Transmission of Astronomical Knowledge
3. Continuity into “Celtic” Memory
1. How Tuatha Dé Danann inherit Megalithic Symbolism
2. How Arthurian Motifs descend from this Layer
6. Brythonic–“Celtic” Layer (3,000–1,000 BC)
1. Shining Ones (Tuatha Dé Danann)
1. Culture‑Bringers
2. Sky‑People
3. Bearers of Lost Knowledge Systems
2. Sovereignty Figures
1. Nuada (Wounded King)
2. Lugh (Solar King)
3. Brân (Giant‑King)
4. Rhiannon (Sovereignty Goddess)
3. Transmission to Cymry
1. Mythic Kingship
2. Ritual Sovereignty
3. Grail‑Cauldron Continuum
7. Cymric Sovereignty Line (1,000 BC–AD 500)
1. Pendragon Line
1. Dragon‑Standard as Sky‑Symbol
2. Continuity of Sacral Kingship
3. Integration of “Celtic”, Megalithic, and Deep‑Time Motifs
2. Britain as Sacred Geography
1. Island of the Mighty
2. Axial Role of Britain in World‑Age Transitions
3. Land‑King Symbiosis
8. Arthur as Terminal King of Deep Cycle (5th–6th Century AD)
1. Arthur as Last Sacral King
1. Final Inheritor of Deep‑Time Sovereignty Lineage
2. Embodiment of Cosmic Kingship in Historical Time
2. Once and Future King
1. Return Motif as Cosmological Cycle
2. Arthur as Hinge between Ages
3. Restoration of Logres as World‑Renewal
9. Summary: Lineage of Logres in “One Line”
1. First Memory‑Bearers →
2. → Proto‑Cosmological Kings →
3. → Precursor Lineages →
4. → Younger Dryas Survivors →
5. → Atlantic Megalithic Navigators →
6. → Shining Ones →
7. → Cymry →
8. → Pendragon Line →
9. → Arthur
3. Earliest “date” on the “Proto-Hindu” (*Bharatan/Ariánic/“Vedic”(/Manasarovar/mind-lake) Ancient Indus Valley) calendar
   1. c 155,519,999,998,000‬ BC ≈ 155,520,000,000,000 BC ≈ 156 Trillion BC
   2. Normalised to c 11,963,076,922,923 BC ≈ 11,963,000,000,000 BC ≈ 12 Trillion BC
4. Earliest “date” on the “Proto-Slavic” (Proto-Orianian/Borusian/Skolotian/Cimmerian) calendar
   1. c 1,499,998,000‬ BC ≈ 1,500,000,000 BC = 1.5 Billion BC
   2. Normalised to c 115,384,462 BC ≈ 115,000,000 BC = 115 Million BC
5. *Earliest emergence “date” for “Aratta” (Cucuteni/Tryphillia)
1. c 1,021,800 BC ≈ 1,022,000 BC = 1.022 Million BC
2. Normalised to c 26,200 BC
6. Earliest “date” on the “Sumerian” calendar
1. <337,718 BC> ≈ 338,000 BC (beginning of “Atlantis”)
1. WB-444 (Sumerian vertically inscribed prism): 340,685 BC
2. WB-62 (Sumerian clay tablet): 490,685 BC
3. Berossus (Babylonian): 466,685 BC
4. Stephen Herbert Langdon (quoting an 8th Century AD Chinese source): 432,000 BC
5. Beginning of Homo naledi as a separate species: c 298,000 BC
6. Beginning of Homo sapiens neanderthalensis as a separate sub-species: c 294,000 BC
7. Beginning of Homo floresiensis as a separate species/sub-species: c 290,000 BC
8. Beginning of Cro-Magnon (Early European Modern Humans) as a separate species: c 248,000 BC
9. Beginning of Denisovans as a separate species/sub-species: c 244,000 BC
10. End of an “Ice Age”: c 335,000 BC
11. Present Author’s Calculation: 275,848 BC
2. Normalised to <25,978 BC> ≈ 26,000 BC
3. Corresponds to the beginning of the reign of Alulim (Al-lulim, Alorus) of Eridu (Babylon)
1. Duration of <40,200 years>
1. WB-444 (Sumerian vertically inscribed prism): 28,800 years
2. WB-62 (Sumerian clay tablet): 67,200 years
3. Berossus (Babylonian): 36,000 years
4. Present Author’s Calculation: 28,800 years
2. Normalised to <3,092 years>
7. Date for the first of multiple floods (end of “Lemuria”, first cataclysm of “Atlantis”)
1. <35,843 BC> ≈ 36,000 BC
1. WB-444 (Sumerian vertically inscribed prism): 34,361 BC
2. Nippur Tablet B (Sumerian) : 30,606 BC
3. Berossus (Babylonian): 35,335 BC
4. Turin Papyrus (Egyptian): 39,720 BC
5. End of Satya/Krita Yuga (Hindu): 36,881 BC
6. End of Lemurians: 36,735/36,881 BC
7. End of Homo sapiens neanderthalensis as a separate sub-species: c 39,000 BC
8. End of Homo floresiensis as a separate species/sub-species: c 38,000 BC
9. End of Denisovans as a separate species/sub-species: c 37,000 BC
10. End of a Virgo Epoch: 36,259 BC
11. Present Author’s Calculation: 34,648 BC
2. Normalised to <2,757 BC> ≈ 2,800 BC
3. Compared with the “Biblical Flood” date as “calculated” to be c 2,349 BC
8. Earliest “date” on the “Egyptian” calendar (end of “Hyperborea”)
1. <30,921 BC> ≈ 31,000 BC
1. Turin Papyrus (Egyptian): <82,557 BC>
2. Manetho (Egyptian): 28,025 BC
3. Beginning of “First Sun” (Aztec/Nahua): 21,142 BC
4. End of Hyperboreans who moved from Lemuria to Hyperborea: 23,835/23,921 BC
5. Beginning of Haplogroup X (mtDNA): c 28,000 BC
6. End of a Gemini Epoch: 30,261 BC
7. Beginning of Last “Ice Age”: c 27,000 BC
8. Nippur Tablet B (Sumerian) : 20,727 BC
9. Present Author’s Calculation: 23,739 BC
2. Normalised to <10,686 BC> ≈ 11,000 BC
3. Corresponds to the beginning of the reign of Ptah
1. Duration of 9,000 years
2. Normalised to 692 years
9. Beginning of Younger Dryas (second cataclysm of “Atlantis”)
1. <11,156 BC> ≈ 11,200 BC
1. Berossus (Babylonian): 11,266 BC
2. Manetho (Egyptian): 11,053 BC
3. Beginning of Sothic Cycles Calendar (Egyptian): 11,542 BC
4. Solar Eclipse: 29 August 11,542 BC
5. Beginning of Lunar Calendar (Assyrian): 11,542 BC
6. End of Atlanteans: 10,947/10,961 BC
7. End of a Virgo Epoch: 10,471 BC
8. Marco M Vigato’s Calculation: 10,983 BC
9. Massive Cometary Strike: c 11,000 BC
10. Beginning of “Third Sun” (Aztec/Nahua): 11,132 BC
11. End of Last “Ice Age”: c 12,000 BC
12. Planetary “Alignment”: 29 October 11,266 BC
13. Present Author’s Calculation: 10,471 BC
2. Normalised to <3,719 BC> ≈ 3,700 BC
10. Date for Fall of First Dynasty of Kish (final cataclysm of “Atlantis”)
1. <9,576 BC> ≈ 9,600 BC
1. WB-444 (Sumerian vertically inscribed prism): 9,851 BC
2. Nippur Tablet B (Sumerian) : 9,710 BC
3. Manetho (Egyptian): 8,913 BC
4. Papyrus of Abu Hormeis (Coptic): 9,220 BC
5. Bundahishn (Persian/Zoroastrian): 9,600 BC
6. Critias (Plato): 9,600 BC
7. Present Author’s Calculation: 10,138 BC
2. Normalised to <3,192 BC> ≈ 3,200 BC
4. The Keltoí, Keltai(s), Celtae, Celtiberi(ans), Celtici, Celtus, and “Modern Celts”
1. Introduction to The Keltoí, Keltai(s), Celtae, Celtiberi(ans), Celtici, Celtus, and “Modern Celts”
1. The name by which the continental Celtic peoples are known to history
1. is one of the most consequential ethnonyms in the classical record
2. — and one of the most abused in the modern
2. Its classical applications are
1. specific,
2. geographically bounded,
3. and well-attested in Greek and Latin sources spanning some seven centuries;
3. its modern applications are
1. broad,
2. ideologically motivated,
3. and traceable to a precise moment of scholarly coinage in the early Eighteenth Century AD
4. To understand the term properly
1. is to disentangle these two very different histories,
2. and to restore to the word something of the precision that the Romantic Pan-“Celtic” movement stripped from it
5. The peoples to whom the Greeks and Romans applied the name Keltoi, Keltai, Celtae, and their cognates were, in the main, continental Europeans:
1. the Gauls of transalpine and cisalpine Gaul,
2. the Celtiberian tribes of the Iberian peninsula,
3. the Celtici of the far west,
4. and the Galatians of Asia Minor
6. None of the classical sources
1. apply any form of this name to the inhabitants of Britain or Ireland
2. as their primary or standard designation,
3. a point of fundamental importance to which this section will return
2. Gauls
1. Κελτοί/Keltoí/Γαλάται/Galatai/(Galatians)
1. The Greek ethnonym Κελτοί (Keltoí) is the earliest attested form of the name,
1. appearing in Herodotus (c 484–425 BC),
2. who uses it to designate peoples dwelling in the region of
• the upper Danube
• and the western reaches of continental Europe
2. Herodotus is the first surviving author to use the term with any geographical specificity,
1. placing the Keltoí beyond the Pillars of Hercules
2. and in the vicinity of the headwaters of the Ister (Danube)
3. — a location consistent with the archaeological distribution of the
• Hallstatt
• and early La Tène cultures
3. The alternative Greek designation Γαλάται (Galatai),
1. from which the Latin Galli and the English Gaul derive,
2. was used more or less interchangeably with Keltoí by later Greek authors,
3. though some writers drew a distinction between the two,
• applying Keltoí to western continental peoples
• and Galatai to those who had migrated eastward
4. The migration of Gaulish peoples into Asia Minor in the third century BC,
1. following their sack of Delphi in 279 BC,
• — Gaulish-speaking continental Celts settled in the region of modern central Turkey,
• where they maintained their distinct identity for several centuries
5. Saint Paul’s epistle to the Galatians is thus addressed to communities of continental Celtic descent
6. The designation Keltoí/Galatai covers the full range of the Gaulish tribal world:
1. the numerous tribes of Gaul as described by Caesar, Strabo, and Diodorus Siculus;
2. the Galatians of Asia Minor;
3. and the Gauls who settled the Po valley of northern Italy (Cisalpine Gaul)
2. Κελταί/Κέλται/Keltai(s)/(Ferries)
1. The term Κελταί (Keltai) presents one of the more intriguing etymological threads in the history of the Celtic name
2. In its most literal and concrete application, Keltai denotes a type of vessel
1. — specifically a ferry, used to transport passengers and cargo across
2. rivers,
3. lakes,
4. and other bodies of water
3. This vessel-meaning is not a homonym or coincidence:
1. several scholars have proposed that the ethnonym Keltoí and the vessel-term Keltai share a common Proto-Indo-European root,
2. possibly related to concepts of movement, passage, or crossing
4. Such a connection, if sustained, would be etymologically revealing,
1. for the continental Celtic peoples whom classical sources describe were pre-eminently a river-culture:
2. they moved along and across the great river systems of Europe
• — the Rhine,
• the Danube,
• the Rhône,
• the Garonne —
3. with a facility and a speed that repeatedly astonished their Mediterranean neighbours
5. The Gaulish sack of Rome in 390 BC and the invasion of Greece and Asia Minor in the third century BC
1. both depended upon precisely this capacity
2. for rapid movement through river-threaded landscapes
6. Whether the people’s name and the vessel’s name are genuinely cognate or merely similar in form
1. remains a matter of scholarly discussion rather than established fact;
2. but the possibility that the continental Celts were, in some ancient linguistic sense,
3. the ferry-people or the crossing-people — those who move across water —
4. is consistent with everything the classical sources record of their behaviour and their world
3. Celtae/Galli/(Galle)
The Latin forms Celtae and Galli were used by Roman authors to designate the continental peoples known to the Greeks as Keltoí and Galatai respectively
1. Caesar, in his Bellum Gallicum,
1. makes the celebrated opening statement that all of Gaul is divided into three parts,
• inhabited by the Belgae,
• the Aquitani,
• and those who call themselves Celtae
2. but are called Galli by the Romans
2. This passage is of the first importance:
1. it demonstrates that Celtae was in Caesar’s time a self-designation used by a specific sub-group of the Gaulish peoples
2. — those of central Gaul, between the Garonne and the Marne-Seine line —
3. while Galli was the broader Roman term for the Gaulish world as a whole
3. Caesar thus preserves a distinction between the ethnically specific Celtae and the more general Latin designation, a precision that subsequent Roman authors did not always maintain
4. The variant Galle, appearing in some mediaeval and early modern manuscript traditions,
1. reflects the later Romance transformation of the Latin Galli
2. through the sound-changes of Vulgar Latin and the vernacular languages that succeeded it,
3. and is the root from which derive
• the French Gaulois,
• the Italian Galli,
• and the English Gaul
3. Celtiberi(ans)
1. Introduction to Celtiberi(ans)
1. The Celtiberians were the peoples of the central and north-eastern Iberian plateau
1. — roughly the region of modern Aragón, Castile, and La Rioja —
2. who combined continental Celtic material culture and language with the indigenous Iberian traditions of the peninsula
2. They are attested in classical sources from at least the third century BC, and played a significant military role in the conflicts between Rome and Carthage:
1. Celtiberian mercenaries served in Hannibal’s army,
2. and Celtiberian resistance to Roman conquest was among the most determined Rome encountered anywhere in the western Mediterranean,
3. culminating in the long sieges of Numantia (134–133 BC) and the Sertorian War (80–72 BC)
3. The Celtiberian language, known from inscriptions in an adapted Iberian alphabet,
1. is a P-Celtic tongue most closely related to Gaulish,
2. confirming the continental Celtic origin of its speakers
4. The principal Celtiberian tribes are the Lusones, Titi(i), Arevaci, and Peledones
2. Lusones
1. They occupied the upper Jalón valley and the Iberian system to the east of the Celtiberian heartland
2. They are attested in Roman sources as among the earliest Celtiberian peoples to come into direct conflict with Rome
1. during the expansion of the Roman province of Hispania Citerior
2. in the early second century BC,
3. and their territory formed something of a buffer
4. zone between the Celtiberian core and the coastal Iberian peoples
3. Titi(i)
1. They inhabited the middle Jalón valley, between the Lusones to the east and the Arevaci to the west
2. They appear in the sources in connection with the diplomacy and warfare of the second-century Celtiberian conflicts,
1. and their name has been tentatively connected by some scholars with a widespread Indo-European root
2. found in tribal designations across the continental Celtic world
4. Arevaci
1. They were the most powerful and the most thoroughly documented of the Celtiberian tribes,
1. occupying the upper Duero valley
2. and the high plateau around Numantia (Soria)
2. It was the Arevaci who led the resistance to Roman conquest in the Celtiberian Wars of 181–133 BC and in the subsequent conflict,
1. and the siege and destruction of their capital Numantia by Scipio Aemilianus in 133 BC
2. — after which the surviving defenders chose mass suicide over surrender —
3. became one of the defining episodes of Roman military history
4. and one of the most celebrated acts of resistance in the classical tradition
3. Numantia remained, for subsequent Spanish national consciousness,
1. a symbol of indigenous heroic defiance
2. comparable in resonance to Masada in the Jewish tradition
5. Pelendones
1. They occupied the upper Duero valley
1. to the north and west of the Arevaci,
2. in the region of the modern province of Soria and parts of Burgos
2. They are less well documented than the Arevaci
1. and appear in the sources primarily in connection with Numantine affairs,
2. suggesting a degree of political and military subordination to or alliance with their more powerful neighbours
3. Their territory encompassed the sources of the Duero and several of its principal tributaries
4. Κελτικοί/Celtici
1. Introduction to Κελτικοί/Celtici
1. The Celtici were distinct from the Celtiberians proper, though related in origin:
1. they were Celtic-speaking peoples settled in
2. the far western and south-western regions of the Iberian peninsula,
3. in territories that the Celtiberians proper did not reach
2. Their distribution, as recorded by the classical geographers
1. — principally Strabo, Pomponius Mela, and Pliny the Elder —
2. was extensive and geographically complex, comprising several distinct population groups
2. South of modern-day Portugal, in the Alentejo region, between the Tagus and the Guadiana rivers
1. In the south of what is now Portugal,
1. Celtici inhabited the Alentejo region between the Tagus and the Guadiana rivers
2. — a broad, rolling landscape of cork oak and scrub that formed the transitional zone
3. between the Atlantic west and the Iberian interior
2. Here the Celtici presence is attested by
1. inscriptions,
2. place-names,
3. and the reports of classical geographers
4. who distinguish them from the Lusitani to the north and the Turdetani to the south
3. Regions from Évora to Setúbal, being the coastal and southern areas occupied by the Turdetani
1. Further south and west,
1. Celtici occupied the regions extending from Évora toward Setúbal,
2. encompassing the coastal and southern areas that bordered upon,
3. and in some periods overlapped with, the territory of the Turdetani
4. — a non-Celtic Iberian people of the lower Guadalquivir valley
2. The precise boundary between these two populations was evidently fluid, and the classical sources do not always distinguish them with consistency.
