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Post by Craig on Jan 17, 2008 15:52:49 GMT -1
The it's Henry Tudor?
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Post by Midori on Jan 17, 2008 19:40:48 GMT -1
The Dutch attempted to invade is in 1666.
Cheers, midori
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Post by littleraven on Jan 17, 2008 23:42:09 GMT -1
He wasn't born royal though. after the Statute of Rhuddlan the royalty wasn't natively Welsh, born and ruling from Wales. Henry Tudor took the throne of England, but he didn't give Wales any kind of independence. Even with the idea of the Welsh Tudor dynasty, Henry VIII actually did a fair bit to reduce the independence of Wales. Let's not forget Owain Glyndwr though, who *was* proclaimed Prince of Wales by his people, but obviously that was open some discussion.
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Post by Lee on Jan 18, 2008 6:23:30 GMT -1
ah! 1797 at Fishguard. they ransacked a farm and was seen off by Jemima Nicholas. had that one drilled into me from an early age, but then we never did have much else to celebrate in fishguard.
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Post by Craig on Jan 18, 2008 7:32:03 GMT -1
Ah yes. The Frenchmen were convicts pardoned on the understanding they would fight for the Republic, and then unceremoniously dumped at Fishguard. The 'ransacking' you speak of was them trying to find food and shelter from the cold rain. Poor beggars.
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Post by Heron on Jan 18, 2008 15:08:07 GMT -1
By native I was referring specifically to Wales, and the prince who was actually born in Wales, Llewelyn. Certainly, the sense of the atmosphere of the times for the Welsh after the death of Llywelyn in 1282 is conveyed quite vividly in the 'Marwnad' or elegy written by his bard Gruffudd ap yr Ynad Coch. And of course it's still alive today in many ways. A modern Welsh poet like Gerallt Lloyd Owen can write about it as if it were yesterday. 'Brythonic time' in this sense as stood still. I published a translation of Gruffudd's 'Marwnad' some years ago. It really does get you in the mood of the times to work on something like this. Consider: What now for us left? with a full load of weeping? The dark hand that felled him haunts his kingdom; his hall now the grave. A long vista of fear stretches before us . You really get a sense of a world coming to an end, as indeed it was: Hearts chilled by a pall of fear Our life-will withers like weeds in winter as the wind dashes the rains upon us and the oaks clash and the sea's crash scours the land. Do you not see? The Sun falls and the stars are shrinking It really is powerful stuff - and in the original the bard manages to achieve the same rhyme in every one of the poems 200 or so lines.
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Post by Midori on Jan 29, 2008 7:18:39 GMT -1
As Lee reminded us there are many different and personal historical threads which may only be remembered in Local folklore, but stiil contribute to the whole fabric.
I love these little snippets of history.
Cheers, midori
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Post by Tegernacus on Jan 29, 2008 8:19:46 GMT -1
it's like these sacred springs: archaeologists have found metal offerings in them, ranging from bronze-age artifacts up to medieval swords - a whole range of history and tradition that didn't stop with the Romans, or Saxons, or even Normans. Religion and tradition doesn't stop because some Royal/Church/Government department decides we should be doing something else
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Post by jeanwall on Feb 1, 2008 13:27:13 GMT -1
Hi All, Hi Craig, my friend, This is the first chance that I've had to get on the site. forgive me if this post leads away from the direction of the thread somewhat, I had only read the first couple of posts then had a bit of inspiration. One post spoke of having a well to draw from and a timeless message; just as I'm reading this the dawn was breaking here in Denver ,Colorado .The sky...no the air itself is pink and amber and everything is gently glowing in this still, cold morning. And I am partaking of this moment of peace that the natural ,living world has gifted me with. Somewhere back in the year 1, or 1000 or whenever, some other soul, much like myself, was also taken captive by a sunrise, or a butterfly or a lightening storm . I have this engagement in common with my predecessors and my contemporaries. It's not a "well" that we go to, it comes to us, it takes us by surprise and takes us out of "our time" into a timeless experience of "nature love". Perhaps how we think about love is as important as how we think about time. Awen, Best to All Jean
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Post by Craig on Feb 1, 2008 15:10:14 GMT -1
Hi Jean ;D
I was wondering when you'd mosey on by. Good to see you!
