Welsh Surnames
This is Sir Taran ap Deiniol (my son) wearing a full coif and tunic of crocheted mail. The ‘ap’ in his name means ‘son of’ for the Welsh. If he were a girl, the ‘ap’ would become ‘ferch’, meaning ‘daughter of”. Among the Welsh today, the number of surnames are few. In general, if you encounter someone with a first name as a last name, their ancestry may very well be Welsh. In Wales today, Jones, Davies, Evans, Williams, and Thomas are the most common surnames. http://www.genealogymagazine.com/welsh.html The reason for this was that the Welsh adopted the use of true surnames very late–beginning in the 15th century and the process didn’t finish until the 18th. This meant that 1) the use of English names and the Englishization of Wales had fully taken hold and 2) the Church’s use of English baptismal Read more…
A Child’s Christmas in Wales
Dylan Thomas wrote A Child’s Christmas in Wales in 1954. It begins: “One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six. All the Christmases roll down toward the two-tongued sea, like a cold and headlong moon bundling down the sky that was our street; and they stop at the rim of the ice-edged fish-freezing waves, and I plunge my hands in the snow and bring out whatever I can find . . .” For the full text: http://www.bfsmedia.com/MAS/Dylan/Christmas.html
The Wildwood — the lost forest of the UK
Imagine all of the UK covered in a thickly wooded landscape, much like portions of the western United States. I just spent the last 1/2 an hour looking up native plants in Wales, trying to come up with a couple that would have reliably flourished in Gwynedd in the 13th century. My sister-in-law is a botanist, and she agreed that agrimony and juniper would good choices. What has been difficult to determine, as with the Roman and ancient roads, is what the landscape looked like in the Middle Ages. England was mostly denuded of trees by then, but it is possible that wasn’t the case in Wales. So when we see these broad lanscapes in the uplands with no trees, was that what they looked like eight hundred years ago? How do we find that out? According to scientists, only Read more…
Vortigern? Who was he again?
Vortigern was a King of the Britons who is remembered for welcoming the Saxons into Britain during the dark ages and then being unable to get them to leave. This site: http://www.vortigernstudies.org.uk/artwho/who.htm would very much like to rehabilitate Vortigern. He has extensive information on this site. Our knowledge of Vortigern comes from some early sources. Gildas, who wrote a moral history of Britain, states, around 540 BC: “At this meeting, the council invited the Saxons in three keels from Germany, as a counter to the threat from the Picts in the north. This is followed after some time by a conflict over the annona (payment in kind), after which the Saxon federates devastate the country. Vortigern, who may have been named by Gildas, is not portrayed by Gildas as a sole ruler, or a High King if you will. He rules Read more…
Gerald of Wales
We are talking about Gerald of Wales because, as a churchmen, he exemplifies the tensions and complicated nature of the relationship between the Welsh and Norman church in the Middle Ages. Gerald was the grandson of Gerald of Windsor and Nest, a princess of Deheubarth, who established Carew Castle after the Norman Conquest of this region of Wales. Thus he was mixed Norman and Welsh descent, and as our daughter writes in her senior thesis, “His Welsh ancestry meant he could act Norman” and side with the Normans but never be accepted as fully Norman. He himself “decried” both Normans and Welsh for despising him, arguing that his uncertain identity left him accepted by neither culture. At the same time, he spoke French primarily, and Latin as a churchman, with only a little Welsh, and overtly participated in Norman efforts Read more…
The Wild Boar in Britain
Four hundred years ago, wild boar officially became extinct in Britain. A wild boar is a creature that weighed upwards of two hundred pounds. “The wild boar is a member of the pig family, Suidae, and is an even-toed ungulate or artiodactyl. It is a large mammal, with an adult male weighing up to 200 kg., or occasionally more, and with a head and body length of up to 2 metres. The tail, which is usually straight, is about 25 cm. long. Female boars are about two thirds of the size of the males, although both stand about one metre in height. A prominent feature of the wild boar is its coat of short, thick bristly hair, which can vary in colour from brown and black to grey. In western Europe, boar generally have brown coats, while in eastern Europe Read more…
Excalibur (Caledfwlch)
