Brython Meet-up 2017 Shrewsbury Sat 22nd April ALL WELCOME!

[lorna]

This year's Brython meet-up will take place on Sat 22nd April in Shrewsbury.

We will meet @10.30 at Shrewsbury train station then walk into town and find a cafe where we can have lunch and do business until @1.30pm.

This will be followed by a walk along the Severn through the park where we will find somewhere to connect with the spirits of place, read some poems from the Canu Heledd cycle and spend time in reflection on Heledd and Cynddylan and the last days of the remnants of the Cornovii of eastern Powys before it was annexed by Mercia.

We will return to town for tea @5pm

~

As a draft agenda for the business part (suggestions welcome):

*Round-up of previous year - festivals
*Plan for next year - revise list of blog themes and create calendar
*Discuss the possibility of hosting public events such as a mini-conference or rituals

[lorna]

This is the list of the blog themes that began life as an outline for a primer for next year. I think it would be useful if we all printed this off and brought a copy? I've added rites of passage.

What is Brythonic Polytheism? - (Done)

Background
Archaeological/historical
Mythological/literary/cultural (Done)

Deities
Gods & goddesses (Done?)
Spirits of the land
Giants
Faeries
Ancestors

Rites of Passage
Namings
Initiations
Handfastings
Funerals

Devotional Practice
Ritual (Done)
Prayer
Meditation
Trance
Journeying
Dreams and Dreaming (Done)
Poetry, song, storytelling
Walking the land
Pilgrimage

Brythonic Polytheism in the World
The Environment
Ethics
Politics
Peace
Inclusivity (Done)

[Heron]

Feb 6, 2017 13:34:43 GMT -1 lorna said:

This year's Brython meet-up will take place on Sat 22nd April in Shrewsbury.

We will meet @10.30 at Shrewsbury train station then walk into town and find a cafe where we can have lunch and do business until @1.30pm.

This will be followed by a walk along the Severn through the park where we will find somewhere to connect with the spirits of place, read some poems from the Canu Heledd cycle and spend time in reflection on Heledd and Cynddylan and the last days of the remnants of the Cornovii of eastern Powys before it was annexed by Mercia.

We will return to town for tea @5pm

~

As a draft agenda for the business part (suggestions welcome):

*Round-up of previous year - festivals
*Plan for next year - revise list of blog themes and create calendar
*Discuss the possibility of hosting public events such as a mini-conference or rituals

Looking forward to this. I've already began pondering Brythonic lore associated with area as evidenced on my current BLOG Post

[lorna]

In relation to thoughts on Heron's recent post and in preparation for our visit, I've drafted a very brief 'history of Powys' putting Cynddylan and Heledd in context in the 'Lore of the Land' section - caerfeddwyd.proboards.com/thread/2027/history-powys-cynddylan-heledd-context I was intrigued to discover a claim that Brochwel Ysgithrog moved the court of Powys from Caer Guricon (Wroxeter) to Pengwern (Shrewsbury) and that Taliesin sang for him on the meadows of the Severn where we'll be walking. Brochwel was apparently buried beneath St Chad's. I'm thinking it may be worth a visit to St Chad's and to Shrewsbury Castle (presumably Pengwen would be under the remains) if we have time?

[Heron]

Mar 24, 2017 12:02:08 GMT -1 lorna said:

In relation to thoughts on Heron's recent post and in preparation for our visit, I've drafted a very brief 'history of Powys' putting Cynddylan and Heledd in context in the 'Lore of the Land' section - caerfeddwyd.proboards.com/thread/2027/history-powys-cynddylan-heledd-context I was intrigued to discover a claim that Brochwel Ysgithrog moved the court of Powys from Caer Guricon (Wroxeter) to Pengwern (Shrewsbury) and that Taliesin sang for him on the meadows of the Severn where we'll be walking. Brochwel was apparently buried beneath St Chad's. I'm thinking it may be worth a visit to St Chad's and to Shrewsbury Castle (presumably Pengwen would be under the remains) if we have time?

Thanks for writing the history Lorna. I had already drafted my own brief historical context for the Cynddylan story to add to my blog before I saw it. Shrewsbury is thought to be an Anglo_Saxon foundation and has been known in Welsh as 'Amwythig' since the early Middle Ages which is why many modern commentators now doubt the association claimed by Gerald of Wales with Pengwern. Viroconium (Wroxeter) is about five miles from Shrewsbury so a move from there to the bend in the river is certainly possible but the other candidates look like more defensible positions in terms of the sort of warfare being fought. All of the sources - including the Taliesin poem as we have it - were likely to have been written hundreds of years after the events and were part of legendary history. The historical Brochwel lived a hundred years earlier, which fits the time frame for the abandonment of Virocomium. But his centre was at Mathrafal, (Meifod in the modern county of Powys) further west. Whoever Cynddylan was, and whoever adopted the voice of Heledd to pen her Laments, captured an echo of the remnants of the Cornovii which is still resonant for us today. There's certainly some genuine history in there, as well as some creative evocation; but the more I tried to pin down the historical context the more this seemed to dissolve. So I opted in the end for a flexible interpretation based on the likelihood of shifting borders at a time when both 'kingdoms' (however they were defined) and allegiances were fragile. I think with this material we have to live in creative uncertainties.