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Post by Midori on Feb 7, 2008 7:50:48 GMT -1
I too feel this 'timelessness' when watching a sunrise, or a great storm, or some other natural wonder which can link me back through time to an ancestor's experience. It brings with it a childlike sense of wonder and awe.
Cheers, midori
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Post by Heron on Feb 7, 2008 22:14:44 GMT -1
I’m writing this here under this heading because it belongs better here rather than under the “Efnisien’ thread which sparked off the thoughts. But it’s really about Brythonic Time or, more precisely, Brythonic Dream Time. But first to the Efnisien thread. There has been much discussion here about he meaning or interpretation of some elements in the third branch of Y Mabinogi to which I have contributed. There has also been an ongoing needle match between Craig and Little Raven. Others have speculated about what certain details of the tale might mean and this is not without interest. But pursuing the text in this way as a finished product can only tell us about moral and social attitudes in the Twelfth or perhaps the Eleventh century. Or perhaps enable us to pick up the fragments of a belief or custom from an earlier time. The tales are, of course, much older than the manuscript versions we have, or rather some elements of them are. What we need to appreciate is the way oral story-tellers – or cyfarwyddwyr – put together different elements of transformed myth, folk tale, legend, and traditional tales some of which might have had an historical basis, to make up stories for particular occasions. The mix of different elements might have been varied to suit the occasion. The particular occasion of the Four Branches happens to have survived because it was the occasion of someone writing them down, and making a good job of it too from the literary point of view. But they do retain elements of oral story telling, something which is more apparent in a recent translation like that of Sioned Davies, but is masked by more ‘poetic’ translations like those of Jones&Jones and Charlotte Guest. This is not a matter of accuracy so much as tone. The roots in oral tale are, perhaps, easier to see in Culhwch ac Olwen where the joins are bit more visible. Getting close to these stories is something that is important to me so that I taught myself to read medieval Welsh in order to be able to read the ‘originals’. This in spite of the fact that I am an English specialist more qualified to read Old English and Old Norse. So I’m not against getting close to the texts and think this enormously important. So what do I think we can gain from them? On my computer desktop I have a picture of a meadow on a sloping hill. I look at it every day and it is part of my ‘dream time’ landscape. It is a photograph I took of the site of what the OS map cites as an Iron Age settlement called Camp Hill. It is just outside the town of Narberth in Pembrokeshire. No trace of the Iron Age settlement is visible as it is all grassed over and the field is on private land. It is the place called Gorsedd Arberth in the First Branch, where Pwyll and his company sat and saw Rhiannon riding past and the nearer any of them got to her the further away she was from them, although her pace never changed. It is the place, in the Third Branch, where Rhiannon and Manawydan saw the enchantment fall on Dyfed and where Manawydan later enacted the hanging of a mouse by which device he brought the enchantment to an end. It is possible to draw social and literary conclusions from the detail of these incidents, and they provide compelling elements to the tales as entertaining stories. I appreciate this and have discussed it with students. It is possible to speculate, even promulgate, on the original meanings of these elements, their sources in myth and folk lore, and this pursuit is fascinating in itself and the tales provide rich pickings for those, including me, who wish to do so. But as Megli said they are not sacred in themselves. So is there a way in which we might regard them as sacred? Well for me what is sacred is the glimpses they provide into that dream time landscape. A series of ‘lucky breaks’ and unexplained chances led to me being able to get into that field with the consent of an initially suspicious owner to take the picture as the only way to it is up a private lane and through the side garden of a house to a gate (if you want to see the pic look greg.members.beeb.net/Rhiannon/Gorsedd.html). And there are other places that I have visited and internalised and made part of my dream time landscape. I have a theory about the way the landscape of the Brythonic past is a sort of objective correlative for many who inhabit the Welsh-speaking world of Wales. Pengwern, Rheged, Gododdin, places beyond present-day Wales, live in the consciousness of many in a way that places in English tradition do not for the inhabitants of England: Agwedi elwch Tawelwch fu.