4. Region of Baeturia (northwestern Andalusia)
1. In the region of Baeturia,
1. the north-western portion of modern Andalusia,
2. a distinct Celtici grouping is attested
2. Pliny the Elder, in his Naturalis Historia,
1. explicitly identifies the Celtici of Baeturia as a people distinct from the surrounding Iberian populations,
2. noting their Celtic customs, divine names, and language as evidence of their continental origin
3. — most probably, he suggests, a migration from the Celtiberian heartland in an earlier period
5. In the North, in Galicia, another group of Celtici dwelt the coastal areas; and comprised several populi, including the Celtici proper:
1. Pomponius Mela, in his De Chorographia (c AD 43), affirmed that all the inhabitants of the coastal regions,
1. from the bays of southern Galicia
2. and till the Astures,
3. were also Celtici
2. In his account, all this coast is inhabited by the Celtici, except from the Douro river to the bays, where the Grovi dwelt
3. On the north coast,
1. he places first the Artabri, whom he describes as still of the Celtic people (Celticae gentis),
2. and after them the Astures, who marked the eastern limit of the Celtici coastal distribution
4. In the north, in Galicia,
1. another population of Celtici occupied the coastal regions,
2. and it is here that the classical evidence is most detailed
5. The northern Celtici comprised several named populi (peoples or communities),
1. including the Celtici proper,
2. the Praestamarci, who dwelt south of the River Tambre (the ancient Tamaris),
3. and the Supertamarci, who dwelt north of it
6. Additionally, the Neri are attested near the Celtic promontory
1. — the Promonturium Celticum,
2. the north-western cape of Iberia,
3. probably identifiable with modern Cape Finisterre or one of the headlands near it —
4. a name that preserves in the landscape itself the ancient Celtic presence
5. at the far western edge of the continental world
7. Mela also mentions, in connection with these Celtici, the fabulous islands of tin
1. — the Cassiterides, the Tin Islands —
2. which he situates among them, a reference that connects
• the north-western Celtici
• to the ancient Atlantic tin trade
3. and, through that trade, to the broader network of Atlantic Bronze Age exchange that linked the coasts of
• Iberia,
• Gaul,
• and Britain in the centuries before the classical period
5. Κελτός/Κέλτος/Keltos/Kǽltos/Celtus
1. A singular and illuminating document in the history of the Celtic name
1. is the mythological genealogy preserved by Παρθένιος (Parthenios, or in his Latinised form Parthenius) of Νίκαια (Nikaia/Nicaea, in Bithynia, Asia Minor),
2. a Greek grammarian and poet of the first century BC and early first century AD
2. In his collection of love stories, Erotica Pathemata,
1. Parthenios records a genealogical tradition by which the eponymous ancestor of the Keltoí
2. — Celtus, or Κελτός/Κέλτος/Keltos —
3. was the offspring of a union between the hero Ήρακλής (Herakles, the Latin Hercules/Iraklís)
4. and a mortal woman named Κελτίνη (Keltine/Kæltíni)
3. According to this tradition,
1. Keltine was the daughter of Βρεττανός (Brettanos, the Latinised Brettanus/Vrættanós)
2. — a figure whose name is transparently the eponymous ancestor of the Britanni, the people of Britain
4. Keltine,
1. encountering Herakles on his return from his labour of capturing the cattle of Geryon in the far west,
2. hid his cattle and refused to restore them unless he would lie with her
5. Herakles consented, and from their union was born Celtus, the ancestor and name-giver of the Celtic people
6. The genealogy repays careful analysis
7. As a first-century AD literary construction,
1. it is not ancient mythological tradition in the same sense as the Homeric genealogies;
2. it is a learned, Alexandrian-influenced aition (origin-story) designed to account for an ethnonym
3. whose ultimate derivation was already obscure to classical scholars of the Hellenistic period
8. Its interest lies in several details:
1. the explicit connection of the Celtic ancestor to Herakles,
1. who in Greek mythological geography was the great civilising hero of the western world,
2. the conqueror of Geryon in the far west (often located in Iberia),
3. and the figure most naturally associated with the routes along which continental Celtic expansion had moved;
2. the naming of Keltine’s father as Brettanos,
1. which places the genealogy within a tradition that distinguished between the continental Keltoí and the Britanni
2. as separate peoples sharing a mythological kinship — precisely the distinction the classical sources elsewhere maintain;
3. and the implicit suggestion,
1. in the cattle-hiding episode,
2. of a ritual or territorial negotiation
3. as the context of the name’s origin
9. Whether the etymology implied
1. — Celtus as a personal name, father of the people —
2. reflects any genuine linguistic tradition or is purely a literary ex nomine construction,
3. in the manner of classical eponymous genealogies generally,
4. cannot be determined with confidence;
10. but as a document of how educated Greeks of the first century AD understood the Celtic name and its origins, it is invaluable
6. “Modern Celts”
1. Introduction to “Modern Celts”
1. The category of the “Modern Celts”
1. — encompassing the peoples of Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Brittany, Cornwall, and the Isle of Man —
2. is a construction of the eighteenth century and later, and must be understood as such
2. It is not an ancient designation,
1. not a classical ethnonym,
2. and not a self-designation of the peoples so described at any point in antiquity or the early mediaeval period
3. It is, rather, the product of a specific intellectual moment
1. — the publication in AD 1707 of Edward Lhuyd’s Archæologia Britannica —
2. subsequently amplified and politically inflated by the Romantic movement
3. into the Pan-“Celtic” ideology
• that dominated popular and much scholarly discourse
• from the late Eighteenth Century AD onward
2. Origin
1. The Roman use of Celtae, as Caesar’s careful testimony makes plain,
1. referred to continental Gauls
2. — specifically to a sub-group of the Gaulish world centred in what is now central France —
3. and was not applied to the inhabitants of Ireland or Britain in any standard or systematic way
2. There is no record of the term “Celt”
1. being used prior to the Seventeenth Century AD in connection with the inhabitants of Ireland and Britain during the Iron Age,
2. and no ancient source employs any form of the name as the primary or defining designation for the Britons (Britanni) or the Irish (Hiberni or Scotti)
3. The extension of the term to these peoples has no ancient authority
4. In AD 1707,
1. the Welsh antiquary and naturalist Edward Lhuyd,
2. in his Archæologia Britannica,
3. coined the term “Celtic Languages” to designate a family of related tongues
4. — the Brythonic languages of Wales, Cornwall, and Brittany, and the Goidelic languages of Ireland, Scotland, and Man —
5. which he recognised as sharing structural and lexical features with the Gaulish of the continental Celts
5. Lhuyd’s philological observation was legitimate and genuinely important:
1. these languages do share a common origin,
2. and the family grouping he proposed has been refined
3. but not fundamentally overturned by subsequent comparative linguistics
6. His error — or, more charitably, his overreach —
1. was to move from the linguistic relationship to an ethnic and cultural equation,
2. implying that the speakers of these languages were, in some meaningful historical sense, Celts
7. The Romantic movement seised upon this equation with enthusiasm,
1. constructing from it the Pan-“Celtic” ideal
2. of a unified Atlantic culture
• of noble Druids,
• heroic warriors,
• and mystical bards
• stretching from Galicia to the Hebrides
8. This ideal is not historically accurate
9. It is, however, extraordinarily persistent
3. The Term Priteni and the Pritenic Languages
1. Pytheas of Massalia
1. The origin of the name requires starting with Pytheas himself,
• since he is the primary
• — and for practical purposes the only —
• ancient source for the indigenous name of the island’s inhabitants
2. Pytheas was a Greek navigator and geographer from Massalia (modern Marseille),
• who undertook a remarkable voyage northward along the Atlantic seaboard around 325–320 BC
• — roughly contemporary with Aristotle, and well before Julius Caesar’s invasions by nearly three centuries
3. He
• circumnavigated Britain,
• recorded observations on its
• geography,
• tides,
• peoples,
• and agriculture,
• and ventured as far as the enigmatic Thule
• — probably the Shetlands,
• or possibly the Norwegian coast,
• or even Iceland,
• depending on which scholar one follows
4. His account, Περὶ τοῦ Ὠκεανοῦ (On the Ocean), is entirely lost
5. We know it only through quotations and paraphrases in later authors
• — principally Strabo, Diodorus Siculus, and Pliny the Elder —
• many of whom quoted him in order to disagree with him
6. Strabo in particular was dismissive, which is frustrating,
• since Pytheas appears to have been a careful observer
• whose distances and descriptions, where checkable, are often remarkably accurate
7. From these fragments,
• the name Pytheas used for Britain and its peoples is reconstructable as something close to
Πρεττανικαί (Prettanikai) or Πρετανίαι (Pretaniai) for the islands,
• and Πρετανοί (Pretanoi) or Πρίτανοι (Pritanoi) for their inhabitants
8. The variation between Pr- and Br- across sources reflects both the ambiguity of the original Greek and the subsequent Latin transmission,
• which eventually settled on Britannia
• and thence Britain
2. Phonological History of the Name
1. The root Priten-/Pritan- is, linguistically, one of the most revealing words in the entire Gallo-Pritenic family:
• it demonstrates the P-branch/Q-branch phonological distinction within its own name,
• and the proto-form underlying both reflexes has itself given rise to a proposed alternative designation for the branch, examined below
2. The reconstruction proceeds as follows: Proto-Celtic kʷriteno- or kʷritanī (the reconstructed ancestral form)
3. This Proto-Celtic initial kʷ- (a labiovelar consonant, like Latin qu-) underwent different treatment in the two Pritenic sub-branches:
• Brittonic (P-branch) {kʷ → p} Priteni/Pritani
• Goidelic (Q-branch) {kʷ → c} Cruithin
4. Both words
• — Priteni (Brittonic) and Cruithin (Goidelic) —
• are therefore the same name in two different phonological traditions
5. The Irish knew the Picts,
• and certain peoples of Ulster,
• as Cruithin;
• the Britons called themselves (or their neighbours called them) Priteni
6. That these are cognate is demonstrable from first principles of sound change, not merely asserted
7. The further development:
• - Welsh Prydein (Britain as a whole, or the island) — from Priteni by regular Brittonic sound changes
• - Welsh Prydyn (the north of Britain, Pictland specifically)
• - Scottish Gaelic Cruithne — variant of Cruithin
• - Latin Britannia — a Latinisation of the Br- variant of the same root
• Proto-Celtic kʷriteno-
• — the reconstructed common ancestor of all the above,
• and the source of the proposed alternative designation Kʷritenic for the branch as a whole
8. So the very word Britain is a descendant of the name Pytheas recorded in the 4th Century BC,
• filtered through Latin,
• filtered through Old English,
• and worn smooth by two and a half millennia
9. The proto-form kʷriteno-
• — which stands prior to both the Brittonic and Goidelic developments and privileges neither —
• has accordingly been proposed as the basis for an alternative designation:
• Kʷritenic (rendered Kwritenic in general scholarly use,
• with the kw digraph approximating the labiovelar for readers unfamiliar with the IPA modifier)
10. The genuine advantage is sub-branch neutrality:
• Pritenic, in its very initial consonant,
• is a P-branch word,
• its Pr- embodying the Brittonic treatment of kʷ as p;
• Kʷritenic makes no such privilege,
• naming the branch after the common ancestor of both Priteni and Cruithin equally
11. The proposal faces, however, a structural objection that outweighs its theoretical elegance
12. Within established linguistic nomenclature,
• Proto-Indo-European and Indo-European are not interchangeable doublets differing only in register:
• they refer to genuinely different things at different chronological levels,
• and the Proto- prefix does irreplaceable semantic work
13. A label derived from a proto-form inherits, by this analogy, a connotation of temporal and reconstructive priority;
• Kʷritenic, derived from the unattested kʷriteno-,
• would accordingly connote the proto-stage of the branch,
• leaving Proto-Kwritenic as the required designation for its actual reconstructed ancestor
• — a redundancy that no other family’s nomenclature requires
14. Proto-Pritenic, by contrast, sits cleanly above Pritenic in the hierarchy without circularity
15. Pritenic is therefore preferred as the standard designation,
• though Kʷritenic may find appropriate use in technical historical-linguistic contexts
• where the proto-stage of the branch is specifically and self-consciously under discussion
16. Gallo-Pritenic uses an older, cleaner form of that same word
3. Etymology of the Root
1. The meaning of kʷriteno- is debated, but the most widely accepted proposal connects it to:
• Proto-Celtic kʷritu- → Welsh pryd, Irish cruth
• — both meaning form, shape, figure, appearance
2. On this reading,
• Priteni/Cruithin means something like
• “the figured people”,
• “the people of forms”,
• or — more evocatively
• — “the painted people”
• or “the tattooed people”
3. This etymology has the considerable advantage of aligning with ancient external descriptions
4. Caesar famously wrote that the Britons se vitro inficiunt
• — dye or paint themselves with woad —
• giving them a distinctive appearance in battle
5. Whether this was woad-dyeing, tattooing, or both, the practice was sufficiently remarkable to be noted by multiple classical observers
6. If the name Priteni genuinely reflects this,
• then the Britons were known to their neighbours
• — and perhaps named themselves —
• as people who mark or figure their bodies:
• a self-designation turned outward into an ethnic name,
• and preserved across three thousand years in the word Britain
7. This etymology is not universally accepted, and the root is ambiguous enough that certainty is probably unattainable
8. But the figured-ones interpretation is
• elegant,
• well-grounded in comparative linguistics,
• and coherent with the historical record
4. Pritenic Languages as a Coherent Group
1. It should be stated at the outset that all Pritenic languages were spoken for centuries or millennia before any written attestation
2. The dates given below represent the earliest surviving literary evidence,
• not the beginning of the languages’ existence;
• in most cases, the spoken tradition is very considerably older than the record
3. What makes Pritenic a genuinely coherent linguistic sub-branch, rather than merely a geographic collection, is a set of shared innovations
• — changes the languages of Britain and Ireland made together,
• after their separation from Continental Celtic,
• which are not found in the continental languages
• Verb-Subject-Object word order places the verb first in the sentence,
• a highly unusual typological feature shared by only a small percentage of the world’s languages
• and absent from continental Celtic
• Conjugated prepositions fuse with personal pronouns to form inflected forms unique to each person and number
• — Welsh arnaf (“on me”),
• arnat (“on you”),
• arno (“on him”) representing a single paradigm of ar (“on”)
• without parallel in Continental Celtic
• The absolute/conjunct verbal distinction,
• attested clearly in Old Irish and arguably in early Welsh,
• gives verbs different forms depending on whether they stand first in the clause or are preceded by a preverbal particle
• Initial consonant mutations
• — the systematic alteration of word-initial consonants according to grammatical
       — context,
       — lenition,
       — nasalisation,
       — aspiration,
       — and others —
• are developed in both Brittonic and Goidelic,
• though the specific systems differ
• And a strong tendency to periphrastic verbal constructions,
• expressing tense and aspect through auxiliary verb plus verbal noun rather than synthetic conjugation,
• distinguishes both branches from their continental relatives
4. These innovations are sufficiently numerous and specific
• that most linguists hold the Pritenic grouping to reflect a genuine period of common development
• — probably during the later Bronze Age and early Iron Age —
• before the two sub-branches diverged
5. Brittonic
1. The Brittonic or Brythonic languages constitute the P-branch of Pritenic, having shifted Proto-Celtic kʷ to p
• Their speakers were the peoples of Roman and sub-Roman Britain,
• and their descendants
2. Pictish (attested c AD 318 to c 11th Century AD) is the most enigmatic of the group,
• surviving principally in the ogham inscriptions of northern Scotland and in a small number of glosses
• Whether Pictish was a Brittonic language
• related to Welsh and Cornish,
• a Goidelic language related to Irish,
• a non-Indo-European tongue,
• or some combination of these possibilities
• remains one of the unresolved questions of early mediæval linguistics
• The language evidently ceased to be spoken
• following the political absorption of the Pictish kingdom into the Kingdom of Alba in the ninth century,
• which brought with it the gradual extension of Scottish Gaelic northward and eastward
• Its inscriptions remain largely undeciphered, its grammar largely inaccessible, and its classification remains, in the strictest sense, open
3. Welsh (attested c AD 454 to the present) descends from the Brythonic speech of Roman and sub-Roman Britain,
• and its earliest attestations include
• material preserved in Y Gododdin of Aneirin
• and the poems attributed to Taliesin,
• both of the late sixth century,
• with some linguistic strata arguably earlier
• It is the most vital of the surviving Pritenic languages,
• with a substantial community of speakers in Wales
• — supported by legal recognition, institutional provision, and a living literary tradition —
• and a significant diaspora
• Welsh is of primary importance as the language of
• Mabinogion,
• Triads,
• early Arthurian verse,
• and mythological tradition
• from which so much of the Arthurian cycle ultimately derives
4. Cornish (attested c AD 491 to AD 1800, with modern revival)
• is most closely related to Breton and Welsh,
• and was spoken in Cornwall
• until its extinction as a native community language
• in the late eighteenth century
• The last known native speaker, Dolly Pentreath of Mousehole, died in 1777
• Modern revitalisation efforts,
• building on the manuscript record and comparative work with Breton and Welsh,
• have produced a small but genuine community of modern speakers
5. Breton (attested c AD 431 to the present) is the P-Pritenic language brought to Armorica by migrants
• from south-western and western Britain
• during the fifth and sixth centuries,
• most closely related to Cornish and Welsh
• It is the only Pritenic language spoken on the European continent at the present day,
• and it survives — under considerable pressure from French —
• in the western portion of Brittany known as Basse-Bretagne or Breizh
• Its migration-origin gives it especial relevance to Arthurian tradition,
• since the Matter of Britain crossed to Brittany with those same migrations,
• and the Breton tradition fed back into the continental Old French romances of the twelfth century AD
6. Cumbric is attested only in fragments
• — glosses, place-names, personal names, and a handful of counting systems preserved in northern English dialects —
• and is generally held to have become extinct during the eleventh or twelfth century,
• following the political incorporation of Strathclyde into the nascent Scottish kingdom and the progressive extension of Old English northward
• It was spoken across what is now Cumbria, southern Scotland, and parts of Yorkshire;
• its literary record is negligible, and its reconstruction depends almost entirely on comparative work with Welsh and the place-name evidence
6. Goidelic
1. The Goidelic or Gaelic languages constitute the Q-branch of Pritenic,
• having preserved Proto-Celtic kʷ as c
• rather than shifting it to p
2. Irish (attested c AD 434 to the present) is the oldest of the group in the written record and the oldest attested vernacular literary tradition in northern Europe
• Its earliest written form is the archaic Old Irish of the ogham inscriptions;
• its classical literary period — Old and Middle Irish —
• produced some of the richest mythological and narrative prose of the early mediæval world,
• including the great Ulster Cycle, the Mythological Cycle, and the Fenian Cycle,
• traditions of direct comparative relevance to wider Arthurian context
• Modern Irish (Gaeilge) remains a living language,
• constitutionally recognised in the Republic of Ireland,
• though its number of native daily speakers is substantially reduced from its historical peak
3. Scottish Gaelic (attested c AD 512 to the present) was brought to what is now Scotland from Ireland during the migrations of Dál Riata in the fifth and sixth centuries,
• subsequently spreading as the Kingdom of Alba expanded and absorbed the Pictish north
• Closely related to Irish, from which it diverged significantly from the twelfth century onward,
• Scottish Gaelic (Gàidhlig) survives primarily in the Western Isles, with a broader diaspora community
4. Manx (attested c AD 1600 to AD 1974, with modern revival) is the Goidelic language of the Isle of Man,
• most closely related to Scottish Gaelic and Irish,
• and certainly spoken on the island
• for many centuries before its late first written attestation
• The death of Ned Maddrell in 1974 is conventionally taken as the extinction of the native speaker community
• — a death unusually well-documented,
• since recordings were made in the final decades
• Modern revitalisation efforts, unusually well-supported by that body of recorded material and by strong community commitment,
• have produced a growing number of fluent speakers for whom Manx is a first or near-first language,
• making its revival arguably the most substantive of any Pritenic language
7. Significance
1. The Pritenic framework has a specific utility for Arthurian purposes:
• it allows the linguistic and cultural tradition of the Brittonic peoples
• — Welsh, Cornish, and the Brythonic-speaking peoples of the Old North —
• to be understood on their own terms,
• as heirs to a coherent Pritenic tradition rooted in Pytheas’ Pritani,
• rather than as peripheral or derivative members of a vaguely defined pan-“Celtic” world
2. The Arthurian legends emerge from precisely this Brittonic stream of Pritenic tradition
3. Situating them within Pritenic rather than “Celtic” culture is both more accurate and more illuminating
• — and, for works of scope and scholarly ambition,
• the distinction is not merely terminological but substantive
5. The History of Cornwall, Wales, and France
1. Introduction to The History of Cornwall, Wales, and France
2. The History of Cornwall
1. Introduction to The History of Cornwall
2. Meaning, Origin, Existence, and Comparison:
        The Name “Cornwall”, Five “Cornwalls”, and Additional Places Similar to Cornwall
1. Introduction to the Meaning, Origin, Existence, and Comparison:
        The Name “Cornwall”, Five “Cornwalls”, and Additional Places Similar to Cornwall
2. Meaning and Origin of the Name “Cornwall”
3. Existence of Five “Cornwalls”
1. Introduction to the Existence of Five “Cornwalls”
2. The Cornavii and Creones/Cerones/Carnonacae/Caereni
• Introduction to the Cornavii and Creones/Cerones/Carnonacae/Caereni
• In what is now Northern Scotland
• 1153 BC/AD 83 to AD 552/700
• Not too far from the Damnonii
• Not too far from the Votadini
• Portion of which became Lothian/Guotodin/Gododdin
• As Loenois/Lyonesse
• Prehistoric/Mythic era Cornavii
• Roman era Cornavii and Creones/Cerones/Carnonacae/Caereni
• Post-Roman era Cornavii and Creones/Cerones/Carnonacae/Caereni
• Early Post-Roman era Cornavii and Creones/Cerones/Carnonacae/Caereni
• Middle Post-Roman era Cornavii and Creones/Cerones/Carnonacae/Caereni
• Late Post-Roman era Cornavii and Creones/Cerones/Carnonacae/Caereni
• Early Mediæval era Cornavii and Creones/Cerones/Carnonacae/Caereni
3. “Cornwall”
• Introduction to “Cornwall”
• Cornovii/Cornubia/Corniu/Cernieu/Cerniw/Kerniw/Kernow
• Kerniw/Kernow/Kornoval/(West Wales)/Cornwales/(Welsh of the Horn)/Corn(e)well
• Corn(e)well/Cornovaglia/Corno(u)aille/Corn(e)waile/Corn(e)wall(e)
• 351 BC to AD 1066
• Next to (sometimes part of) Dumnonia
• Not too far from Powys
• Next to the Isles of Scilly (as Lyonesse/Liones)
• Prehistoric/Mythic era Cornovii — 4000 BC (351 BC) to AD 43
• 4000 BC — Cornish Stone Age, Bronze Age and Iron Age structures
• Chûn Quoit
• Boscawen-Un
• Chysauster Ancient Village
• First Cornish hedges
• 2150/2000 BC
• “Mining in Cornwall has existed from the early Bronze Age
    and it is thought that Cornwall was visited by metal traders
    from the eastern Mediterranean. It has been suggested that
    the Cassiterides or ‘Tin Islands’ as recorded by Herodotus
    in 445 BC may have referred to the Scilly Islands and Cornwall
    as when first discovered were both thought to have been islands.”