There have been several adaptations in modern Welsh of the Canu Heledd verses as popular songs Example HERE:

[lorna]

Thanks, Heron. I enjoyed the song. Any idea where this video is set? I heard Y Dref Wen has been identified with Whittington, but it doesn't look like what I've seen of Whittington on the web. Would you agree Y Dref Wen is Whittington?

I read your post and posed a question on your blog, which I'll repeat here for anyone interested -

Thanks for sharing this summary of what is known and what is not known about Pengwern. I’m wondering what your opinion is on whether Viroconium, then Pengwern, were ruled by the Cadelling then usurped by Cynddylan of the Cyndrwynyn. You mentioned on Caer Feddwyd that Meifod was Brochwel’s (of the Cadelling’s) centre of rule. However it says (on Wikipedia at least) this was his summer residence. Is there a possibility Brochwel’s centre could have been at Pengwern with Meifod as a ‘May abode’? Or do you think the Cyndrwynyn ruled at Pengwern all along? Can we know?

[Heron]

Mar 25, 2017 12:09:23 GMT -1 lorna said:

Thanks, Heron. I enjoyed the song. Any idea where this video is set? I heard Y Dref Wen has been identified with Whittington, but it doesn't look like what I've seen of Whittington on the web. Would you agree Y Dref Wen is Whittington?

I read your post and posed a question on your blog, which I'll repeat here for anyone interested -

Thanks for sharing this summary of what is known and what is not known about Pengwern. I’m wondering what your opinion is on whether Viroconium, then Pengwern, were ruled by the Cadelling then usurped by Cynddylan of the Cyndrwynyn. You mentioned on Caer Feddwyd that Meifod was Brochwel’s (of the Cadelling’s) centre of rule. However it says (on Wikipedia at least) this was his summer residence. Is there a possibility Brochwel’s centre could have been at Pengwern with Meifod as a ‘May abode’? Or do you think the Cyndrwynyn ruled at Pengwern all along? Can we know?

I've no idea where those video pics are from and wondered myself which ruined castle that is in the background - there are plenty of them about!

I don't think anyone knows where Y Dref Wen is , though most commentators seem to think Whittington unlikely. Though the names seem to match in translation, this is based on 'Whitting- ' meaning 'white' where it is in fact 'Hwita's Town'. It is also considered a bit too far north to be a likely candidate.


As it appears that the relationship between the descendants of Cadell and the descendants of Cyndrwyn was that of enemies, it seems more likely that the Cyndrwyn line occupied land around the Virocomium/Pengwern territory and that the Cadell line had a larger territory to the north and the west (including Brochwel’s Mathrafal). I don’t think we can know definitively. But I have now come across an article in Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies (No. 67, 2014) by Patrick Sims-Williams that seems to support that view. He suggests that Cynddylan may have joined the alliance of Gwynedd and Penda of Mercia against the Northumbrians in the hope that they would support him in his conflict with the Cadellings. He also says that, while the line of Cyndrwyn was once a great dynasty they had declined so that “...when [later] the poet Cynddelw listed the fourteen tribes of Powys, he put the Cyndrwynyn in last place, whereas the Cadellings were in second place. The elegiac tone of Canu Heledd may reflect the Cyndrwynyn’s sense of loss more than that of Powys as a whole.” This makes Powys not a single entity but a looser confederation, with dispersed power-bases across the area. I think this is particularly likely to be true of the area which is now the borderland between England and Wales, where holding on to power would have been more difficult than in the mountainous country further west and north-west.

If they were, as I suggested in the blog post, the dispersed people of the 'pagenses' of the Cornovii they could very well by the seventh century have developed into rival groupings.

[lorna]

Thanks for this, immensely helpful. It makes sense that there were a number of different 'tribes' with different seats of power and that Pengwern was ruled by the Cyndrwynyn. Interesting idea about Cynddylan allying with Penda against the Northumbrians in the hope the Mercians would support him against the Cadelling, particularly after Selyf of the Cadelling and Cadawal of Rhos plus others failed fighting against the Northumbrians at the battle of Chester. Very complicated - lots of different shifting political allegiances. And I bet there was loads more going on that was not written down!

[Heron]

Mar 27, 2017 15:39:52 GMT -1 lorna said:

Thanks for this, immensely helpful. It makes sense that there were a number of different 'tribes' with different seats of power and that Pengwern was ruled by the Cyndrwynyn. Interesting idea about Cynddylan allying with Penda against the Northumbrians in the hope the Mercians would support him against the Cadelling, particularly after Selyf of the Cadelling and Cadawal of Rhos plus others failed fighting against the Northumbrians at the battle of Chester. Very complicated - lots of different shifting political allegiances. And I bet there was loads more going on that was not written down!

Yes, though I think it was the presence of the Welsh power-centre of Gwynedd in the alliance that may have made Cynddylan feel that he was less likely to be attacked from the West.

One further point on Y Dref Wen : although 'tref' means 'town', in earlier Welsh it could be applied more generally to any settlement. In the Canu Heledd it is said that Cynddylan will no more return to the 'tref' of his father. Here the context requires it to be translated as something like 'homestead' or 'estate'. So Y Dref Wen may not have been a town but a large house, where '[g]wen' does not so much mean 'white' as it more general usage of 'fair', 'shining' or 'bright'. Or it may have been a sacred place of some sort if we consider that gwyn/gwen can also mean 'blessed'.