Medieval Welsh language, history, literature, and culture

The four branches of the Mabinogion are preserved primarily within two medieval manuscripts (MS), namely the White book of Rhydderch (hereafter termed WBR) and the Red Book of Hergest (hereafter termed RBH)1 as well as in Peniarth 6, 7, 14 and 16, which contain the oldest copies of the fragments and were probably written in the 12 th and 13 th century AD.2 This essay aims to explore these four branches and their authorship. A major issue with determining the authorship of the Mabinogi in general is that nobody has quite agreed on a date of composition of the tales.3 Therefore, there will need to be an exploration of the arguments of dating the Four Branches, as well as discussing whether they should be read as products of their time, or whether we should consider them to be much older than the MS in which they reside. After this, the author of the four branches will try to be located. The author and date will attempt to be located by exploring mythological themes as well as themes on the Norman influence over the Four Branches.

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

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

An analysis of the passage in Branch Two of the Mabinogi concerning Efnysien’s discovery of the Irish warriors hidden in flour bags. This analysis shows the significance and context of the passage and considers a range of relevant factors. There are interesting comments on the style and episodic nature of the text and on the core themes of feud and friendship and recurring motifs.  It includes a useful summary of the main content and characterisation in this passage, and suggests that one could consider the passage in the light of Freytag’s dramatic arc framework.

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

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

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The present article discusses the concept of Europe in Delw y Byd, the medieval Welsh translation of the geographical section of the twelfth-century encyclopedia Imago mundi, written in Latin by Honorius Augustodunensis. The research presented here forms part of the project ‘Defining Europe in Medieval European Geographical Discourse: the
Image of the World and its Legacy, 1110-1500’ funded by the  Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research. An early version of this article was presented at the Japan Society for Celtic Studies Annual Congress in October 2017.

This edition of the Welsh geographical and astronomical treatise Delw y Byd is the first edition to use the entire corpus of the surviving medieval manuscripts, extracts from which are presented alongside an introductory discussion of their origins, their literary, historical, and scientific context, as well as their linguistic features.
The edition is available in hardback, paperback, and as JSTOR e-book.
ISBN: 978-1-781889-49-7 (hardback)
ISBN: 978-1-781889-50-3 (paperback)
ISBN: 978-1-781889-51-0 (JSTOR ebook)
A GoogleBooks preview is available (link provided on this page).

OPEN ACCESS This article reopens the question of the relationship between the medieval Welsh version of the Grail narrative, the Historia Peredur vab Efrawc, and the French Conte du Graal of Chrétien de Troyes. It explores the seeming inconsistencies in the Welsh tale’s presentation of the Grail procession, and suggests that the hero’s actions, and in particular his reticence in asking questions about the procession, should be read in the context of medieval Welsh customs and legal tradition. The article concludes with an exploration of the implications of the proposed interpretation for the reading of Historia Peredur as a postcolonial narrative.

This article investigates the linguistic situation in medieval Wales and searches for interpreters and translators as well as their potential tools there. The article was published in: Poppe, E. & H.L.C. Tristram (eds.), Übersetzung, Adaption und Akkulturation im insularen Mittelalter, Münster: Nodus Publikationen.

This talk draws structured historical comparisons between the fall and rise of Welsh and of its sibling Brythonic language, Cornish. I discuss four topics: industrialisation; religion; nationalism; and diaspora. My contribution is to highlight hitherto unexplored points of similarity and difference, leading to discussion of their present and possible futures.

As Morgan (1971: 155) and Thomas (1987) note, though 19th century industrialisation had a certain anglicising influence in Wales, overall it buttressed Welsh by reducing the need to emigrate for work. By contrast in Cornwall, when heavy mining began in the 16th century, Cornish speaking was already so sporadic that as mining grew, migration within Cornwall washed away the last pockets of the language into final extinction (Pounds 1943: 45).

Religion was central to the survival of Welsh, and the decline of Cornish. The Book of Common Prayer and the Bible were translated 1567-1588 (Khleif 1979:62), to foster Protestantism and see off Catholic dissent. Later, the 18th century Methodist revival in Wales taught literacy using the Welsh Bible, greatly strengthening Welsh. Meanwhile in Cornwall there was limited translation of some scripture but not the whole Bible. By the time of the 18th century Welsh literacy drive, Cornish was already dead. On an intriguing side note, it was three 14th century Cornishmen who played key roles in the first translation of the Bible into English (P.B. Ellis 1967: 47-51).