• 1600 BC — Cornwall experiences a trade boom
• Driven by the export of tin
• Across Europe
• 750 BC — The Iron Age reaches Cornwall
• Permitting greater scope of agriculture
• Through the use of new iron ploughs and axes
• 351 BC — The Cornovii emerge as a distinct people
• 330/320 BC — Pytheas of Massilia/Marseilles
• A Greek merchant and explorer
       — Circumnavigated the British Isles between c 330 BC and 320 BC
       — Produced the first written record of the islands
• He described the Cornish as
       — Civilised
       — Skilled farmers
       — Usually peaceable
       — Formidable in war
• 60 BC — Greek historian Diodorus Siculus
• Named Cornwall “Belerion”
• “The Shining Land”
• The first recorded place name in the British Isles
• 43 BC — First attempted invasion of British Mainland by Julius Caesar
• Over the next century
• The Romans came to rule Cornwall
• As part of Dumnonia
• AD 43 — Claudian invasion of Britain begins
• Roman control of Cornwall comes much later
• But at an uncertain date
• Roman era Cornovii/Cornubia/Cornyw/Corniu/Cernieu/Cerniw/Kerniw/Kernow — AD 43 to AD 410
• AD 43 — Claudian invasion of Britain begins
• Roman control of Cornwall comes much later
• But at an uncertain date
• AD 55 to AD 60 — Construction of Nanstallon Roman fort near Bodmin
• One of only a few Roman sites in Cornwall
• Roman villa at Magor Farm near Camborne occupied
• AD 360 and after – various Germanic peoples came to Roman Britain
• Raiders
• Roman armies recruited from among German tribes
• Authorised settlers, such as Aelle of Sussex
• AD 400 — Cornwall’s native name (Kernow) appeared on record
  
  • The Ravenna Cosmography
    
  • Compiled c AD 700 from Roman material 300 years older
    
  • Lists a route running westward into Cornwall
    
  • On this route is a place then called Durocornovio
         — Latinised from British “Celtic”
         — duno-Cornouio-n “Fortress of the Cornish people”
         — In Latin, ‘V’ was pronounced as a ‘W’
         — The fortress name refers to Tintagel(?)
• AD 410 — Emperor Honorius recalls the last legions from Britain
• There is some uncertainty
• Some say that this “rescript” refers not to Britannia/Britain
• But to Bruttium/Britain in Italy
• Post-Roman era Cornyw/Corniu/Cernieu/Cerniw/Kerniw/Kernow — AD 410 to AD 550
• Early Post-Roman era Cornyw/Corniu/Cernieu/Cerniw/Kerniw/Kernow — AD 410 to AD 477
  
  • AD 410 — Emperor Honorius recalls the last legions from Britain
         — There is some uncertainty
         — Some say that this “rescript” refers not to Britannia/Britain
         — But to Bruttium/Britain in Italy
  • AD 433 — The Britons call the Angles/Angli
         — To come and help them as mercenaries
         — Against the Picts
  • c AD 446 — The “Groans of the Britons” last appeal
         — Possibly to the Consul Aetius
         — For the Roman army to come back to Britain
  • Mid-5th century AD
         — First waves of settlers from Cornwall, and Devon
         — Go to Brittany
• Middle Post-Roman era Cornyw/Corniu/Cernieu/Cerniw/Kerniw/Kernow — AD 477 to AD 523
  
  • Late-5th century AD
         — King Mark, of Tristan and Isolde fame, probably ruled during this period
         — According to Cornish folklore, Mark held court at Tintagel
         — King Salomon, father of Saint Cybi, ruled after Mark
  • AD 490 to AD 510
         — Likely range of dates for the Battle of Mons Badonicus
         — In which Romano-British “Celts”
         — Defeated an invading Anglo-Saxon army
  • c AD 491 — Cornish written language emerges
  • AD 500 — The Kingdom of Cornwall emerged c 6th century AD
         — Which included the tribes of the Dumnonii
         — And the Cornish Cornovii (as opposed to those who were from what is now the Midlands)
         — Origins of the Kingdom of Wessex are also in this period
• Late Post-Roman era Cornyw/Corniu/Cernieu/Cerniw/Kerniw/Kernow — AD 523 to AD 550
• AD 535/536 — Extreme weather events cause European famine
• After AD 540s — Plague of Justinian, affected all of Europe
• Early Mediæval era Kerniw/Kernow/Kornoval/(West Wales)/Cornwales/(Welsh of the Horn)/Corn(e)well — AD 550 to AD 871
• AD 577 — Battle of Deorham Down near Bristol
  
  • Results in the separation of the West Welsh (the Cornish)
  • From the Welsh
  • By the advance of the Saxons
  • The earliest Cornish saints systematically convert Cornwall
  • To Christianity, a considerable period before the conversion
  • Of the Anglo-Saxon peoples
  • Of England (the territory east of the River Tamar)
  • According to tradition
         — These early monastic foundations
         — Were made by Christian preachers
         — Or Christian Druids from other “Celtic” lands
    
    •      Mainly Ireland (as in the cases of Saint Piran and Saint Gwinear)
           Wales (as in the case of Saint Petroc and the Children of Brychan)
           And Brittany (as in the case of Saint Mylor)
• AD 664 — The Synod of Whitby
• Determines that England
• Is again an ecclesiastical province of Rome
• With its formal structure of dioceses and parishes
• The Celtic Church in Dumnonia
       — Is not party to the decision
       — And the Cornish Church remains monastic in nature
• AD 682 — Centwine, King of Wessex
• Drove the Britons of the West at the sword’s point as far as the sea
• This resulted in the West Saxon occupation
• Of the north-eastern district of Cornwall
• Even today several Saxon place names are found in that area
       — Widemouth (wid)
       — Canworthy (worthig)
       — Crackington Haven (hæfen)
       — Otterham (hamm)
• AD 710 — Battle of Lining
• Probably between the rivers Lynher and Tamar
• Resulted from King Geraint of Cornwall’s refusal
• To allow the Celtic church to follow the call of the English church
       — Which was perhaps 300 years younger
       — To conform to the standards of Rome
• The battle was fought against
       — The West Saxon King Ine
       — And his kinsman, Nonna
• AD 722 — Battle of Hehil
• The Cornish Britons together with their friends and allies
• Push back a West-Saxon offensive at “Hehil”
• Unlocated, but probably somewhere in modern Devon
• AD 807 — Unsuccessful Cornish alliance with Danes
• AD 815 — The Anglo Saxon Chronicle states
• “& þy geare gehergade Ecgbryht cyning on West Walas from easteweardum oþ westewearde.”
•    ...and in this year king Ecgbryht harried on West Wales [Cornwall] from east to west.
• AD 825 — The Battle of Gafulforda
• At an uncertain location
• Thought to be Galford, near Lewdown in West Devon
• The Anglo Saxon Chronicle only states
• “The Wealas (Cornish)
    and the Defnas (men of Devon)
    fought at Gafalforda.”
• AD 838 — Battle of Hingston Down
• The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle reports that the Cornish
• In alliance with the Danes
• Were defeated by Egbert of Wessex at “Hengestesdun”
• Generally considered to be Hingston Down in eastern Cornwall
• True Mediæval era Corn(e)well/Cornovaglia/Corno(u)aille/Corn(e)waile/Corn(e)wall(e) — AD 871 to AD 1485 (AD 1066)
• AD 875 — King Dungarth (Donyarth)
• Of Cerniu (“id est Cornubiae”)
• Drowns in what is thought to be the River Fowey
• AD 880s — the Church in Cornwall
• Is having more Saxon priests appointed to it
• They control some church estates like
       — Polltun/Pawton
       — Caellwic/Celliwig/Kellywick
       — And Landwithan/Lawhitton
• Eventually they passed these over to Wessex kings
• According to Alfred the Great’s will
       — The amount of land he owned
       — In Cornwall
       — Was very small
• Late 9th century AD — The earliest(?) known example of written Cornish
• Is a gloss in a late 9th century Latin manuscript
• Of De Consolatione Philosophiae by Boethius
• Which used the words “ud rocashaas”
• The phrase means “it (the mind) hated the gloomy places”
• AD 926 — The entry in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle reads
  
  •  ...“This year fiery lights appeared in the north part of the heavens.
         And Sihtric perished:
         and king Aethelstan obtained the kingdom of the North-humbrians.
         And he ruled all the kings who were in this island:
                   first, Huwal king of the West-Welsh (Cornish);
                   and Constantine king of the Scots;
                   and Uwen king of the people of Guent;
                   and Ealdred, son of Ealdulf, of Bambrough:
         and they confirmed the peace
                   by pledge
                   and by oaths
                   at the place which is called Eamot
                   on the 4th of the ides of July [12 July]
                   and they renounced all idolatry
                   and after that submitted to him in peace”
• AD 927 — Athelstan (as said by William of Malmesbury c AD 1120)
• Evicted the Cornish from Exeter and perhaps the rest of Devon
• “Exeter was cleansed of its defilement by wiping out that filthy race”
• The area inside the city walls still known today as ‘Little Britain’
       — Is the quarter where most of the Cornish Romano-British aristocracy had their town houses
       — From which the Cornish were expelled
• Under Athelstan’s statutes
       — It eventually became unlawful for any Cornishman to own land
       — Lawful for any Englishman to kill any Cornishman (or woman or child)
• AD 928 — It is thought that the Cornish King Huwal
• “King of the West Welsh”
• Was one of several kings
       — Who signed a treaty
       — With Aethelstan of Wessex
       — At Egmont Bridge
• AD 930 — Armes Prydein, (Prophecy of Britain)
• This early Welsh poem mentions ‘Cornyw’
• The “Celtic” name for Cornwall
• It foretells that the Welsh
       — Together with Cornwall, Brittany, Ireland and Cumbria
       — Would expel the English from Britain
• This poem also demonstrates
       — Any early allegiance
       — Between the “Celtic” people of Britain
• AD 936 — Athelstan fixed Cornwall’s eastern boundary
• As the east bank
• Of the Tamar
• There is no record of Athelstan taking his campaigns into Cornwall
• It seems probable that Huwal, King of the Cornish
       — Agreed to pay tribute
       — Thus avoiding further attacks
       — And maintaining a high degree of autonomy
• Prior to this the West Saxons had pushed their frontier
       — Across the Tamar as far west as the River Lynher
       — But this was only temporary
       — It was long enough for Saxon settlement and land charters
       — To influence our modern day inheritance of placenames
  
  •          between Lynher and Tamar
             there are today many more English
             than Cornish place names
             as is also the case in that other debatable land
             between Ottery and Tamar in north Cornwall
• AD 944 — Athelstan’s successor
• Edmund I of England
• Styled himself “King of the English and ruler of this province of the Britons”
• AD 981 — The Vikings
• Lay waste “Petroces stow” (probably Padstow)
• According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
• AD 986 — Olaf Tryggvason allegedly visits the Isles of Scilly
• AD 997 — The Dartmoor town of Lydford
• Near the Cornish/Wessex border
• Just east of the Tamar
• Completely destroyed by an angry mob of Danish Vikings
• The surprise attack on Lydford is ordered
       — By the King of Denmark
       — And Viking leader Sweyn Forkbeard
• Lydford was believed to be impregnable against Viking attack
• Cornwall is left alone
       — As Sweyn Forkbeard has no intention of crushing Cornwall
       — Unlike Wessex
• AD 1013 — Cornwall’s enemy and Anglo-Saxon neighbour, Wessex
• Crushed and conquered by a Danish army
• Under the leadership of the Viking leader
• And King of Denmark Sweyn Forkbeard
• Sweyn annexes Wessex to his Viking empire which includes
       — Denmark
       — Norway
• He does not annex Cornwall, Wales, and Scotland
       — Allowing these “client nations” self-rule
       — In return for an annual payment of tribute or “danegeld”
• AD 1014-1035 — The Kingdoms of Cornwall, Wales, and much of Scotland and Ireland
• Were not included in the territories
• Of King Canute the Great
• AD 1016 — Famine throughout Europe
• AD 1066 — Norman Conquest brings many Bretons into Cornwall
• The Cornish and Breton languages are mutually intelligible at this point
• According to William of Worcester
       — Writing in the Fifteenth Century AD
       — Cadoc
•       The last survivor of the Cornish royal line
        at the time of the Norman Conquest
• William the Conqueror
     — May have granted Cornwall
     — To Brian of Brittany
4. The Cornovii
• Introduction to the Cornovii
• In what is now the Midlands
• AD 47 to AD 460
• Not too far from Dumnonia
• Next to the Ordovices (a porton of which became Powys)
• Roman era Cornovii
• Early Post-Roman era Cornovii
5. The Cernyw/Glywyssing/(Mid-South Wales)/(Gwynllg & Edeligion, Penychen & Gorfynedd)/Morgannwg/Glamorgan
• Introduction to the Cernyw/Glywyssing/(Mid-South Wales)/(Gwynllg & Edeligion, Penychen & Gorfynedd)/Morgannwg/Glamorgan
• AD 383 to AD 1093
• Near to Dumnonia
• Near to Powys
• Roman era Cernyw/Glywyssing/(Mid-South Wales)
• Post-Roman era Cernyw/Glywyssing/(Mid-South Wales)
• Early Post-Roman era Cernyw/Glywyssing/(Mid-South Wales)
• Middle Post-Roman era Cernyw/Glywyssing/(Mid-South Wales)/(Gwynllg & Edeligion, Penychen & Gorfynedd)
• Late Post-Roman era (Gwynllg & Edeligion, Penychen & Gorfynedd)/Glywyssing
• Early Mediæval era (Gwynllg & Edeligion, Penychen & Gorfynedd)/Glywyssing
• True Mediæval era Glywyssing
6. The Cornouaille/Kerne(v)
• Introduction to the Cornouaille/Kerne(v)
• In what is now Brittany
• AD 387 to AD 1093
• Near to Domnonia
• Next to Poher
• Next to Léon (Leonais as Lyonesse)
• Roman era Cornouaille/Kerne(v)
• Post-Roman era Cornouaille/Kerne(v)
• Early Post-Roman era Cornouaille/Kerne(v)
• Middle Post-Roman era Cornouaille/Kerne(v)
• Late Post-Roman era Cornouaille/Kerne(v)
• Early Mediæval era Cornouaille/Kerne(v)
• True Mediæval era Cornouaille/Kerne(v)
4. Comparison of Other Places to “Cornwall”
3. Geography, Genealogy, and Timeline of “Cornwall”
1. Geography of “Cornwall”
2. Genealogy of “Cornwall”
3. Timeline of “Cornwall”
3. The History of Wales
1. Introduction to The History of Wales
1. Wales occupies the western peninsula of the island of Britain,
1. bounded to the north and west by the Irish Sea,
2. to the south-west by Saint George’s Channel,
3. to the south by the Bristol Channel,
4. and to the east by the long contested boundary with England
2. It comprises some 20,779 square kilometres
1. — approximately 8,023 square miles —
2. and holds one of the oldest continuous literary and cultural traditions in Europe
3. Its history encompasses pre-human occupation stretching back nearly a quarter of a million years,
1. successive waves of settlement and incursion,
2. the survival of a distinct “Celtic” language and civilisation against persistent external pressures,
3. and a complex political relationship with England that was formalised
4. — though never wholly resolved —
5. in the Sixteenth Century AD
4. To understand Wales fully,
1. one must understand not merely the modern nation-state
2. but the broader world of the Brythonic-speaking peoples
3. who once ranged from the south-western shores of Scotland to the tip of Cornwall,
4. and whose diaspora extended across the sea to Armorica (modern Brittany)
5. Wales is,
1. in a very real sense,
2. the surviving heartland of a civilisation
3. that once encompassed much of post-Roman Britain
6. The Cymry
1. — the Welsh people —
2. call their country Cymru,
3. their language Cymraeg,
4. and themselves Cymry,
5. all three terms deriving from the Brythonic Combrogi,
6. meaning ‘fellow countrymen’ or ‘compatriots’:
• a self-designation
• that speaks to a profound collective identity
• forged long before the English name ‘Wales’ was imposed from without
7. This history
1. is organised into seven principal eras
• — prehistoric,
• Roman,
• post-Roman,
• early mediæval,
• true mediæval,
• and early modern —
2. preceded by an extended analysis of the name ‘Wales’ itself,
3. the existence of multiple regions bearing cognate names,
4. and the comparative relationships between Wales and kindred lands
5. A geographical survey,
• a genealogical overview of the principal Welsh dynasties,
• and a consolidated timeline
• follow at the close of the work
8. The sources for Welsh history are unusually rich and diverse
9. They range
1. from the physical testimony of cave deposits and megalithic monuments to the Latin annals of Roman historians,
2. from the vernacular poetry of the Cynfeirdd (the ‘Early Poets’, including Taliesin and Aneirin) to the law-texts of Hywel Dda,
3. from the chronicles of Brut y Tywysogyon to the documents of the English crown’s bureaucracy
10. Taken together,
1. these sources permit a history of exceptional depth,
2. even if they also demand of the scholar an unusual degree of linguistic versatility and critical caution
2. Meaning, Origin, Existence, and Comparison:
        The Name “Wales”, Multiple “Wales”, and Additional Places Similar to Wales
1. Introduction to Meaning, Origin, Existence, and Comparison:
        The Name “Wales”, Multiple “Wales”, and Additional Places Similar to Wales
1. Few national names in the British Isles carry so complex and revealing a history as ‘Wales’
2. The word is not Welsh at all,
• but rather a Germanic imposition,
• applied by the Anglo-Saxon settlers of eastern Britain
• to the indigenous Brythonic-speaking peoples they encountered
• — and, in time, displaced —
• upon their westward expansion
3. That the Welsh themselves have never used this name for their own country,
• preferring always Cymru,
• is indicative of the fundamental disjunction
• between the name by which a people is known to others
• and the name by which they know themselves
4. To trace the etymology of ‘Wales’
• is therefore to trace the history of a cultural encounter
• — and, ultimately, a conquest
5. Equally significant is the geographical breadth of the name’s application
6. The same Germanic root that gives us ‘Wales’ also gives us
• ‘Cornwall’ (the Cornish Wealas),
• ‘Wallachia’ (the Vlachs of south-eastern Europe),
• the French ‘Wallonie’ (Wallonia),
• and the archaic English adjective ‘walnut’
• (the foreign or Roman nut,
• Juglans regia,
• introduced to Britain)
7. The Cymric-speaking peoples of northern Britain
• — of Strathclyde, of Cumbria, of Rheged —
• were, to the Anglo-Saxon mind, equally Wēalas;
• and it is from this broader application that the concept of ‘multiple Wales’ arises
2. Meaning and Origin of The Name “Wales”
1. Introduction to Meaning and Origin of The Name “Wales”
• The English name ‘Wales’
• derives from the Old English nominative plural Wēalas
• (also written Wælas),
• the plural of Wealh
• (also Walh)
• This word is Proto-Germanic in origin,
• reconstructed as walhaz,
• which is itself derived from the name of the Volcae,
• a Celtic Gaulish tribe encountered by the Germanic peoples on the Rhine frontier
• Over time,
• walhaz shifted in meaning
• from a specific ethnic designation
• to a generalised term for ‘foreigner’,
• particularly for “Celts”
• and, after the Roman period, for those “Celts” who had become Romanised
• The word thus came to mean,
• simultaneously,
• ‘Briton’,
• ‘Celt’
• (meaning British “Celt”,
• not true Celts from the continent),
• and ‘one who speaks Latin or a Romance language’
• The semantic range of walhaz and its descendants is remarkable
• In Old High German,
• Walh designated a Gallo-Roman
• or, later, an Italian
• In Middle Dutch,
• Wale referred to a Romance-speaking person
• from what is now southern Belgium
• (the modern Walloons preserve this designation)
• In Old Norse, Valir denoted the French
• The Vlachs of Romania and the Balkans bear a name of the same origin
• Even ‘walnut' (OE weal-hnutu) reflects the perception
• that the cultivated walnut was a ‘foreign’ or ‘Roman’ nut,
• distinct from the native hazel
• The consistent thread throughout all these applications is otherness:
• the walhaz was always the person
• beyond the linguistic and cultural boundary
• For the Anglo-Saxons settling Britain from the Fifth Century AD onward,
• Wealh designated specifically the indigenous Brythonic-speaking inhabitants of the island
• — the people whom earlier Roman sources had called Brittones or Britanni
• The plural Wēalas thus came to denote the Britons collectively,