“Excalibur” was first used for King Arthur’s sword in the embellishment of the King Arthur legend by the French. Contrary to present-day myth, Excalibur was not the famous “Sword in the Stone” (which broke in battle), but a second sword acquired by the King through the intercession of Myrddin (Merlin). Worried that Arthur would fall in battle, “Merlin took the King to a magical lake where a mysterious hand thrust itself up from the water, holding aloft a magnificent sword. It was the Lady of the Lake, offering Arthur a magic unbreakable blade, fashioned by an Avalonian elf smith, along with a scabbard which would protect him as long as he wore it . . .” http://www.britannia.com/history/arthur/excalibur.html The Welsh name for King Arthur’s sword was ‘Caledfwlch’, which means ‘cleaving what is hard’. (from Celtic Culture: A Historical Encyclopedia). It later Read more…
Rewriting the Dark Ages
A new theory has been working it’s way through the archaeological literature that there was no Saxon ‘invasion’ of Britain after the fall of Rome. The theory states that “9th century Anglo-Saxon propaganda distort [ed] the records for the turbulent 5th and 6th centuries. . . . Rather than Briton versus Anglo-Saxon – as in the myth of Arthur – was it simply a murderous struggle between rival British warlords?” http://www.archaeology.co.uk/articles/rewriting-the-age-of-arthur.htm The theory, at least in this article, is based on a lack of primary sources of the era. This is an interesting argument, but there are a number of sources that suggest it isn’t accurate. First: written evidence, which the article claims to be scarce, is far more prevalent than at first appears–it’s just that the sources are not necessarily British. This site on the ruin and conquest of Britain, details, Read more…
Introducing . . . The Good Knight (A Medieval Mystery)
Intrigue, suspicion, and rivalry among the royal princes casts a shadow on the court of Owain, king of north Wales… The year is 1143 and King Owain seeks to unite his daughter in marriage with an allied king. But when the groom is murdered on the way to his wedding, the bride’s brother tasks his two best detectives—Gareth, a knight, and Gwen, the daughter of the court bard—with bringing the killer to justice. And once blame for the murder falls on Gareth himself, Gwen must continue her search for the truth alone, finding unlikely allies in foreign lands, and ultimately uncovering a conspiracy that will shake the political foundations of Wales. The Good Knight is available NOW at Amazon, Amazon UK and at Smashwords: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/90803
Darkiss Reads reviews The Pendragon’s Quest!
The folks over at Darkiss Reads have posted a wonderful review for The Pendragon’s Quest: “Sarah Woodbury outdoes herself with “The Pendragon’s Quest”, which I thought was impossible because the first book was so good. I was wrong, this book surpasses the first as the author brings us deeper into Cade’s world and those of his companions. Again I was caught up in the brotherhood of warriors whose mettle was tested time and time again in battle. The story explores and adds more depth to the Characters of Cade’s most trusted Knights; Dafydd, Hywel and Goronwy whose loyalty to King and country could cost them their lives. We see the true meaning of courage and the will to never surrender flow from the pages of this novel. We see the love grow and strengthen between Cade and Rhiann along with Read more…
Anglo-Saxon Law (to 1066)
Anglo-Saxon law didn’t come to an end with the coming of William of Normandy in 1066, but it was definitely changed. Norman law was based in feudalism and heavily influenced by the Church. Anglo-Saxon law had been developed over a long period of time and while influenced by Christianity in later centuries, was more egalitarian. It was based on a system of courts, the main one being the ‘hundred court’. “The hundred court met every four weeks, in the open if possible and usually at a prominent local landmark that gave its name to the hundred. The king’s reeve usually presided over the court. It had many functions, and was a mixture of parish council business meeting, planning enquiry, and magistrates’ court. . . Edward the Elder decreed that the hundred courts were to judge the worthiness of every law-suit and Read more…
Writing Historical Fiction
Back in high school, I remember overhearing two girls lamenting how awful their classes were and how they ‘hated’ history. Since I was hiding in a bathroom stall at the time, I didn’t give voice to my horror at their sentiment, but it has stuck with me in the thirty years since. How could they ‘hate’ history? Unfortunately, all too easily if by ‘history’ they meant the memorization of facts and dates that had little or no bearing on their lives. Why did they care what year the Civil War began? Or who was the tenth president of the United States? Or what happened in the fertile crescent of Mesopotamia (though knowing might clarify our wars in the Middle East today, but that’s a different topic). That’s not what history is about. History is about people. It’s the anthropology of Read more…
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