Nationalism has long surged through both language movements, though perhaps more clearly in Welsh. Cornish was among the issues at stake in certain uprisings in Tudor times, underscoring germinal links between pre-nationalist sentiment (Mills 2010; cf. Ellis 1974: 52–69). Modern nationalism has a longer and louder history in Wales than Cornwall, including linguistic nationalism (Morgan 1971; Parry & Williams 1999) – traceable at least to the founding of Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg in 1885. In Cornwall too, language has inspired modern nationalism; the first constitution of Mebyon Kernow in 1951 included Cornish as a priority. Generally though, the nationalist emphasis in Cornish activism has been less overt. This relates to overarching policy incentives that differ from Wales, which I explore.

Finally, I examine the trope of diaspora as a feature of Welsh and Cornish language movements. Wales has long drawn on diasporic Welsh-speaking communities for strength and dialogue, in the UK – not least London (Segrott 2001) – and abroad, particularly Patagonia and the USA (Garrett et al. 2009). In Cornwall, the industrial mining boom created a population with internationally transferrable skills. Some of the out-migrants and slaves from Cornwall were therefore Cornish-speaking. Precise information is elusive, but there is evidence of 18th century correspondence in Cornish between Cornwall and the USA (Ellis 1974:100). In the 20th century, scholarly research on Cornish mostly occurred in the USA, only gaining more recently in the UK (Ellis 1974:191–193). Today there are Cornish speakers and learners worldwide, and the Cornish American Heritage Society has links with the Cornish Language Partnership in Cornwall.

I conclude with some remarks about contemporary institutional frameworks in Welsh and Cornish language planning. There is significant influence from Wales in Cornwall, including the commissioning of IAITH (Welsh Centre for Language Planning) to propose a structural reform plan for 2015–2025. Again, I highlight points of similarity between Welsh and Cornish, and possible futures for the two.

References:
Ellis, P. Berresford (1974): The Cornish Language and Its Literature. London: Routledge.
Garrett, Peter, Hywel Bishop & Nikolas Coupland. 2009. Diasporic ethnolinguistic subjectivities: Patagonia, North America, and Wales. IJSL 195: 173–199.
Khleif, Bud B. 1979. Language as an Ethnic Boundary in Welsh-English Relations. IJSL 20: 59–74.
Morgan, Kenneth O. 1971. Welsh Nationalism: The Historical Background. J. Contemporary History 6(1): 153–72.
Mills, Jon. 2010. Genocide and Ethnocide: The Suppression of the Cornish Language. In J. Partridge et al. (eds.), Interfaces in Language. Newcastle-Upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars. 189–206.
Parry, Gwenfair & Mari A. Williams. 1999. The Welsh Language and the 1891 Census. Cardiff: University of Wales Press.
Pounds, Norman J.G. 1943. Population Movement in Cornwall, and the Rise of Mining in the 18th Century. Geography 28(2): 37–46.
Segrott, Jeremy. 2001. Language, geography and identity: The case of the Welsh in London. Social & Cultural Geography 2(3): 281–296.
Thomas, Brinley. 1987. A Cauldron of Rebirth: Population and the Welsh Language in the Nineteenth Century. Welsh History Review / Cylchgrawn Hanes Cymru 13(4): 418–437.
Williams, David. 1969. A History of Modern Wales. John Murray, London.

This article discusses the relevance of ecocriticism to
Welsh literature. With particular reference to medieval literature, it suggests that literary scholarship has often failed correctly to identify species (or aspects of behaviour) referred to in poetry. It also gives examples of how ecological change impinges upon readings of both modern and medieval poetry. While suggesting that the Welsh language and the natural world in the modern era have shared a metanarrative based upon decline (including a parallel between declining biodiversity and lexical erosion), it also compares the uneasy relationship of post-structuralist theory with both ecocriticism and traditional Welsh-language culture. It ends on the key question of whether ecocriticism, which celebrates both
life and death as key processes in the natural world, will prove of value to a culture which is itself threatened by extinction.