• and eventually the western Britons of what we now call Wales in particular,
• as the eastern and midland Britons were progressively absorbed into or driven out by the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms
• Land of the Wēalas became Wēalas-land, contracted to Wales
2. Veales
• The form ‘Veales’ represents one of several early variant spellings of the name ‘Wales’
• found in mediæval and early modern manuscripts and documents,
• particularly those produced by Welsh or Anglo-Norman scribes
• working within a tradition in which the graphemes V and W were not always sharply differentiated
• In the orthographic conventions of mediæval Welsh Latin,
• the letter V was regularly used to represent a labial sound that in English corresponded to W;
• thus a Welsh scribe rendering the English word into his own hand might naturalistically produce
• ‘Veales’,
• ‘Vales’,
• or ‘Valez’
• where an English scribe would write
• ‘Walez’,
• ‘Wales’,
• or ‘Walys’
• The form is attested in administrative records of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth centuries,
• particularly in documents originating in the Welsh Marches
• or in offices with significant Welsh clerical staff
• It is not a separate tradition of naming
• but rather a phonographic variant
• reflecting the phonological habits of scribes writing in a second language,
• wherein the English W sounded, to Welsh ears and practice,
• as the Welsh W — a bilabial glide which Welsh scribal convention chose to represent with V
• The variant also appears in some early printed books and maps of the Tudor period,
• where typesetters of various linguistic backgrounds introduced their own orthographic preferences
• into what was not yet a fully standardised spelling tradition
• Related forms include
• ‘Walis’,
• ‘Walys’,
• ‘Walez’,
• ‘Gales’ (Anglo-Norman),
• and the Latinate ‘Wallia’ or ‘Gualia’
• — the last two being the most common in formal ecclesiastical and royal documents throughout the mediæval period
• The modern French ‘Galles’ (as in ‘Pays de Galles’)
• derives from the Anglo-Norman ‘Gales’,
• itself a variant of the same Old English root,
• filtered through the Norman scribal tradition
3. Weal(h)a(s)
• Weal(h)a(s) represents the Old English lexical complex from which the modern name ‘Wales’ directly descends
• The base form Wealh (also written Walh in some texts,
• reflecting dialectal variation in the quality of the vowel)
• is a masculine a-stem noun meaning ‘foreigner’, ‘Briton’, ‘Celt’, or ‘serf of British origin’
• Its nominative plural Wēalas or Wælas gives us ‘Wales’
• The genitive singular Wēales or Walles and the genitive plural Wēala
• give rise to the compound forms seen in place-names:
• Walcot (‘cottage of the Britons’),
• Walton (‘settlement of the Britons’),
• Walbrook (a stream in London),
• and the like
• The feminine form Wīele or Wielisc yielded the adjectival ‘Welsh’ (OE Wīelisc, Wælisc), meaning ‘belonging to the Wēalas’, ‘British’, or ‘foreign’
• This adjective was applied not only to people but to objects associated with Brythonic culture or Latin inheritance:
• wēlisc-ceap (‘foreign bargain’, precursor of ‘welch’ in the sense of defaulting on a deal),
• wēlisc-nuttu (‘Welsh nut’, id est, walnut),
• and wēlisc-āl (‘Welsh ale’, a particular style of brewing)
• The persistence of these compounds in the Old English lexicon attests to the salience of the Brythonic neighbour in Anglo-Saxon cultural consciousness
• It should be noted that Wealh could also carry the secondary meaning of ‘serf’ or ‘slave’,
• reflecting the common ancient equation between foreignness and servitude,
• and indicative of the social conditions of those Britons who remained within Anglo-Saxon territory as a subject population
• This secondary meaning has been seen by some scholars
• as evidence of the progressive displacement and social marginalisation of the Brythonic peoples in the areas that became England;
• it is, in any case, a reminder that the name carried social as well as ethnic weight
4. Waleis
• Waleis (also Waleys, Galeis, or Gales in different manuscript traditions)
• is the Anglo-Norman and Old French form of ‘Wales’,
• current from the eleventh century onward and reflecting the linguistic transformation wrought by the Norman Conquest of AD 1066
• Anglo-Norman Waleis derives from Old English Wēalas
• through the well-attested process by which Norman settlers and scribes adapted English place-names and ethnonyms to their own phonological system,
• wherein the initial W might be retained or transformed to G (hence both Waleis and Galeis)
• In the Arthurian romance tradition
• — so extensively cultivated in France and the Anglo-Norman realms —
• Wales appears most commonly as Galles (modern French), Gales, or le Pays de Gales
• Chrétien de Troyes, in his late Twelfth-Century AD romances, refers to Welsh characters and settings using these forms
• The hero Perceval is described as coming from ‘les îles de mer’ or from Galles;
• the lady Lunete in Yvain is associated with Welsh tradition;
• and the whole matter of “Celtic” Britain permeates the Old French corpus of Arthurian writing,
• mediated largely through the Welsh and Breton storytelling traditions
• Waleis as a surname is also attested in mediæval England and Scotland, designating a person of Welsh origin or association
• The Norman lord William Waleis (later anglicised forms: Wallace),
• from whom the Scottish patriot Sir William Wallace may have descended,
• bore this name as an indicator of Welsh or Brythonic ancestry
• The Scottish surname Wallace is thus, in origin, precisely the same word as ‘Wales’:
• a person called Wallace was, etymologically, a Welshman
• — testimony to the broad reach of the Brythonic world that once extended far into what is now Scotland
3. Existence of Multiple “Wales”
1. Introduction to the Existence of Multiple “Wales”
• The application of the Old English term Wēalas was not, in the early Anglo-Saxon period, restricted to the western peninsula we now call Wales
• It was applied wherever Brythonic-speaking peoples were encountered
• — and in the Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Centuries AD,
• such peoples occupied a vast swathe of Britain,
• from the Firth of Forth in the north to the Tamar and Exe in the south-west
• The gradual Anglo-Saxon conquest of lowland Britain did not eliminate these peoples;
• it pushed them westward and northward
• into regions where terrain, distance, and their own resilience
• enabled them to persist as distinct cultural and political entities
• The result was a scattered archipelago of Brythonic-speaking territories,
• each in its own way a ‘Wales’ to the Anglo-Saxon mind,
• though each also possessed its own distinct identity, history, and political organisation
• The principal such territories were:
• North Wales, being the heartland of Cymru (the modern Wales);
• territory of the Damnonii in south-western Scotland;
• kingdom of Alt Clut (Strathclyde) and the associated region of Cumbria;
• and the territory of the Votadini (Gododdin) in south-eastern Scotland and north-eastern England
• To these must be added the southern Welsh kingdoms,
• the regions that fall outside the traditional Cymric heartland,
• and the pre-Welsh indigenous peoples of the whole Welsh peninsula
• Taken together,
• these entities constitute the ‘multiple Wales’
• — a distributed Brythonic world that survived,
• in varying degrees,
• into the high mediæval period
2. North Wales — Cymru
• Introduction to North Wales — Cymru
• North Wales,
• in the broadest historical sense,
• encompasses the territories of
       — Gwynedd,
       — northern Powys,
       — and the island of Anglesey (Ynys Môn)
• It constitutes the geopolitical and cultural core of what the Welsh themselves have always called Cymru,
• and it is no accident that the strongest and most enduring of the mediæval Welsh kingdoms
• — Gwynedd — was centred precisely here,
• sheltered by the mountain massif of Eryri (Snowdonia) and flanked by the sea
• Gwynedd’s rulers,
• from the semi-legendary Cunedda in the sub-Roman period to Llywelyn ap Gruffudd in the Thirteenth Century AD,
• were consistently the most formidable defenders of Welsh independence,
and their heartland remained unsubdued by Anglo-Saxon and Norman pressure long after the south had been penetrated
• The name Cymru,
• first attested in the poetry of the late Sixth and early Seventh Centuries,
• derives from the Brythonic Combrogi, ‘fellow countrymen’
• — a term that emphasises community and shared identity rather than territory per se
• It was used self-referentially by the Brythonic peoples of both north Britain and the Welsh peninsula,
• and its cognate Cumbria,
• the name of the north-western English county,
• preserves the same root,
• attesting to the historical unity of the Cymric world
• Within North Wales itself,
• the principal geographical divisions were the cantrefi
• (singular cantref, ‘hundred homesteads’)
• and commotes (Welsh cymwd),
• the traditional administrative units of Welsh society that predated and survived the Norman intrusion
• Anglesey,
• known to the Romans as Mona,
• to the Welsh as Ynys Môn,
• deserves special mention as the granary of Gwynedd and sacred island of the Druids
• Its flat, fertile land
• could support a population far larger than the mountainous mainland,
• and its strategic position at the mouth of Menai Strait made it simultaneously an asset and vulnerability
• Roman, Viking, and English forces all at various points
• seised or raided Anglesey
• because to hold it was to threaten the subsistence of Gwynedd’s mountainous heartland
• Damnonii
• They were a Brythonic tribe
• occupying the territory of what is now the Strathclyde region of south-western Scotland,
• centred on the valley of the River Clyde from its upper reaches to the Firth of Clyde
• Their name
• — like that of the Dumnonii of south-western England (Devon and Cornwall)
• and the Dumnonii of Ireland —
• is thought to derive from a Brythonic root meaning either ‘deep valley dwellers’
• or, alternatively, reflecting an association with mining and subterranean resources
• (confer Gaulish dubno-, ‘deep, world'’)
• The parallelism of their name with the south-western English tribe
• is almost certainly not coincidental;
• it may reflect a common cultural identity among peoples
• who occupied upland, pastoral, or mineralogically significant territories
• By the time they emerge clearly into historical record,
• the Damnonii had been absorbed into the political complex of Alt Clut (Strathclyde),
• the dominant Brythonic kingdom of north Britain
• Their cultural and linguistic identity was thus Cymric
• — closely related to the Welsh being spoken simultaneously in the peninsula to the south —
• and they were ‘Welsh’ in precisely the sense that the Anglo-Saxons would have recognised:
       — Brythonic-speaking,
       — of Romano-British cultural inheritance,
       — and distinct from both the Gaelic-speaking peoples
       — of Dál Riata to the north-west
       — and the Anglian settlers of Bernicia to the south-east
• The Damnonii did not leave significant documentary evidence of their own composition;
• their history is known primarily through Roman sources
• (notably Ptolemy’s Geography, which lists them as one of the peoples of northern Britain),
• through the oblique testimony of place-names,
• and through the political history of the Strathclyde kingdom of which they formed a constituent part
• Their legacy is preserved in the landscape of the Clyde valley,
• where river-names, hill-names, and settlement-names of Brythonic origin
• persist beneath layers of subsequent Gaelic and Scots naming
• Alt Clut/Alt Clud/Strathclyde-Cumbria
• The Kingdom of Alt Clut (in Welsh, ‘Rock of the Clyde’; in Latin, Petra Cloithe)
• was the principal northern Brythonic kingdom,
• centred on the volcanic rock of Dumbarton (Dùn Breatainn, ‘Fortress of the Britons’)
• at the confluence of the Rivers Leven and Clyde
• Its existence can be traced
• from the sub-Roman period into the Eleventh Century AD,
• making it one of the most durable of all post-Roman British kingdoms
• The Clyde Rock was an exceptionally strong natural fortress,
• accessible only by one approach and surrounded on three sides by water,
• and it served as the royal seat of the Alt Clut dynasty throughout the early mediæval period
• The language spoken in Alt Clut was Cumbric,
• a P-“Celtic” (P-Pritenic or P-Kʷritenic) dialect very closely related to Old Welsh
• — sufficiently similar that communication between Cumbric and Welsh speakers was probably not difficult,
• and that Welsh poetry of the period resonated in Alt Clut just as it did in Gwynedd or Powys
• The kingdom participated in the cultural world of the Hen Ogledd, the ‘Old North’,
• which encompassed the Brythonic kingdoms of sub-Roman northern Britain,
• and figures prominent in Welsh heroic tradition
• — Urien Rheged, Rhydderch Hael (Rhydderch the Generous, king of Alt Clut), Clydno Eidyn —
• were remembered and celebrated in Welsh poetry centuries after their kingdoms had fallen
• In AD 870,
• a Viking fleet under Olaf the White and Ivar the Boneless
• besieged Dumbarton Rock for four months before taking it and carrying off an immense number of captives
• — Britons, Anglo-Saxons, and Gaels alike — to the slave markets of Dublin
• The kingdom recovered and reconstituted itself,
• now more commonly called the Kingdom of Strathclyde,
• shifting its centre somewhat southward to Govan
• (where a remarkable series of Brythonic-style carved stones survive,
• attesting to the kingdom’s cultural vitality)
• Strathclyde continued to exist as a political entity,
• nominally independent but increasingly under Scottish suzerainty,
• until the death of its last king, Owen the Bald, at the Battle of Carham (c AD 1018),
• after which it was absorbed into the Kingdom of Scotland
• Cumbria — the name itself derived from Cymry, ‘the Brythonic people’
• — is the southern extension of the (Alt Clut)/Strathclyde cultural world,
• encompassing what is now the English county of that name together with parts of Dumfriesshire
• Cumbric-speaking until perhaps the twelfth century,
• Cumbria preserves an extraordinary density of Brythonic place-names:
• Penrith (‘chief ford’, from Brythonic penn, ‘head/chief’, and ryd, ‘ford’),
• Carlisle (Luguvallum, ‘Luguvalos’ wall’, with the Brythonic caer, ‘fort’, prefixed),
• Blencathra (‘peak of the demon’),
• and scores of topographical terms — pen (summit), blaen (head of a valley), nant (stream), and comb (valley) —
• that betray an unbroken Brythonic naming tradition
• The ‘Cymric Sheep Counts’ of northern England (yan, tan, tethera, methera, pimp — one, two, three, four, five),
• surviving into the nineteenth century in some upland areas,
• preserve fossilised Brythonic numerals
• Votadini/(Manau Guotodin)
• Votadini (their Latin name as recorded in Ptolemy’s Geography)
• were a Brythonic tribe
• occupying the territory of south-eastern Scotland and north-eastern England:
       — roughly modern Lothian,
       — Berwickshire,
       — and Northumberland
• In Welsh tradition
• they are known as Y Gododdin,
• and their principal stronghold was Din Eidyn,
• the fortress on the great basaltic crag now occupied by Edinburgh Castle
• The sub-kingdom of Manau Gododdin — also known as Manau Guotodin —
• lay to the west and north,
• around the headwaters of the River Forth and the Firth of Forth,
• in the area of modern Clackmannanshire and Stirlingshire
• Votadini appear to have maintained a relatively cooperative relationship with Rome during the period of Roman occupation:
• their territory lay beyond Hadrian’s Wall
• (and sometimes beyond the more northerly Antonine Wall),
• and they seem to have served as a buffer people or client state
• Roman material culture has been found in Votadinian sites,
• and the tribe may have provided auxiliary forces or intelligence to the Roman military
• After the Roman withdrawal,
• Votadinian leadership maintained Roman-style titles and cultural pretensions,
• as evidenced by the Latinate names in their genealogies
• It is from Manau Gododdin that,
• according to the later Welsh genealogical tradition recorded in Historia Brittonum and the royal pedigrees of Gwynedd,
• Cunedda Wledig led his sons and followers southward into north Wales, c AD 380–430,
• to expel the Irish (Gaelic) settlers who had established themselves in the region
• Cunedda’s sons — Ceredigion, Dunoding, Edeyrnion, Rhufoniog, and others —
• allegedly gave their names to the regions they settled,
• and the dynasty of Gwynedd traced its descent from Cunedda
• Whether this tradition reflects an historical migration or is a later genealogical construction designed to legitimise Gwynedd’s claim to primacy among the Welsh kingdoms remains debated;
• but the tradition itself testifies to the perceived unity of the Brythonic world from Gododdin to Gwynedd
• The most enduring monument of the Votadini/Gododdin is the poem Y Gododdin,
• attributed to the bard Aneirin
• and composed (in its earliest strata) c AD 600
• This elegiac poem commemorates a warband of 300 (or, in some versions, 363) warriors from Gododdin
• who rode south to attack the Anglian fortress of Catraeth (probably Catterick in Yorkshire)
• and were almost entirely slaughtered
• The poem, preserved in Thirteenth-Century AD manuscript Llyfr Aneirin (Book of Aneirin),
• is one of the oldest texts in any Brythonic language
• and one of the most poignant records of the age of Y Hen Ogledd
• Its famous line — ‘he fed black ravens on the wall of a fort, though he was no Arthur’ —
• contains one of the earliest possible references to the figure of Arthur,
• embedded in a context that suggests his fame as a warrior was already well-established by c AD 600
3. South Wales
• Introduction to South Wales
• South Wales in the early mediæval period
• encompassed a constellation of kingdoms distinct in
       — culture,
       — genealogy,
       — and political character
• from the northern heartland of Gwynedd
• The principal kingdoms were:
• Dyfed, in the south-west (modern Pembrokeshire, Carmarthenshire, and Ceredigion);
• Seisyllwg, comprising the merged kingdoms of Ceredigion and Ystrad Tywi;
• Brycheiniog (Breconshire), a highland kingdom of the central south;
• Gwent, in the south-east (modern Monmouthshire);
• and Morgannwg (Morgan’s Territory, modern Glamorgan),
       — a coastal and lowland kingdom
       — that bore the marks of heavy Roman influence
       — through its proximity to Caerleon and Caerwent
• Dyfed is particularly notable for its Irish dimension
• The dynasty ruling Dyfed from the late Roman period derived from the Déisi,
• an Irish people from Munster who had settled in south-western Wales
• during the Third or Fourth Century AD —
• possibly as laeti (frontier settlers) under Roman licence,
• or possibly through straightforward colonisation
• The ogham inscriptions of south-west Wales,
• using the Irish ogham alphabet to record names in a form of Old Irish,
• attest to this settlement;
• and the early kings of Dyfed bear Irish names (Triphun, Aircol, Vortepor)
• that appear in both the Welsh king-lists and in the denunciations of Gildas,
• Sixth-Century AD British cleric whose De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniæ provides
• our most detailed, if rhetorically overwrought, picture of sub-Roman Wales
• Gwent and Morgannwg,
• lying close to the Roman centres of Caerleon (Isca Silurum) and Caerwent (Venta Silurum),
• were in many respects the most Romanised of the Welsh kingdoms
• The civitas of the Silures, centred on Caerwent,
• had been one of the success stories of Roman administration in Wales,
• a prosperous town with a forum, basilica, temples, town walls, and a thriving urban life
• The transition from Roman civitas to post-Roman kingdom was, in this region, relatively smooth;
• and Gwent's early rulers bore names that blended Roman and “Celtic” elements,
• as befit a community that had thoroughly internalised the Roman provincial culture
• Non-Cymru
• Beyond kingdoms that directly identified with the Cymry,
• a broader world of Brythonic culture and speech
• existed in regions not traditionally counted as ‘Welsh’ in the narrow sense
• These include:
• Rheged,
       — a kingdom of uncertain but probably substantial extent,
       — associated in the poetry of Taliesin with a ruler named Urien,
       — and possibly centred on the Carlisle/Galloway area;
• Elmet,
       — a small but tenacious Brythonic enclave in what is now west Yorkshire,
       — surviving until its absorption by Northumbria in early Seventh Century AD;
• Pengwern,
       — a disputed entity sometimes identified with the Powys of sub-Roman period,
       — possibly centred on Wroxeter (Viroconium Cornoviorum);
• and territory of the Cornovii,
       — a Brythonic tribe whose civitas at Viroconium was the fourth largest town in Roman Britain,
       — and whose southern extension into Cornwall (Corn-Wealas) preserves the Brythonic name into the present day
• These ‘non-Cymru’ Brythonic territories
• are significant because they demonstrate that Cymric cultural identity
• was not, in the early period, geographically fixed
• The poets of the Cynfeirdd wrote for audiences in Rheged as readily as for those in Gwynedd;
• the heroes of one kingdom were celebrated in all;
• and the consciousness of a shared British heritage,
• however it might be politicised or romanticised,
• provided a cultural bond that transcended the divisions between individual kingdoms
• The progressive loss of these northern and eastern territories to Anglian and Mercian power
• during Sixth and Seventh Centuries AD
• did not sever their connection to the Welsh tradition;
• rather, it intensified the nostalgic and elegiac quality of Welsh historical memory,
• producing a literature in which the heroic past of Y Hen Ogledd
• became an inexhaustible source of pride and lamentation
• Indigenous Peoples in what is now the Whole of Wales
• Before Brythonic “Celts” (P-Pritens/P-Kʷritens),
• and indeed before any named historical people,
• Wales was inhabited by a succession of populations whose history
• is reconstructed through archaeology, palaeoanthropology, and, increasingly, ancient DNA analysis
• These populations were not, of course, ‘Welsh’ in any cultural sense;
• yet they constitute the deepest stratum of the human story in the Welsh peninsula,
• and their biological legacy almost certainly persists,
       — to varying degrees,
       — in the genetic make-up of the modern Welsh population
• Iron Age “Celtic” tribes who occupied Wales at the time of the Roman conquest
• — and whose descendants, transformed by Roman provincial culture,
• became the sub-Roman Britons of the post-Roman period —
• were themselves relative newcomers in geological time
• Brythonic “Celtic” (P-Pritenic/P-Kʷritenic) language and culture that defines historical Wales was introduced,
• by migration or cultural diffusion,
• probably in the first millennium BC
• Before them lay Bronze Age and Neolithic populations,
• who had built the great megalithic monuments of the Welsh landscape;
• and before those lay Mesolithic and Upper Palæolithic peoples
• who first colonised the peninsula after the retreat of the “last glaciation”
• The remarkable physical continuity of population suggested by recent ancient DNA studies,
• in which Neolithic farmers were substantially (though not wholly) replaced by Bronze Age Beaker people from central Europe,
• and in which the pre-Roman Iron Age peoples of Britain show high proportions of ancestry tracing to this Bronze Age migration,
• places the modern Welsh population within a long genetic continuum that reaches back to the first “post-glacial” settlers
• Iron Age tribes of Wales proper — those who confronted the Roman legions in the First Century AD — were:
• Silures of the south-east,
       — described by Tacitus as a dark-complexioned, curly-haired people of possible Iberian origin
       — (a characterisation now understood as more rhetorical than scientific,
       — but indicative of their fierce distinctiveness);
• Ordovices of the north and north-west, the last Welsh tribe to be conquered and among the most determined resisters;
• Deceangli of the north-east, occupying the mineral-rich hills of Flintshire;
• Demetae of the south-west, apparently more peaceable and less troubled by the Roman presence;
• and Gangani of Llŷn Peninsula
• The Cornovii,
• whose civitas centred on Viroconium (Wroxeter),
• occupied the Welsh Marches and extended into what is now Shropshire and Cheshire,
• straddling the later boundary between Wales and England
4. Comparison of Other Places to Wales
1. Introduction to Comparison of Other Places to Wales
• Wales does not exist in cultural or historical isolation
• It is one of several surviving territories of Brythonic “Celtic” (P-Pritenic/P-Kʷritenic) civilisation,
• and its history is best understood in the context of broader P-“Celtic” (P-Pritenic/P-Kʷritenic) world
• that once extended from the Firth of Forth to the bay of Biscay
• The following comparative survey examines the principal lands to which Wales bears the closest
• linguistic,
• cultural,
• and historical kinship
2. Brittany (Armorica/Llydaw)
• Brittany
• — known to the Welsh as Llydaw,
• to the Romans as Armorica,
• and to its own people as Breizh —
• represents the most direct overseas extension
• of the Welsh cultural world
• Migration of Brythonic peoples from south-western and western Britain to Armorica,
• which took place principally during the Fifth and Sixth Centuries AD
• in the context of the Anglo-Saxon settlement of lowland Britain,
• produced a P-“Celtic”(P-Pritenic/P-Kʷritenic)-speaking enclave in north-western France
• that has maintained its linguistic and cultural distinctiveness into the present day
• Breton language is a P-Pritenic/P-Kʷritenic tongue descended from the same Brythonic root as Welsh and Cornish,
• and it retains a sufficiently close relationship with Welsh that,
• at least in earlier periods, mutual intelligibility was possible
• Legendary history of Brittany’s foundation
• is closely intertwined with the Arthurian matter
• and with the political history of the Welsh kingdoms
• Figure of Conan Meriadoc,
• who in Welsh tradition accompanies Magnus Maximus (Macsen Wledig)
• to the continent and there establishes the Breton kingdom,
• represents the mythologised memory of actual migration movements
• Close literary and hagiographical connections between Wales and Brittany
• — shared saints, parallel genealogies, cognate place-names —
• testify to the sustained cultural traffic across the Channel
• that maintained the sense of kinship between the two Brythonic communities throughout the mediæval period
3. Cornwall (Kernow)
• Cornwall
• — Kernow in Cornish,
• from the Brythonic Cornovii (the ‘peninsula people’ or ‘horn folk’) —
• is the third surviving territory of the P-“Celtic” (P-Pritenic/P-Kʷritenic) world and the nearest to Wales geographically
• ‘Cornwall’ is itself a compound of Cornish + Old English Wealas:
• ‘the Wealas of the horn (peninsula)’,
• making it explicitly an anglicised ‘Wales of the south-west’
• The Cornish language,
• closely related to both Welsh and Breton,
• survived as a community language until the late Eighteenth Century,
• when the last known native speaker, Dolly Pentreath, died in 1777,
• though revitalisation efforts have since produced a small community of modern speakers
• The political relationship between Cornwall and the Welsh kingdoms was not always close,
• given the separation imposed by the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of Wessex and Mercia;
• but the cultural and literary connections were deep
• The Arthurian matter,
• so central to Welsh historical identity,
• is associated in multiple traditions with Cornwall— Tintagel, Kelliwic, Castle Dore —
• and the sub-Roman kings of Dumnonia (the kingdom encompassing Devon and Cornwall)
• appear in both Welsh and Cornish genealogical tradition
• The shared Brythonic heritage made Cornwall,
• for the Welsh,
• a kindred land across the river of Severn
4. Cumbria and Y Hen Ogledd
• As discussed in the section on Alt Clut above,
• Cumbria (the name itself a Brythonicism, from Cymry) was,
• until the high mediæval period,
• a Cymric-speaking territory in all but its political allegiance
• The Cumbric language,
• spoken from the Firth of Forth to the River Ribble,
• was linguistically indistinguishable from,
• or at most a close dialect of, early Welsh
• The survival of Cumbric place-names, numerals, and personal names
• into the post-Conquest period
• is evidence of a population that retained its linguistic identity
• long after its political independence had been extinguished
• Y Hen Ogledd, the ‘Old North’, is a concept of central importance in Welsh cultural memory
• The heroic poetry associated with the Cynfeirdd celebrates the deeds of northern Brythonic kings
• — Urien of Rheged, Owain mab Urien, Llywarch Hen, Rhydderch Hael —
• with an intensity that suggests these figures were regarded
• as the truest exemplars of the heroic British tradition
• For the Welsh of subsequent centuries,
• the loss of Y Hen Ogledd was experienced as a cultural amputation,
• and the poetry of its heroes was cherished and transmitted
• with the same reverence accorded to the deeds of Arthur
• The consciousness of this northern heritage is one of the defining features of Welsh literary culture throughout the mediæval period
5. Galicia, Iberia, and Other Celtic Comparanda
• Comparisons between Wales and Celtic Iberia
• — particularly Galicia and Asturias in north-western Spain —
• have been drawn by scholars on both linguistic and cultural grounds,
• though the connections are more attenuated and controversial than those with Brittany and Cornwall
• The Gallaeci (Galicians) of north-western Iberia bore a name that some have sought to connect with the Gaulish root that gives us ‘Wales’ (walhaz),
• though this connection is not universally accepted;
• the Celtic languages of Iberia belong to the Q-“Celtic” (Q-Pritenic/Q-Kʷritenic) branch
• (closer to Goidelic Irish than to P-“Celtic” Welsh),
• which significantly complicates any linguistic comparison
• More substantive are the comparisons drawn on the basis of shared Iron Age material culture
• (La Tène and Hallstatt traditions),
• Atlantic Bronze Age networks
• (which linked Wales, Ireland, south-western Britain, Brittany, and north-western Iberia in a continuous cultural zone),
• and shared legendary traditions
• (most notably the story-complex surrounding the Irish voyage tales and the mythology of the western ocean)
• Wales,
• in this broader comparative frame,
• is best understood as the north-eastern terminus of an Atlantic “Celtic” cultural province that stretched,
• in its Bronze Age phase,
• from the coasts of Portugal to the Orkney Islands
3. Prehistoric/Mythic era Wales
1. Neanderthals — from c 228,000 BC
1. The earliest human presence in what is now Wales
• is attested not by Homo sapiens but by Homo neanderthalensis,
• the archaic human species that occupied much of Europe during the Middle Palaeolithic
2. The principal site of Neanderthal occupation in Wales
• is Pontnewydd Cave (Ogof Pontnewydd),
• situated in the Elwy valley of Denbighshire in north Wales
3. Excavations at Pontnewydd,
• conducted primarily from the 1970s onward under the direction of Stephen Aldhouse-Green,
• dated by uranium-series methods to approximately 225,000–230,000 years before present,
• making them the oldest known human remains in Wales and among the oldest in Britain
4. The Pontnewydd hominins display a mosaic of features
• consistent with an early or ‘ante-Neanderthal’ population,
• showing some characteristics typical of classic Neanderthals alongside more archaic traits
5. Associated with these remains are Levallois flint tools
• — the distinctive prepared-core technology associated with Middle Palaeolithic Neanderthal industry —
• and the bones of rhinoceros, bear, hyaena, and other large mammals that indicate a warmer “interglacial” climate,
• the Hoxnian “interglacial” (Marine Isotope Stage 9–11), during which the cave was occupied
6. The cave may have served as a kill site or a short-term habitation
• during hunting excursions through what was then a forested and relatively warm landscape,
• quite unlike the bleak uplands of modern Denbighshire
7. The subsequent “glaciation” phases supposedly drove Neanderthal populations out of Britain entirely
8. Wales covered by “ice sheets” during the major “glaciations” is actually controversial, lacking conclusive evidence
9. Therefore, Wales was not necessarily rendered uninhabitable for long periods
10. The record of Neanderthal presence in Wales is thus assumed to be episodic rather than continuous,
• supposedly reflecting the recurrent colonisation and abandonment of Britain
• during “interglacial” warm periods
11. By approximately 40,000 years ago,
• Neanderthal populations across Europe were in rapid decline,
• probably as a result of both climate deterioration and competition with
• — and assimilation into —
• the incoming Homo sapiens populations
12. Whether any Neanderthal genetic legacy persists in the modern Welsh population is,
• given the near-universal presence of small amounts of Neanderthal DNA in non-African modern humans (typically 1–4%),
• almost certain in a statistical sense, though no specifically Welsh Neanderthal genetic signal has been identified
2. Homo sapiens — from c 31,000 BC
1. The earliest evidence of Homo sapiens in Wales
• — and, indeed, one of the most remarkable Upper Palaeolithic burials in Europe —
• is the Paviland burial, discovered in 1823 in Paviland Cave
• (Ogof Paviland, also called the Goat’s Hole Cave) on the Gower Peninsula, Glamorgan
2. The burial was initially misidentified by the Reverend William Buckland, the Oxford geologist,
• as a ‘Red Lady' on the assumption that the red ochre
• staining the bones and the grave goods of perforated shells and ivory ornaments indicated a female,
• possibly a witch or prostitute associated with a nearby Roman camp
3. Subsequent re-analysis,
• confirmed by radiocarbon dating and osteological examination,
• has established that the ‘Red Lady of Paviland’ was in fact a young adult male,
• and that the burial dates to approximately 33,000–29,000 years before present,
• placing it securely in the Upper Palaeolithic,
• some 25,000 years before the hypothetical Roman camp
4. The Paviland burial is extraordinary in its implications
5. The intentional use of red ochre
• — haematite ground to a fine powder and applied to the body and grave goods —
• indicates ritual practice, symbolic thought, and almost certainly belief in an afterlife or a numinous dimension to death
6. The grave goods,
• including perforated shells (likely used as personal ornaments), ivory rods, and rings,
• attest to craft skill and aesthetic sensibility
7. The individual was buried within a small, managed community that invested substantial effort in the mortuary treatment of its dead
8. In short,
• the ‘Red Lady of Paviland’ is evidence that Wales was, some 30,000 years ago,
• home to behaviourally modern Homo sapiens of a sophistication in no way inferior to that attested elsewhere
• in the Aurignacian and Gravettian cultures of continental Europe
9. Wales was subsequently depopulated
• during the supposed “Last Glacial Maximum” (c 26,000–19,000 years before present),
• when “ice sheets” supposedly again covered the landscape
10. The rock art of Cathole Cave on the Gower Peninsula,
• dated to approximately 14,500–12,000 years before present,
• attests to a Magdalenian-period reoccupation of the peninsula
• as “the ice retreated during the late glacial”
11. The Cathole engraving,
• depicting a stag or cervid,
• is the oldest known cave art in Britain,
• and its existence in Wales has enhanced the scholarly appreciation of Wales
• as an important centre of “late glacial” human activity,
• in the north-western European Atlantic zone
3. Continuous habitation by Modern Humans — from c 9,000 BC onward
1. The retreat of the last major “glaciation” and the gradual warming of the Holocene epoch
• (from c 11,700 years before present)
• enabled the permanent human recolonisation of Wales
2. By approximately 9,000 BC,
• Mesolithic hunter-gatherer communities had established themselves across the peninsula,
• exploiting a landscape that was initially open grassland and tundra
• but rapidly filled in with birch, hazel, oak, elm, and ash as the climate warmed
3. These Mesolithic peoples
• — anatomically modern humans of a genetic profile broadly similar to modern western hunter-gatherers —
• moved through the landscape in small, mobile bands, following seasonal resources:
• hunting red deer, aurochs, wild boar, and beaver;
• fishing the rivers and coastal shallows;
• gathering hazelnuts, berries, and roots
4. Key Mesolithic sites in Wales include the Nab Head on the Pembrokeshire coast,
• where shale beads and flint microliths attest to both craft production and personal ornamentation;
• the Burry Holms on the Gower, with its shell-midden deposits;
• and numerous cave sites in the limestone districts of south Wales and the Clwydian hills of the north
5. The coastal regions and river valleys
• were particularly favoured,
• as they offered the richest combination of marine, riverine, and terrestrial resources
6. At this period
• — and for the subsequent several thousand years,
• until the channel between Wales and Ireland finally closed with rising sea levels —
• land connections may still have existed to Ireland,
• facilitating the spread of populations and ideas across what is now the Irish Sea
7. The Neolithic period,
• beginning in Wales approximately 4,000–3,500 BC,
• brought the first farming communities,
• probably arriving by sea from western France or from Britain’s south-east
8. With them came
• domesticated cattle, sheep, pigs, and goats;
• emmer and einkorn wheat;
• the polished stone axe;
• and, above all, the megalithic monument-building tradition
• that has left its most spectacular traces
• in the chambered cairns of Wales
9. Bryn Celli Ddu on Anglesey (a passage tomb with solar alignment, rebuilt in the late Neolithic),
• Pentre Ifan in Pembrokeshire (a portal dolmen with a vast capstone),
• Barclodiad y Gawres on Anglesey (a passage tomb decorated with abstract carved art),
• and the Tinkinswood and Saint Lythans cairns in Glamorgan
• represent the surviving monuments of a sophisticated mortuary and cosmological tradition
• that linked Wales to the broader Atlantic Neolithic cultural province from Portugal to Scotland
10. The Bronze Age (c 2,500–800 BC) introduced new populations
• — the Beaker people, so named for the distinctive ceramic forms found in their burials, arriving from the continent —
• along with copper and bronze metallurgy, new burial practices (individual inhumation and cremation replacing collective Neolithic burial),
• and almost certainly the early forms of the “Celtic” languages
11. Wales proved particularly rich in copper:
• the Great Orme copper mine near Llandudno,
• worked from at least 1,900 BC and possibly earlier,
• is one of the largest prehistoric copper mines in Europe,
• its galleries extending some eight kilometres
• and its total output estimated at many hundreds of tonnes
12. Bronze Age Wales
• was thus not a peripheral backwater
• but an active participant in the continental networks of metal exchange
• that linked the Atlantic fringes of Europe
13. Iron Age (c 800 BC–AD 43) saw the emergence of “Celtic” tribal societies that confronted the Romans
14. Hillforts
• — enclosed defensive settlements on prominent hilltops —
• are among the most conspicuous monuments of Iron Age Wales:
• Tre’r Ceiri on the Llŷn Peninsula, with its astonishing preservation of stone-walled hut circles;
• Pen y Gaer above the Conwy valley;
• Caer y Twr on Holyhead Mountain;
• and the multiple-ditched great hillforts of the south such as Llanmelin in Gwent and Croft Ambrey on the Welsh Marches
15. These were not merely defensive structures but central-place settlements, market sites, and symbolic expressions of tribal authority
16. The ‘mythic era’ of Welsh tradition
• — the age of Mabinogi’s magical landscapes, of giants and heroes, of the god-kings who gave their names to the land —
• is rooted, however distantly, in the imaginative transformation of this Iron Age world
4. Roman era Wales/Cymru — AD 48 to AD 383
1. AD 48 — The Roman conquest of Wales began
1. Roman conquest of Wales was not a swift or straightforward campaign
• but a protracted, intermittent struggle lasting some three decades,
• against opponents who proved far more tenacious and militarily capable than the tribes of the south-east
2. When Emperor Claudius initiated the invasion of Britain
• in AD 43
• under the command of Aulus Plautius,
• the initial focus was the south-east:
• the Catuvellauni,
• the Trinovantes,
• and the great centre of Camulodunum (Colchester)
3. By the late 40s,
• the frontier had been pushed westward as far as the Fosse Way,
• and Roman attention turned to the tribes of the west and north
4. In AD 47–48,
• the newly appointed governor Publius Ostorius Scapula
• moved against the Deceangli of north-east Wales (modern Flintshire),
• advancing through their territory and apparently reaching the shores of the Dee estuary
• or the Irish Sea before being called back by trouble elsewhere
5. This incursion,
• recorded briefly by Tacitus,
• marks the formal beginning of Roman military engagement with Welsh territory
6. The Deceangli offered relatively little resistance,
• their territory being relatively accessible from the east;
• but the campaign alerted the more powerful western tribes to the Roman threat
• and gave the fugitive British chieftain Caratacus (Welsh: Caradog),
• son of Cunobelinus of the Catuvellauni, a base from which to organise resistance
7. Caratacus had been driven westward
• after defeats in the south-east
• and had allied himself first with the Silures of south-east Wales
• and then with the Ordovices of the north
8. Under his leadership,
• the tribes of Wales mounted a guerrilla war of considerable effectiveness against the Roman forces,
• exploiting the mountainous terrain to negate Roman advantages in close-order infantry tactics
9. Tacitus describes the Romans
• as repeatedly frustrated
• by the nature of the country
• and by the elusiveness of their opponents
10. The decisive confrontation came in AD 51,
• when Caratacus made a stand at an unnamed river and hillsite
• (possibly the upper Severn valley or the Berwyn hills),
• deploying his forces on high ground defended by dry-stone walls
11. The Romans,
• though initially checked,
• eventually
• outflanked the position,
• broke the defence,
• and captured Caratacus’ wife and daughter;
• Caratacus himself escaped
• but was subsequently betrayed
• by the Brigantian queen Cartimandua,
• who handed him to the Romans
12. Caratacus was taken to Rome in chains and displayed in Claudius’ triumph,
• but his dignified bearing before the emperor
• — reported by Tacitus in a speech that is certainly invented
• but is one of the great set-pieces of imperial literature —
• moved Claudius to grant him and his family their lives
13. Caratacus thus passed out of Welsh history, but the resistance he had inspired did not die with his capture
14. The Silures in particular continued to harry Roman forces
• for the next two decades with a ferocity that led Scapula himself to propose their extermination
• — a proposal that was not implemented but that testifies to the seriousness of the challenge they posed
2. AD 78 — Roman conquest completed
1. The subjugation of Wales was completed in two principal stages after the capture of Caratacus:
• the defeat of the Silures by Julius Frontinus (governor AD 74–78),
• and the final reduction of the Ordovices
• and the seizure of Anglesey
• by Gnaeus Julius Agricola (governor AD 77–84)
2. Frontinus, a brilliant administrator and military engineer as well as a field commander,
• broke Silurian resistance
• through a combination of aggressive campaigning
• and the systematic construction of a fort network
• that denied the tribe the freedom of movement on which guerrilla warfare depends
3. His construction of the legionary fortress at Isca Silurum (Caerleon),
• completed c AD 75,
• gave Rome a permanent and formidable base
• in the heart of Silurian territory
4. Caerleon, positioned at the lowest fordable point of the River Usk,
• was to remain the headquarters of the Second Augustan Legion for some three centuries,
• and its remains — the most complete legionary fortress surviving in Wales, with
• amphitheatre,
• barrack blocks,
• and baths —
• are among the finest Roman monuments in Britain
5. Agricola, on taking office in AD 77,
• moved immediately against the Ordovices,
• who had recently ambushed and nearly destroyed a Roman cavalry regiment
6. Rather than consolidating the existing position,
• Agricola struck hard into Ordovician territory
• and effectively destroyed them as a fighting force
7. He then turned to Anglesey
• — the island that had served,
• under its Druidic establishment,
• as the spiritual and political centre of British resistance
• since the abortive Roman assault of AD 60 under Suetonius Paulinus —
• and seised it by a surprise amphibious operation,
• his soldiers allegedly swimming the Menai Strait in full armour
• (or, more probably, crossing in shallow-draught vessels)
8. With the conquest of Anglesey,
• the last organised military resistance in Wales was broken,
• and the full territorial extent of what the Romans knew as Britannia Secunda (and later Prima)
• had been brought under Roman control
9. Roman administrative and military apparatus in Wales
• was characterised by a density of auxiliary forts unparalleled elsewhere in Roman Britain,
• reflecting the continuing need for military surveillance
• of a population that had resisted conquest so strenuously
10. Segontium (Caernarfon), Mediomanum (Caersws),
• Cicucium (Y Gaer, Brecon),
• Blestium (Monmouth),
• Nidum (Neath),
• Leucarum (Loughor),
• and dozens of other forts were connected by the remarkable road network of Roman Wales,
• of which the Sarn Helen
• — running from the legionary fortress of Isca in the south to Segontium in the north,
• a distance of some 160 miles —
• is the most celebrated
11. The road name,
• first attested in the mediæval Welsh tale of Dream of Macsen Wledig,
• has been fancifully attributed to Helena, the empress mother of Constantine,
• but more probably derives from a Brythonic phrase meaning ‘road of the legions’
12. Civilian settlement in Roman Wales was sparser than in the lowland south-east but not without significance
13. The two civitas capitals
• — Caerwent (Venta Silurum) for the Silures
• and Carmarthen (Moridunum) for the Demetae —
• developed as the principal urban centres, with
• public buildings,
• town walls,
• and the apparatus of Roman civic life
14. Roman villas,
• while fewer and generally less grand than those of the English south,
• are attested in the more fertile lowland areas of south Wales
15. The copper mines of the Great Orme
• were worked under Roman management,
• and gold was extracted from the mines at Dolaucothi in Carmarthenshire
• — the only known gold mine operated by the Roman state in Britain,
• its hydraulic mining systems still visible in the landscape today
3. AD 383 — Roman rule ended
1. The formal end of Roman rule in Wales
• — and in Britain as a whole —
• was a process rather than a single event,
• and its narrative is bound up with the extraordinary career of Magnus Maximus
2. In AD 383,
• the Roman general Magnus Maximus,
• commanding the army of Britain,
• was proclaimed emperor by his troops
• and crossed to the continent
• with the bulk of the British garrison to contest the throne
3. His campaign was initially successful:
• he defeated and killed the western emperor Gratian,
• established himself at Trier,
• and ruled the western provinces of Gaul, Britain, and Hispania for some five years
• before being defeated and executed by Theodosius I in AD 388
4. In Welsh historical tradition,
• Magnus Maximus is remembered as Macsen Wledig
• — ‘Macsen the Overlord’ or ‘Macsen the Emperor’ —
• and his role in Welsh history is regarded as foundational rather than destructive
5. The tale of Dream of Macsen Wledig (Breuddwyd Macsen Wledig),
• one of the stories of Mabinogion,
• presents him as the dreaming emperor of Rome
• who seeks and finds a Welsh princess,
• Elen of the Hosts (Elen Luyddog), in Caernarfon,
• and rules Britain with her as his queen
6. The roads of Wales
• (the Sarn Helen network)
• are attributed in this tale to Elen’s command
7. More historically significant
• is the genealogical tradition
• by which the royal dynasties of several Welsh kingdoms
• traced their descent to Magnus Maximus
• or to companions whom he settled in Wales before his continental campaign
8. Gwynedd’s dynasty,
• Powys’ rulers,
• and the lineages of several other kingdoms
• include Macsen Wledig in their pedigrees
• — testament to the prestige of Roman imperial legitimacy
• in post-Roman Welsh political imagination
9. Whether any of these genealogical connections are historical
• or are inventions designed to confer Roman nobility
• on native dynasties remains debated;
• but the pervasiveness of the tradition attests to
• how deeply the Romano-British period
• had shaped Welsh political culture
10. After the withdrawal of the main Roman garrison with Maximus in 383,
• Britain received some replacement forces under Stilicho (c AD 396–398)
• and continued to be administered as a Roman province;
• but the effective military and administrative reach of Rome in Wales
• was diminishing rapidly
11. In AD 407,
• the British army again raised up a usurper,
• Constantine III,
• who crossed to Gaul,
• and the final dissolution of Roman authority in Britain followed
• with the famous rescript of Honorius in 410,
• which (possibly) instructed the civitates of Britain to look to their own defence
12. By this point,
• the legionary fortresses of Wales
• had been significantly demilitarised,
• and the transition from Roman province to a constellation of sub-Roman kingdoms
• was already well under way
5. Post-Roman era Wales/Cymru — AD 383 to AD 550
1. AD 383 — Magnus Maximus declares himself Emperor
1. The proclamation of Magnus Maximus as emperor in AD 383
• marks the beginning of Wales’ post-Roman history
• in more than a merely calendrical sense
2. Maximus’ removal of the main Roman garrison
• not only weakened Britain’s external defences
• but initiated the political fragmentation
• through which the unified Roman province
• dissolved into the multiple kingdoms of the sub-Roman period
3. The process was neither sudden nor uniform:
• Roman administrative structures,
• Latin literacy,
• and Christian institutional life
• continued in Wales for generations after 383,
• and the sub-Roman kingdoms that emerged
• drew heavily on Roman models of governance and legitimacy
4. The legend of Maximus in Welsh tradition
• does more than merely commemorate an historical figure:
• it provides the foundational myth of Welsh political organisation
5. According to the genealogical and hagiographical sources,
• Maximus gave territories in Brittany to Conan Meriadoc
• and settled a series of chieftains from Y Hen Ogledd to Wales
• to defend the land in his absence
6. Whether or not these specific traditions have historical validity,
• they encode a real historical process:
• the restructuring of political authority in Britain
• in the wake of Roman military withdrawal,
• and the emergence of a new ruling class
• that legitimised itself
• through a combination of Roman precedent
• and native Brythonic tradition
7. The period AD 383–410
• saw Wales continuing to function within the broader Roman imperial system
• — taxes were collected,
• bishops attended church councils,
• and the civilian population of the larger towns continued their urban lives —
• but with an increasing reliance on local initiative and local military capacity
8. The civitas councils,
• which had always been the real administrative backbone of Roman Britain,
• now began to act with greater independence
9. In Wales,
• where the civitas structure
• had been less fully developed than in the lowland south-east,
• it was the great hill-fortress traditions and the remnant military leadership
• that provided the nucleus around which post-Roman political authority coalesced
2. AD 410 — The Roman garrison of Britain was withdrawn
1. The rescript of the Emperor Honorius in AD 410,
• addressed to the civitates of Britain,
• has long been taken as the moment at which Rome
• formally severed its administrative connection with the island
2. Modern scholarship has raised questions
• about both the precise target of the rescript
• (some suggesting it was addressed to Bruttium in Italy, not Britain)
• and its practical significance;
• but the broad historical point stands:
• by the second decade of the fifth century,
• Britain was no longer defended by Roman imperial forces,
• and its communities were responsible for their own security
3. In Wales,
• the century and a half following AD 410
• was a period of both
• profound disruption
• and remarkable cultural creativity
4. On the disruptive side:
• Irish raiders and settlers pressed upon the western and north-western coasts;
• the threat of Irish occupation was sufficiently serious that, as noted above,
• the tradition records the invitation
• of Cunedda and his people
• from Manau Gododdin to drive them out
5. Pictish raids may have troubled the north;
• and the broader instability of sub-Roman Britain
• — eloquently lamented by Gildas in his De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae (c AD 560 or after) —
• created conditions in which older Roman order dissolved
• and was replaced by a more martial, more personal form of kingship
6. On the creative side,
• this was the age of the Welsh saints
• — perhaps the most distinctive contribution
• of sub-Roman Wales to European civilisation
7. The tradition of “Celtic” Christianity,
• with its emphasis on monastic learning, asceticism, and the wandering peregrinus
• (the pilgrim-scholar who carried Christian learning across the “Celtic” world),
• produced in Wales a galaxy of founding saints whose
• churches,
• holy wells,
• and place-name commemorations
• remain embedded in the Welsh landscape
8. Illtud
• (Illtyd Farchog,
• the ‘Knight’,
• whose monastery at Llantwit Major in Glamorgan
• was one of the great centres of learning in Sixth-Century AD Britain),
• Dewi Sant (Saint David, patron saint of Wales, floruit c 500–589),
• Deiniol (founder of Bangor),
• Teilo (associated with south-east Wales and Brittany),
• Cadog (Catwg the Wise, of Llancarfan),
• and scores of lesser figures established the network of monastic communities that maintained
• literacy,
• scholarship,
• and Christian practice
• through the turbulence of the post-Roman centuries
9. This was also the era in which the Arthurian legend,
• if it has any historical foundation,
• must be located
10. Historia Brittonum (c AD 828–830),
• attributed to the Welsh monk Nennius,
• describes a dux bellorum named Arthur who fought twelve battles against the Saxons,
• culminating in the battle of Mons Badonicus (Badon Hill) in which 960 enemy were slain in a single charge
11. Annales Cambriæ (c 10th Century AD, drawing on earlier materials)
• record both the Battle of Badon
• and the Battle of Camlann ‘in which Arthur and Medraut fell’
12. Whether an historical Arthur underlies these traditions remains one of the most intensely debated questions in British history;
• what is certain is that the figure of Arthur,
• as a defender of Britain against Anglo-Saxon incursion,
• resonated deeply with the experience of the sub-Roman Welsh,
• who saw in him the epitome of what post-Roman British civilisation might have been
13. The political landscape of post-Roman Wales took shape gradually across this period
14. The kingdom of Gwynedd,
• under the dynasty claiming descent from Cunedda,
• established itself as the dominant power in the north
15. Powys, centred on the former civitas of the Cornovii at Viroconium (Wroxeter),
• maintained a more thoroughly Romano-British character than most Welsh kingdoms:
• the Pillar of Eliseg near Valle Crucis Abbey,
• erected in the early Ninth Century by Cyngen ap Cadell,
• commemorates the Powysian dynasty in terms that foreground its Roman and Maximan descent
16. Dyfed in the south-west preserved its Irish dynastic connections
17. Gwent and Morgannwg in the south-east maintained the urban and ecclesiastical traditions of the Roman civitas
18. By approximately AD 550,
• when the conventional end of the post-Roman period is set,
• the outline of the Welsh political world for the subsequent three centuries was firmly in place
6. Early Mediæval era Wales/Cymru — AD 550 to AD 871
1. The early mediæval period in Wales is characterised by three great overlapping processes:
1. the consolidation of the Welsh kingdoms into more defined political entities;
2. the sustained threat of English expansion from the east, culminating in the construction of Offa’s Dyke;
3. and the beginnings of Viking pressure from the sea
2. It is also the period in which the distinctive literary culture of Wales
1. — the bardic tradition,
2. the poetry of the Cynfeirdd,
3. the early prose narratives that would eventually be written down as the Mabinogi —
4. took its most formative shape
3. The threat from Anglo-Saxon Mercia,
1. the most powerful of the midland English kingdoms,
2. defined Welsh political life throughout this period
4. The boundary between Wales and Mercia was neither fixed nor peaceful:
1. Welsh princes raided into Mercian territory,
2. and Mercian rulers in turn pushed Welsh kingdoms back from the fertile eastern borderlands
5. The most dramatic expression of this struggle was the construction of Offa’s Dyke,
1. a massive linear earthwork running approximately 240 kilometres
2. from the Dee estuary in the north to the Wye valley in the south,
3. built c AD 784–796 under the direction of Offa, king of Mercia (r 757–796)
6. The dyke
1. — the longest surviving linear earthwork in Europe —
2. represented a formal demarcation of the boundary between Mercia and the Welsh kingdoms,
3. and its construction implies a degree of negotiation or at least tacit agreement
4. between Offa and his Welsh counterparts
7. It did not, however,
1. mark the limit of Mercian ambitions,
2. nor did it prevent continued cross-border raiding in both directions
8. Among the most remarkable cultural productions of this period is
1. the poetry attributed to Taliesin and Aneirin,
2. the earliest Cynfeirdd
9. The historical Taliesin,
1. a court poet active c AD 550–600,
2. composed praise-poetry for the northern British king Urien of Rheged and his son Owain,
3. celebrating military victories over the Angles of Bernicia
10. The historical Aneirin
1. composed Y Gododdin (discussed above),
2. commemorating the Gododdin warriors’ doomed expedition against Catraeth
11. Both poets, though connected to the Hen Ogledd rather than to Wales proper,
1. were claimed by the Welsh tradition as foundational figures of Welsh literature,
2. their poems transmitted southward as the northern Brythonic kingdoms fell
3. and their cultural heritage passed into Welsh keeping
12. The Sixth and Seventh Centuries AD thus created the core of what would become Welsh literary identity:
1. a combination of elegy, praise, prophecy, and heroic memory
2. that persisted through all subsequent transformations
13. The later Eighth Century also witnessed the emergence of Viking pressure on the Welsh coasts
14. Norse and Danish fleets,
1. having begun their raids on Ireland and the Scottish islands from c 793 onward,
2. soon extended their activities to Wales
15. Anglesey
1. — the island granary of Gwynedd —
2. was a particular target,
3. its flat, accessible land and monastic wealth
4. making it an attractive objective for seaborne raiders
16. Ynys Seiriol (Priestholm/Puffin Island) and several coastal monasteries
1. suffered attack,
2. and the memory of Norse violence embedded itself
3. in Welsh chronicle and tradition
17. The Vikings also established seasonal markets
1. and, eventually, more permanent settlements at several points around the Welsh coast
• — Swansea (Sweyne’s Ea, ‘Sweyne’s Isle’),
• Fishguard,
• and Haverfordwest
• preserve Scandinavian name-elements —
2. though Viking settlement in Wales was far less dense and lasting
3. than in Ireland, Scotland, or northern England
18. The reign of Rhodri Mawr (Rhodri the Great, d AD 878) represents the apogee of early mediæval Welsh political ambition
19. Through inheritance and conquest,
1. Rhodri accumulated under his rule the kingdoms of
• Gwynedd,
• Powys,
• and Seisyllwg
2. — a greater extent of Wales
3. than had been held by any single ruler since the legendary Arthur
20. He also achieved a significant military victory over the Vikings,
1. killing the Norse leader Gorm (Gor or Horm) in battle in AD 856
2. — a feat celebrated in a congratulatory letter from the Frankish scholar Hincmar of Reims,
3. who wrote to him on behalf of Charles the Bald,
4. testifying to the international reputation of the Welsh king
21. Rhodri was killed in the AD 878 battle against the Mercian English,
1. but his achievement in holding together the greater part of Wales,
2. however briefly, established the political ambition of subsequent Welsh rulers
22. His descendants
1. — the Rhodri Mawr dynasty —
2. dominated Welsh politics for the next four centuries
7. True Mediæval era Wales — AD 871 to AD 1485
1. Wales/Cymru — AD 871 to AD 1050
1. The death of Rhodri Mawr in 878 and the partition of his kingdoms among his sons
• initiated a period of Welsh political fragmentation
• from which a new configuration gradually emerged
2. The most important figure in the subsequent generation was Hywel Dda (Hywel the Good, d c AD 950),
• who ruled Dyfed by inheritance and Seisyllwg and Gwynedd by conquest,
• and who submitted to the overlordship of the English king Æthelstan at the conference of Hereford in 928
3. Hywel’s willingness to acknowledge English suzerainty
• — he attended Æthelstan’s court on multiple occasions, witnessed royal charters,
• and minted coins in his own name at English mints —
• has been interpreted by some as pusillanimity
• and by others as sophisticated political realism
4. Whatever the motivation,
• it secured peace and stability for his domain
• and allowed the accomplishment for which Hywel is most celebrated:
• the codification of Welsh law
5. The Cyfraith Hywel (Laws of Hywel)
• represent one of the great achievements
• of mediæval Welsh civilisation
6. Preserved in a number of later manuscript redactions
• of which the most important are
• Llyfr Blegywryd,
• Llyfr Cyfnerth,
• Llyfr Iorwerth,
• the law-codes attribute their creation to Hywel’s convocation of learned men
• from all parts of Wales at a legislative assembly,
• traditionally located at Whitland in Carmarthenshire
7. Whether this assembly was historical or is a founding myth designed to give the laws royal authority,
8. the codes themselves reflect a highly developed legal culture with distinctive features:
• a sophisticated system of compensation (galanas) for unlawful killing and bodily harm;
• a significant emphasis on women’s property rights, including the right to divorce and to a share of marital property;
• the legal recognition of illegitimate children;
• and a body of land law rooted in the Welsh system of joint inheritance among all sons (gavelkind),
• which consistently frustrated Anglo-Norman attempts to impose primogeniture on Welsh society
9. The mid-Tenth and early Eleventh Centuries AD saw
• renewed English pressure under Æthelred the Unready and Cnut,
• though Wales was not directly incorporated into the English state
10. The kingdoms remained independent,
• if often client states,
• and continued their internal conflicts
11. The most dramatic political career of the period belongs to Gruffudd ap Llywelyn (d 1063),
• who through a combination of exceptional military skill and political ruthlessness
• united the whole of Wales under a single ruler for the first and only time in its history
12. Between AD 1039 and 1057,
• Gruffudd conquered Gwynedd, Powys, Deheubarth, and Morgannwg in succession,
• and extended his power into the English borderlands,
• capturing Hereford in 1055 and ravaging extensively into Mercia
13. He was recognised as king of Wales
• by the English court,
• and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle describes him as ‘King over all Wales’
14. His fall was as dramatic as his rise:
• in AD 1063,
• Harold Godwinson launched a coordinated land-and-sea campaign
• that systematically destroyed Gruffudd’s power base
15. Gruffudd was killed by his own men, and Wales reverted to its multiple kingdoms
2. Princes of Wales — AD 1050 to AD 1289
1. Norman Conquest of England in 1066 transformed the relationship between Wales and its eastern neighbour
2. William I created three great Marcher earldoms on the Welsh border
• — Hereford under William FitzOsbern, Shrewsbury under Roger of Montgomery, and Chester under Hugh d’Avranches —
• and granted their holders exceptional powers to conquer Welsh territory at their own initiative
3. This policy produced a century of aggressive Norman penetration into Wales:
• by the early Twelfth Century AD,
• the Normans had established castles and lordships across much of south and east Wales,
• creating the Marchia Wallie (the Welsh Marches),
• a zone of Anglo-Norman lordship interleaved with surviving native Welsh kingdoms in the north and west
4. Welsh resistance to Norman expansion was vigorous and ultimately effective in preserving the heartland
5. Gwynedd under Gruffudd ap Cynan (d 1137) and his son Owain Gwynedd (d 1170) successfully resisted Norman penetration into the north-west
6. Deheubarth was reconstituted under Rhys ap Gruffudd (the Lord Rhys, d 1197),
• who became the dominant figure in south Wales and established a working relationship with Henry II
• after the latter’s Welsh campaigns of AD 1157 and 1163
7. The Lord Rhys is notable for presiding over the first recorded eisteddfod in 1176 at Cardigan,
• a competitive festival of poetry and music
• that established a tradition continuing to the present day
8. His submission to Henry II at the Council of Woodstock in AD 1163
• recognised the English king’s overlordship
• but preserved Rhys’ practical authority over Deheubarth
9. The high point of native Welsh political ambition was reached under the two Llywelyns of Gwynedd
10. Llywelyn ap Iorwerth (Llywelyn Fawr, Llywelyn the Great, d 1240) deployed a combination of
• military power,
• dynastic alliance (he married Joan, illegitimate daughter of King John),
• and diplomatic skill to establish himself as the dominant figure in Wales
11. He styled himself ‘Prince of Aberffraw and Lord of Snowdon’,
• and through a series of agreements
• — most significantly the Treaty of Worcester (1218)
• and his relationship with the English barons during the crisis of Magna Carta (AD 1215) —
• he secured recognition of his pre-eminence among the Welsh princes and of his son Dafydd’s right to succeed him,
• reversing the traditional Welsh gavelkind inheritance
12. His grandson Llywelyn ap Gruffudd (Llywelyn the Last, d 1282)
• achieved the pinnacle of Welsh political recognition in the Treaty of Montgomery (1267),
• by which Henry III formally acknowledged him as ‘Prince of Wales and Lord of Wales’
• — the first time this title was accorded to a native Welsh ruler by the English crown
13. The homage of the other Welsh princes was confirmed, and Llywelyn's territorial acquisitions were recognised
14. This achievement was, however, short-lived
15. The accession of Edward I in AD 1272
• brought to the English throne a ruler of exceptional administrative and military capability,
• and Llywelyn’s failure to pay homage and his marriage to Eleanor de Montfort
• — daughter of the rebel Simon de Montfort —
• provided the pretext for the First Welsh War of 1276–1277,
• which stripped Llywelyn of much of his territorial base
16. The Second Welsh War of 1282–1283,
• triggered by the revolt of Llywelyn’s brother Dafydd,
• ended with Llywelyn’s death in a skirmish at Cilmeri near Builth Wells on 11 December 1282
• Dafydd was captured and executed in AD 1283
• Native Welsh princely power had been extinguished
3. English Princes of Wales — AD 1289 to AD 1485
1. The Statute of Rhuddlan (1284)
• established the administrative framework for the governance of conquered Wales under English law,
• creating the new English-style counties of
• Anglesey,
• Caernarfon,
• Merioneth,
• Flint,
• Cardigan,
• and Carmarthen
• alongside the Marcher lordships
2. A Justiciar of Wales
• administered the new royal demesne,
• and English settlers were encouraged in the new plantation boroughs that Edward I founded
• alongside his formidable network of concentric castles:
• Caernarfon,
• Conwy,
• Harlech,
• Beaumaris,
• Rhuddlan,
• and Flint
3. These castles
• — engineering masterpieces of their age,
• largely the work of the Savoyard military architect James of Saint George —
• remain among the finest mediæval fortifications in Europe
4. The title ‘Prince of Wales’ was conferred upon Edward of Caernarfon,
• the future Edward II,
• in AD 1301 by letters patent,
• though the tradition that he was presented to the Welsh
• as a prince ‘born in Wales who could speak no English’ is a later confection
5. Edward of Caernarfon had in fact been born at Caernarfon Castle in 1284,
• a fact that Edward I exploited;
• but the formal investiture ceremony at which the title is popularly presented
• to Welsh leaders is an early Twentieth-Century invention,
• performed for the future George V in 1911
6. The succession of English Princes of Wales throughout the mediæval period included
• Edward the Black Prince (invested AD 1343),
• Richard of Bordeaux (later Richard II, 1376),
• Henry of Monmouth (later Henry V, 1399),
• Edward of Westminster (son of Henry VI, 1454),
• and Edward of Westminster (later Edward V, AD 1471)
7. For each of these princes,
• the title represented primarily a statement of English sovereignty over Wales
• rather than any genuine connection with Welsh culture
8. The most significant challenge to English rule in this period
• was the revolt of Owain Glyndŵr (c 1354/59–c 1415/16),
• which remains the most formidable and the most celebrated uprising in Welsh history
9. Glyndŵr,
• a Welsh nobleman of distinguished ancestry descended from the princes of both Powys and Deheubarth,
• raised his standard in AD 1400 following a dispute with the Marcher lord Reginald Grey of Ruthyn
10. What began as a localised dispute
• escalated with extraordinary rapidity
• into a national uprising that by 1404–1405 had brought virtually the whole of Wales under Glyndŵr’s control
11. He convened Welsh parliaments at Machynlleth and Harlech,
• concluded alliances with France and Scotland
• (the Tripartite Indenture of 1405, by which he proposed dividing Britain between himself, the Percies, and Edmund Mortimer),
• and in the Pennal Letter of AD 1406 addressed to the French king
• set out a visionary programme for an independent Welsh church and two universities
12. The revolt ultimately failed:
• English resources,
• political stability after Henry IV’s defeat of the Percy rebellion,
• and the slow recovery of English military control gradually eroded Glyndŵr’s position
13. By 1409–1410,
• the main Welsh castles had been retaken;
• and Glyndŵr himself, refusing all offers of pardon,
• disappeared from the historical record after AD 1412, his fate unknown
14. He was
• never captured, never submitted, and never betrayed
• — qualities that gave him an almost mythic status in Welsh memory
15. His grave is unknown;
• the legend that he sleeps, like Arthur, awaiting the hour of his country’s need,
• attached itself to him with remarkable speed
8. Early Modern era Wales — AD 1485 to AD 1624
1. English Princes of Wales — AD 1485 to AD 1523
1. The accession of Henry VII in 1485
• — the first monarch of the Tudor dynasty,
• with significant Welsh ancestry on both sides of his lineage —
• transformed the relationship between Wales and the English crown
• in ways that were simultaneously symbolic and substantive
2. Henry’s father, Edmund Tudor, had been born
• of a Welsh father (Owen Tudor, a gentleman from Anglesey)
• and an English royal mother (Catherine of Valois, widow of Henry V)
3. His mother, Margaret Beaufort, also carried Plantagenet descent
4. But it was his paternal Welsh heritage
• that he and his supporters chose to emphasise,
• and the Welsh response to his candidacy for the throne was correspondingly enthusiastic
5. Henry landed at Milford Haven in south-west Wales
• on 7 August 1485 with a French-backed force,
• marched northward through Wales raising support,
• and, at the Battle of Bosworth Field on 22 August,
• defeated and killed Richard III to claim the crown
6. The Welsh poets and prophets had long anticipated a ‘Son of Prophecy’ (Mab Darogan)
• — a descendant of the old Welsh royal houses —
• who would reclaim the sovereignty of Britain from the English
7. Henry Tudor’s victory at Bosworth,
• his red dragon standard,
• and his Welsh blood allowed him
• to fulfil, at least symbolically, this prophecy
8. In the jubilant poetry
• of Welsh bards such as Dafydd Llwyd of Mathafarn and Lewis Glyn Cothi,
• his accession was greeted as the restoration of Britain to its rightful heirs
9. Henry repaid this loyalty with gestures of Welsh pride
• — naming his eldest son Arthur,
• born in Winchester in AD 1486,
• invoking both the Arthurian and the British heritage —
• and with the appointment of Welsh gentry to court positions;
• but his actual governance of Wales was thoroughly English in its institutional framework
10. Arthur, Prince of Wales (AD 1486–1502),
• the most politically significant holder of the title in this period,
• married Catherine of Aragon in November 1501 at St Paul’s Cathedral
• but died at Ludlow Castle on 2 April 1502,
• probably of the sweating sickness,
• before the marriage could produce heirs
11. His younger brother Henry became Prince of Wales and subsequently Henry VIII
12. Henry Fitzroy,
• the illegitimate son of Henry VIII,
• was made Duke of Richmond and Somerset in 1525
• but was not formally created Prince of Wales before his death in AD 1536
2. True Early Modern era Wales — AD 1523 to AD 1624
1. The true early modern period in Wales
• is defined above all by the Acts of Union of 1536 and 1543
• (passed under Henry VIII and known in Welsh historiography as the Laws in Wales Acts),
• which formally incorporated Wales into the English state
• and eliminated the legal distinction between the two countries
2. The 1536 Act
• required that all court proceedings and public administration in Wales be conducted in English
• — a provision of profound long-term significance for the Welsh language,
• which was thereby excluded from official life —
• and that Wales be divided into English-style counties,
• each returning members to the Westminster Parliament
3. The 1543 Act completed the settlement,
• establishing the Court of Great Sessions in Wales
• and abolishing the remaining Marcher lordships
4. The administrative unity thus imposed was real and lasting;
• the cultural and linguistic consequences
• were complex and contested
5. The provision of the 1536 Act requiring English in legal and official proceedings
• — sometimes described as the ‘Language Clause’ —
• has been interpreted both as a deliberate assault on the Welsh language
• and as a pragmatic administrative measure
6. In practice,
• its impact on Welsh was significant but not immediately devastating:
• the language remained the primary medium of
• domestic life,
• religious practice,
• poetry,
• and song
• for the overwhelming majority of the Welsh population
• throughout the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries AD
7. What saved it from the fate of Cornish was,
• more than any other single factor,
• the translation of the Bible and the Book of Common Prayer into Welsh
8. Welsh Bible of AD 1588,
• translated by William Morgan
• (later Bishop of Llandaff and then Saint Asaph)
• with assistance from colleagues including
• Gabriel Goodman,
• Richard Davies,
• and Edmund Prys,
is the single most important document in the history of the Welsh language
9. Morgan’s translation was accurate, idiomatic, and — crucially — in a literary Welsh that,
• while elevating the contemporary vernacular into a dignified formal register,
• was intelligible across the regional dialects of the language
10. By making Welsh the language of
• divine worship,
• scriptural reading,
• and theological discourse,
11. the 1588 Bible ensured that Welsh would remain a
• living,
• written,
• and respected language
12. rather than degenerating
• into a series of unwritten regional dialects
• as Cornish had done
13. The earlier translation
• by William Salesbury of the New Testament (1567)
• and the Book of Common Prayer (AD 1567) had prepared the ground;
• Morgan’s complete Bible consummated the achievement
14. The religious life of early modern Wales was transformed by the Reformation
15. Henry VIII’s break with Rome
• was followed by the dissolution of the Welsh monasteries
• — Valle Crucis,
• Tintern,
• Strata Florida,
• Whitland,
• and all the rest —
• and the appropriation of their lands
• by the Tudor crown
• and the Welsh gentry
16. The Welsh gentry,
• beneficiaries of the union settlement,
• largely conformed to the Protestant establishment,
• though a significant Catholic recusant community survived,
• particularly in the northern counties
17. The Elizabethan period saw the establishment of the Welsh educational infrastructure:
• Christ College Brecon (AD 1541),
• Friars School Bangor (1557),
• and the beginnings of Welsh representation
• in the newly founded grammar school network
18. all contributed to a literate gentry class
• capable of sustaining the bilingual culture
• that characterised Welsh life in the early Seventeenth Century AD
19. The Council in the Marches of Wales,
• revived and reorganised by Henry VII
• and maintained throughout the Tudor period,
• served as the principal governing body for Wales and the border counties,
• hearing cases in
• equity,
• enforcing royal authority,
• and providing an accessible forum for Welsh suitors
• that the distant Westminster courts could not
20. Its seat at Ludlow Castle
• made that Shropshire town
• one of the effective capitals of Tudor Wales
21. The Council was eventually abolished in 1689
• as part of the post-Restoration settlement,
• but throughout the Sixteenth and early Seventeenth Centuries AD
• it was the primary instrument of English administrative integration
22. Culturally, the early modern period produced a paradox:
• the formal incorporation of Wales into England,
• combined with the Protestant emphasis on scripture in the vernacular,
• actually stimulated Welsh literary and intellectual life
23. The eisteddfod tradition revived under Tudor patronage;
• the great compilations of Welsh manuscripts
• — Red Book of Hergest,
• White Book of Rhydderch,
• Peniarth manuscripts —
• were studied, copied, and published;
• and scholars such as Humphrey Llwyd, David Powel, and George Owen
• produced the first historical and geographical studies of Wales in the modern scholarly tradition
24. The period ends, conventionally,
• with the establishment of the first Welsh-language printing press
• and with the publication of works that laid the foundations of modern Welsh studies
• — a fitting close to a period in which the survival of the Welsh language and culture
• against considerable odds had been secured, if not wholly without cost
9. Geography, Genealogy, and Timeline of Wales
1. Geography of Wales
1. Wales occupies a peninsula of western Britain,
• roughly diamond-shaped,
• covering approximately 20,779 square kilometres
2. Its dominant physical character is mountainous:
• more than a quarter of its surface lies above 300 metres,
• and three distinct mountain massifs define its landscape
3. Eryri (Snowdonia) in the north-west is the highest and most rugged,
• culminating in Yr Wyddfa (Snowdon) at 1,085 metres
• — the highest peak in England and Wales
4. The Cambrian Mountains
• form the central spine of the country,
• an upland plateau draining to the sea in all directions
5. The Brecon Beacons (Bannau Brycheiniog) in the south,
• whose highest summit is Pen y Fan at 886 metres,
• provide the defining physical boundary
• between the fertile coastal plain of south Wales
• and the interior uplands
6. The principal rivers of Wales drain the mountain heartland to the sea or to the English border
7. The Severn (Afon Hafren)
• — the longest river in Britain —
• rises in mid-Wales on the eastern slopes of Plynlimon
• and flows eastward into England
8. The Wye (Afon Gwy),
• famous for its scenic valley and associated in English Romanticism with the picturesque,
• also rises on Plynlimon and follows a winding course through the southern Marches to join the Severn below Chepstow
9. The Dee (Afon Dyfrdwy) flows northward through the Vale of Llangollen and across the Cheshire plain to the Irish Sea
10. The principal rivers draining to the west include the Teifi, the Tywi (Towy), the Wye's tributaries the Usk (Wysg), and the Conwy in the north
11. The Usk valley, containing both Abergavenny and Brecon, has been throughout history one of the more accessible routes into the Welsh interior
12. The coastline of Wales extends for approximately 1,200 kilometres (750 miles),
• an extraordinary length relative to the country’s area,
• and provides both assets and vulnerabilities
13. Pembrokeshire in the south-west,
• whose coastline has been designated a National Park,
• offers the most dramatic coastal scenery,
• with sea stacks,
• caves,
• and sandy bays
• punctuated by the inlet harbours of Milford Haven
• (one of the finest natural harbours in Europe)
• and Saint Brides Bay
14. The Gower Peninsula in Glamorgan,
• the first area in Britain to be designated an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (1956),
• contains Rhossili Bay and the limestone cliffs of the south coast
15. Cardigan Bay,
• the great west-facing bay of central Wales,
• is sheltered and relatively shallow,
• important historically for fishing and small-scale seaborne trade
16. The north coast,
• from the Dee estuary to Anglesey and the Llŷn Peninsula,
• faces Ireland across the Irish Sea
• and has throughout history been the principal conduit for movement
• between Wales
• and the Gaelic world
17. Anglesey (Ynys Môn),
• separated from the mainland by the Menai Strait,
• is geologically distinct from the rest of Wales:
• a low-lying,
• relatively flat island of ancient Precambrian and Ordovician rocks,
• its fertile soils having made it the ‘Mother of Wales’ (Môn, mam Cymru)
• in the ancient agricultural proverb
18. The island contains several of the most significant prehistoric monuments in Wales,
• including Bryn Celli Ddu
• and Barclodiad y Gawres
19. Administrative divisions of historical Wales have varied considerably across periods,
• from the ancient cantrefi and commotes of native Welsh law
• through the shires established by the Statute of Rhuddlan and the Act of Union,
• to the current twenty-two unitary authority areas established in 1996
2. Genealogy of Wales
1. The genealogical tradition of Wales
• — the tracing of royal and noble descent through patrilineal pedigrees —
• is one of the most elaborately developed in early mediæval Europe
2. Welsh genealogy served not merely as a record of biological descent
• but as a political and legal instrument:
• the right to rule,
• to inherit land,
• to claim the protection of honour-price law,
• and to receive the recognition of one’s peers
• all depended, in the Welsh system,
• on a documented and publicly accepted genealogy
3. The great genealogical compilations
• — preserved in manuscripts such as Harleian 3859 (containing the genealogies of the Welsh royal houses),
• Bonedd Gwŷr y Gogledd (Descent of Men of the North),
• and the Bartrum corpus of Welsh genealogies —
4. trace the descent of the principal dynasties
• from post-Roman founders
• through multiple generations of mediæval rulers
5. The House of Gwynedd,
• the most consistently dominant dynasty in Welsh history,
• traced its descent from Cunedda Wledig (floruit c AD 380–430),
• the chieftain brought from Manau Gododdin,
• through a long succession of rulers including
• Maelgwn Gwynedd
• (the ‘Dragon of the Island’, d c 547),
• the subject of Gildas’ most vitriolic denunciations;
• Cadwallon ap Cadfan (d 634),
• who allied with Penda of Mercia
• to defeat and kill the Northumbrian king Edwin
• at Hatfield Chase (AD 633);
• Cadwaladr Fendigaid (Cadwaladr the Blessed, r c 655–682);
• Rhodri Mawr (d 878);
• Hywel Dda (d c 950, through the female line);
• Llywelyn ap Iorwerth (Llywelyn the Great, d 1240);
• and Llywelyn ap Gruffudd (Llywelyn the Last, d AD 1282)
6. The House of Deheubarth (southern Wales)
• derived principally from Rhodri Mawr through his son Cadell,
• and included Hywel Dda (through matrilineal descent from Gwynedd combined with direct paternal inheritance of Dyfed),
• the Lord Rhys (Rhys ap Gruffudd, d 1197),
• and the numerous branches of his prolific family
7. The House of Powys,
• claiming descent from Cadell Ddyrnllug
• through the Gwerthrynion dynasty
• and ultimately from the post-Roman chieftains of the Cornovii civitas,
• produced its greatest ruler in Madog ap Maredudd (d 1160),
• after whose death Powys was partitioned into
• Powys Fadog (the north)
• and Powys Wenwynwyn (the south)
8. The House of Morgannwg (Glamorgan)
• traced its descent from Morgan Hen (Morgan the Old, d c AD 974),
• and maintained a degree of independence in the south-east
• until Norman penetration transformed its political character
9. The dynastic connections of the Welsh houses
• extended outward through marriage alliance
• and shared ancestry to the royal families of Scotland, Ireland, and England
10. Llywelyn the Great’s marriage to Joan, daughter of King John, brought the Gwynedd dynasty into direct relationship with the Plantagenet house
11. The intermarriage of Welsh princely families with Anglo-Norman Marcher lords
• from the Twelfth Century onward
• created a complex genealogical web
• in which Cymric and Norman descent became thoroughly intertwined
12. The Tudor dynasty itself exemplifies this complexity:
• Henry VII’s descent from Owen Tudor of Anglesey
• connected him to the old houses of Gwynedd,
• while his Beaufort descent traced to
• the House of Lancaster
• and ultimately to Edward III of England
3. Timeline of Wales
1. c 228,000 BC:ࡊNeanderthal occupation of Pontnewydd Cave, Denbighshire — the earliest human presence in Wales
2. c 33,000 BC:ࡊBurial of the ‘Red Lady of Paviland’ (Gower Peninsula), the earliest ceremonial burial in Wales and among the oldest in western Europe
3. c 14,500 BC:ࡊMagdalenian-period rock engraving at Cathole Cave, Gower — the oldest cave art in Britain
4. c 9,000 BC:ࡊPermanent Mesolithic recolonisation of Wales following the retreat of the last glaciation
5. c 4,000 BC:ࡊArrival of Neolithic farming communities; construction of megalithic monuments including Pentre Ifan and Bryn Celli Ddu
6. c 2,500 BC:ࡊBronze Age and Beaker culture; intensive copper mining at the Great Orme
7. c 800 BC:ࡊIron Age and Celtic culture; construction of hillforts; emergence of the tribal peoples encountered by Rome
8. AD 43:ࡊRoman invasion of Britain under the Emperor Claudius
9. AD 47–48:ࡊGovernor Ostorius Scapula begins the Roman conquest of Wales; campaign against the Deceangli
10. AD 51:ࡊCapture of Caratacus (Caradog) and betrayal to Rome by Cartimandua of the Brigantes
11. AD 60:ࡊSuetonius Paulinus destroys the Druidic sanctuary on Anglesey; Boudiccan revolt diverts Roman forces
12. c AD 75:ࡊLegionary fortress of Isca Silurum (Caerleon) established; Julius Frontinus defeats the Silures
13. AD 77–78:ࡊGnaeus Julius Agricola defeats the Ordovices and completes the Roman conquest of Wales
14. AD 383:ࡊMagnus Maximus (Macsen Wledig) proclaimed emperor in Britain; withdraws garrison to Gaul
15. AD 388:ࡊMaximus defeated and executed by Theodosius I
16. AD 410:ࡊHonorius’ rescript; effective end of Roman administration in Britain
17. c AD 400–430:ࡊCunedda Wledig leads forces from Manau Gododdin to expel Irish settlers; foundation of the Gwynedd dynasty
18. c AD 500–550:ࡊThe Age of Saints: Illtud, Dewi Sant (St David), Deiniol, Teilo, Cadog
19. c AD 600:ࡊY Gododdin composed by Aneirin; poems of Taliesin for Urien of Rheged
20. c AD 784–796:ࡊConstruction of Offa’s Dyke by Offa of Mercia
21. AD 856:ࡊRhodri Mawr defeats and kills the Viking leader Gorm
22. AD 878:ࡊDeath of Rhodri Mawr in battle against the Mercians
23. c. AD 942–950:ࡊHywel Dda codifies Welsh law; the Cyfraith Hywel
24. AD 1039–1063:ࡊGruffudd ap Llywelyn unites all Wales under a single ruler; first and last native king of all Wales
25. AD 1063:ࡊGruffudd ap Llywelyn killed by his own men following Harold Godwinson’s campaign
26. AD 1066:ࡊNorman Conquest of England; creation of the Marcher earldoms threatening Wales
27. AD 1176:ࡊThe Lord Rhys convenes the first recorded eisteddfod at Cardigan
28. AD 1215:ࡊLlywelyn the Great participates in the Magna Carta crisis; secures Welsh interests
29. AD 1240:ࡊDeath of Llywelyn the Great; greatest extent of native Welsh political power under a single ruler to this date
30. AD 1267:ࡊTreaty of Montgomery: Llywelyn ap Gruffudd recognised as ‘Prince of Wales and Lord of Wales’ by Henry III
31. AD 1276–1277:ࡊFirst Welsh War of Edward I; Llywelyn stripped of much of his power
32. AD 1282:ࡊSecond Welsh War; death of Llywelyn ap Gruffudd at Cilmeri, 11 December. End of native Welsh princely rule
33. AD 1283:ࡊCapture and execution of Dafydd ap Gruffudd. Statute of Rhuddlan
34. AD 1284:ࡊBirth of the future Edward II at Caernarfon; later (1301) created Prince of Wales
35. AD 1400–1415:ࡊRevolt of Owain Glyndŵr; Wales briefly under native rule; Pennal Letter (1406)
36. AD 1485:ࡊHenry Tudor (Henry VII) lands at Milford Haven; defeats Richard III at Bosworth; Tudor dynasty begins
37. AD 1536:ࡊFirst Act of Union (Laws in Wales Act); Wales formally incorporated into England; English required in official proceedings
38. AD 1543:ࡊSecond Act of Union; complete administrative integration; Court of Great Sessions established
39. AD 1567:ࡊWilliam Salesbury’s translation of the New Testament and Book of Common Prayer into Welsh
40. AD 1588:ࡊWilliam Morgan’s Welsh Bible; the most important document in the history of the Welsh language.
41. AD 1624:ࡊClose of the early modern period surveyed in this work
4. The History of France
1. Introduction to The History of France
2. Meaning, Origin, Existence, and Comparison:
        The Name “France”, Another Kind of “France”, and Additional Places Similar to France
1. Introduction to the Meaning, Origin, Existence, and Comparison:
        The Name “France”, Another Kind of “France”, and Additional Places Similar to France
2. Meaning and Origin of the Name “France”
3. Existence of Another Kind of “France”
1. Introduction to the Existence of Another Kind of “France”
2. Vannetais/Briezh (what is now Brittany)
3. Non-Briezh (the remainder of Gaul)
• Belgae
• Aquitani
4. Comparison of Other Places to France
3. Roman era Gaul
4. Post-Roman era Gaul/France
1. Early Post-Roman era Gaul/France
2. Middle Post-Roman era France
3. Late Post-Roman era France
5. Early Mediæval era France
6. True Mediæval era France
7. Early Modern era France
8. Geography, Genealogy, and Timeline of France
1. Geography of France
2. Genealogy of France
3. Timeline of France
6. The History of The Saxons, Romans, Picts, Scots, and The Irish
1. Introduction to The History of The Saxons, Romans, Picts, Scots, and The Irish
2. The History of The “Saxons”
1. Introduction to The History of The “Saxons”
2. Meaning, Origin, Existence, and Comparison:
        The Name “Saxon”, Migrations of The “Saxons”, and Additional Peoples Compared to The “Saxons”
1. Introduction to The Meaning, Origin, Existence, and Comparison:
        The Name “Saxon”, Migrations of The “Saxons”, and Additional Peoples Compared to The “Saxons”
2. Meaning and Origin of the Name “Saxon”
3. Migrations of The “Saxons”
1. Introduction to The Migrations of The “Saxons”
2. The Angles/Angli
3. The Saxons
4. The Jutes/Iuti/Iutæ
5. The (Herulo-/Erila-)Frisians
4. Comparison of Other Peoples to The “Saxons”
3. Geography, Genealogy, and Timeline of The “Saxons”
1. Geography of The “Saxons”
1. Introduction to The Geography of The “Saxons”
2. Geography of The Angles/Angli
3. Geography of The Saxons
4. Geography of The Jutes/Iuti/Iutæ
5. Geography of The (Herulo-/Erila-)Frisians
2. Genealogy of The “Saxons”
1. Introduction to The Genealogy of The “Saxons”
2. Genealogy of The Angles/Angli
3. Genealogy of The Saxons
4. Genealogy of The Jutes/Iuti/Iutæ
5. Genealogy of The (Herulo-/Erila-)Frisians
3. Timeline of The “Saxons”
1. Introduction to The Timeline of The “Saxons”
2. Timeline of The Angles/Angli
3. Timeline of The Saxons
4. Timeline of The Jutes/Iuti/Iutæ
5. Timeline of The (Herulo-/Erila-)Frisians
3. The History of The Romans
1. Introduction to The History of The Romans
2. Meaning, Origin, Existence, and Comparison:
        The Name “Roman”, Roman Settlements, and Roman-related Peoples
1. Introduction to the Meaning, Origin, Existence, and Comparison:
        The Name “Roman”, Roman Settlements, and Roman-related Peoples
2. Meaning and Origin of the Name “Roman”
3. Settlements of The Romans
4. Comparison of Other Peoples to The Romans
3. Roman era Britain — AD 43 to AD 421
1. Introduction to Roman era Britain — AD 43 to AD 421
2. AD 43 to AD 46
3. AD 47 to AD 61
4. AD 62 to AD 69
5. AD 70 to AD 79
6. AD 80 to AD 88
7. AD 89
8. AD 90 to AD 200
9. AD 201 to AD 366
10. AD 367 to AD 378
1. AD 367 – The Consulship of Lupicinus and Jovinus
11. AD 379 to AD 381
1. AD 379 – The Consulship of Ausonius and Olybrius (Year 1 of Gratian as Augustus)
12. AD 382 to AD 409
13. AD 410 to AD 421
4. Post-Roman era Britain — AD 421 to AD 579
1. Early Post-Roman era Britain — AD 421 to AD 477
1. Introduction to Early Post-Roman era Britain — AD 421 to AD 477
2. AD 421 to AD 425
• AD 421 – The Consuls Eustathius and Agricola (Year 13 of the Augustus Honorius)
3. AD 426 to AD 430
4. AD 431 to AD 449
• AD 431 - The Consulship of Bassus and Antiochus (The Council of Ephesus: Mary is declared Theotokos, Mother of God)
• AD 441 - The consulship of Cyrus (Year 19 of the Augustus Theodosius II)
• AD 446 - The consuls Aetius and Symmachus (Year 23 of Theodosius II as Augustus)
5. AD 450 to AD 470
• AD 450 - The Consulship of Valentinian and Abienus (Year 1 of Valentinian III as Augustus)
• AD 451 – The Consulship of Marcian and Adelfius (The Council of Ephesus proclaims the dual nature of Christ, and affirms Mary as Mother of God)
6. AD 471 to AD 474
7. AD 475
8. AD 476 to AD 477
2. Middle Post-Roman era Britain — AD 477 to AD 523
1. Introduction to Middle Post-Roman era Britain — AD 477 to AD 523
2. AD 477 to AD 484
3. AD 485 to AD 486
4. AD 487 to AD 499
5. AD 500
6. AD 501 to AD 509
7. AD 510 to AD 511
8. AD 512 to AD 516
9. AD 517 to AD 523
• By AD 521, Cerdic had emerged as the clear leader of the Saxons who landed at Cerdicesora
3. Late Post-Roman era Britain — AD 523 to AD 579
1. Introduction to Late Post-Roman era Britain — AD 523 to AD 550
2. AD 523 to AD 524
3. AD 525
4. AD 526 to AD 529
5. AD 530 to AD 534
6. AD 535
7. AD 536 to AD 537
8. AD 538 to AD 539
9. AD 540 to AD 549
• AD 540 – The Consulship of Justinus
10. AD 550 to AD 553
11. AD 554 to AD 569
• AD 554 - Salisbury (two armies, Saxon and British, faced one another in the summer sunshine of what is now Wiltshire)
12. AD 570 to AD 579
• AD 570 - Battle of Deorum
• AD 573 - Battle of Arfderydd
5. Geography, Genealogy, and Timeline of The Romans
1. Geography of The Romans
2. Genealogy of The Romans
3. Timeline of The Romans
4. The History of The Picts
1. Introduction to The History of The Picts
2. Meaning, Origin, Existence, and Comparison:
        The Name “Pict”, Pict Settlements, and Pict-related Peoples
1. Introduction to the Meaning, Origin, Existence, and Comparison:
        The Name “Pict”, Pict Settlements, and Pict-related Peoples
2. Meaning and Origin of the Name “Pict”
1. Qritani/Cru(i)th(i)n(i)/Cruithne
2. Πρετ(τ)αν(ν)οί/Pret(t)an(n)oi/Prettanikē/Pretani/(painted ones)/Pritani/Priteni
3. Prydyn/Prydain
4. Βρίττωνες/Brittones/Brit(t)anni
5. Pixti/Pexti/Picti/(painted ones)/Peohtas
6. Albidosi
3. Settlements of The “Picts”
1. Picti
• Caledonii
• Cornavii
• Decantae
• Epidii
• Lugi
• Smertae
• Taexali
• Vacomagi
2. Iverni
3. Pictones/Pictavii
4. Comparison of Other Peoples to The Picts
3. Prehistoric/Mythic era “Picts” — c 898,000 BC to AD 43
1. First Human Inhabitants (Homo antecessor) — c 898,000 BC
2. Homo heidelbergensis — c 498,000 BC
3. Very Early Neanderthals — c 398,000 BC
4. Classic Neanderthals — c 223,000 BC
5. Neanderthal occupation of Britain — c 178,000 BC to c 58,000 BC
6. Human/Neanderthal Hybrids (Homo sapiens) occupied Britain — c 38,000 BC
7. Neolithic culture — c 4000 BC
8. “Beaker” Folk — c 2500 BC
9. Kings of the Picts — 1153 BC to AD 43
4. Roman era Kings of The Picts — AD 43 to AD 410
5. Post-Roman era Kings of The Picts — AD 410 to AD 550
6. Early Mediæval era Picts — AD 550 to AD 850
1. Kings of the Picts — AD 550 to AD 552
2. Pictlands
1. North Pictland — AD 552 to AD 697
2. South Pictland — AD 552 to AD 697
3. United Pictland — AD 697 to AD 850
7. Geography, Genealogy, and Timeline of The Picts
1. Geography of The Picts
2. Genealogy of The Picts
3. Timeline of The Picts
5. The History of The Scots
1. Introduction to The History of The Scots
2. Meaning, Origin, Existence, and Comparison:
        The Name “Scot”, Scot Settlements, and Scot-related Peoples
1. Introduction to the Meaning, Origin, Existence, and Comparison:
        The Name “Scot”, Scot Settlements, and Scot-related Peoples
2. Meaning and Origin of the Name “Scot”
3. Settlements of The Scots
4. Comparison of Other Peoples to The Scots
3. Post-Roman era Scots — AD 474 to AD 550
1. Early Post-Roman era Scots
1. Kings of Dalriada/(Dál Riata)/(Dæl Reoda)
2. AD 474 to AD 477
2. Middle Post-Roman era Scots
1. Kings of Dalriada/(Dál Riata)/(Dæl Reoda)
2. AD 477 to AD 523
3. Late Post-Roman era Scots
1. Kings of Dalriada/(Dál Riata)/(Dæl Reoda)
2. AD 523 to AD 550
4. Early Mediæval era Scots — AD 550 to AD 871
1. Kings of Dalriada/(Dál Riata)/(Dæl Reoda) — AD 550 to AD 850
2. Kings of Scotland — Kings of Scots and Picts
1. House of Alpin
2. AD 850 to AD 871
5. True Mediæval era Scots — Kings of Scotland
1. House of Alpin — AD 871 to AD 1034
2. House of Atholl — AD 1034 to AD 1040
3. House of Alpin — AD 1040 to AD 1058
4. House of Atholl/Canmore — AD 1058 to AD 1292
5. House of Balliol — AD 1292 to AD 1304
6. House of Bruce — AD 1304 to AD 1371
7. House of Stewart — AD 1371 to AD 1485
6. Early Modern era Scots — House of Stewart
1. Kings of Scotland — AD 1485 to AD 1603
2. Under English rule — AD 1603 to AD 1635
7. Geography, Genealogy, and Timeline of The Scots
1. Geography of The Scots
2. Genealogy of The Scots
3. Timeline of The Scots
6. The History of The Irish
1. Introduction to The History of The Irish
2. Meaning, Origin, Existence, and Comparison:
        The Name “Irish”, Irish Settlements, and Irish-related Peoples
1. Introduction to the Meaning, Origin, Existence, and Comparison:
        The Name “Irish”, Irish Settlements, and Irish-related Peoples
2. Meaning and Origin of the Name “Irish”
3. Settlements of The Irish
4. Comparison of Other Peoples to The Irish
3. Prehistoric/Mythic era Irish — 9500 BC to AD 43
1. Very First Inhabitants — 9500 BC
2. Daughters of Delbáeth/Bith/Bitu/(world/life/age) and his wife Ernmas/Birren
1. Banb(h)a/(Ces(s)air/Ceasair/Kesair), wife of Fintán (son of Bóchra and Cuill)
2. (Fótla/Fódla/Fod(h)la)/(Ba(i)rr(fh)ind/Barrann/Burran(/Birren)), wife of Bith mac Cecht
3. (É(i)riu/Éire/Īwerjū/(fat land, fertile))/(Alba/Balva/(british)), wife of Ladra mac Gréine (grandson of the Dagda)
4. Sumerian
5. c 3065 BC
3. Partholán/Partholoim/Partholomus/Partholanians
1. Left Greece c 2760 BC
2. Arrived c 2753 BC
3. c 2751 BC, they encountered Fomorians
4. Lived until c 2603 BC
4. Fomóraigh/Fomorians
1. NonCeltiberian/Heavy Neanderthal admixture
2. High Kings of Ireland/Hieriyo
3. 2751 BC to 1287 BC
5. Nemed(ians)
1. Sumerian/Belgae admixture
2. Arrived c 2573 BC
3. c 2564 BC, most died of a plague
6. Fir Bolg/Firbolgs
   1. Belgae/former slaves to the Greeks
   2. High Kings of Ireland/Hieriyo
   3. 2334 BC to 1477 BC
7. Tuatha dé Danann
1. Oetzi/Belgae admixture
2. High Kings of Ireland/Hieriyo
3. 2334 BC to 1287 BC
8. Goídelic/Gaelic/Celtiberian/Milesian
1. Scythian
2. Moved to Egypt
3. Moved back to Scythia
4. Moved to Basque (Spain)
5. High Kings of Ireland/Hieriyo
6. 1287 BC to AD 43
4. Roman era Irish — AD 43 to AD 410
1. Goídelic/Gaelic/Celtiberian/Milesian
1. High Kings of Ireland
2. AD 43 to AD 368
2. Historical Ireland — AD 368 to AD 410
5. Post-Roman era Irish — AD 410 to AD 550
1. Historical Ireland
2. AD 410 to AD 550
6. Early Mediæval era Irish — AD 550 to AD 871
1. Historical Ireland
2. AD 550 to AD 871
7. True Mediæval era Irish — AD 871 to AD 1485
1. Historical Ireland — AD 871 to AD 1177/1183
2. Lordship and Kingdom of Ireland — AD 1177/1183 to AD 1485
8. Early Modern era Irish — Lordship and Kingdom of Ireland
1. AD 1485 to AD 1542
2. AD 1543 to AD 1635
9. Geography, Genealogy, and Timeline of The Irish
1. Geography of The Irish
2. Genealogy of The Irish
3. Timeline of The Irish