And after celebration There was silence. That silence is real. For people like me it resonates with my sense of the land, the gods, the ‘Brythonic Dream Time’. But I believe it is there , at different levels of consciousness, for many Christians and atheists too. It is real. And it is sacred.
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Post by Adam on Oct 7, 2008 9:39:16 GMT -1
Just browsing and found this wonderful post, Heron... have you developed your thinking any further?... btw, that photograph is no longer accessible from that link.
Alan Garner created a childhood dream time landscape for me in a similar way, and now as I'm older I start to think in an odd sense about time, in which a world entirely contiguous to the one of my usual experience, interpenetrating, co-exist and in which mythic action takes place now...
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Post by nellie on Jun 14, 2011 5:40:37 GMT -1
Apologies if this has been spoken about again elsewhere? In regards to different periods that are all essentially 'Brythonic', this is something I'm eager to hear people discuss further.
The focus is very much iron-age and understandably so... But those later periods and influences, the saxons, Danes, Norse etc, are they still of value? I know nothing about this subject so I'm hoping better informed people know the answers (and please try to excuse my ignorance!!). Did the Saxons (just as an example) invade and impose a new set of beliefs and customs or did they mingle? Did the peoples that once Brythonic get pushed aside or did they become the Saxons? Essentially what I think I'm trying to say is was there a real break in native beliefs or did the native spirituality just mutate? I have just finished reading 'the real middle earth' which has left me with some similar questions - were the new comers (again saxons, danes etc) similar enough in their belief systems that absorbing them would have come quite easily?
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Post by deiniol on Jun 15, 2011 10:33:45 GMT -1
The focus is very much iron-age and understandably so... But those later periods and influences, the saxons, Danes, Norse etc, are they still of value? I know nothing about this subject so I'm hoping better informed people know the answers (and please try to excuse my ignorance!!). Did the Saxons (just as an example) invade and impose a new set of beliefs and customs or did they mingle? Did the peoples that once Brythonic get pushed aside or did they become the Saxons? This is actually still the subject of quite a bit of academic debate, and the answers have varied quite wildly. I think the answer probably lies somewhere between the two extremes of "the Saxons slaughtered and drove away the native population" and "the native Britons cheerfully adopted their new overlords' language and culture, becoming indistinct from the invaders." What actually happened also probably varied according to place and time. For example, in the earliest areas conquered by the Saxons there appears to be archaeological and textual evidence for a complete break in habitation, almost as if the native simply "disappeared". However, in those areas which were last to be conquered (particularly the south-west), there is ample evidence for distinct communities of native Britons well into the ninth century (IIRC). Given that the native population of Britain was probably well on its way to being majority Christian at the time of the Saxon invasions, I'd probably suggest that no, the belief systems were far from being similar. Were we to go back four centuries, I'm sure that there would have been a number of similarities between British and Germanic belief systems, simply by virtue of their being related. By the time of the Saxon invasions though? Probably not. What we know of Anglo-Saxon beliefs seems fairly run of the mill for a Germanic polytheism, and no specifically "British" influences can readily be identified.
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Post by nellie on Jun 15, 2011 12:24:31 GMT -1
This is why I love this board - there are clever people willing to answer questions! ;D
So was Saxon belief similar enough to Brythonic belief, through shared origins (shared origins?) to be able to 'fill in' some blanks about early Brythonic belief or are the similarities to few and far between to say anything worthwhile about Brythonic belief?
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Post by deiniol on Jun 15, 2011 12:51:58 GMT -1
So was Saxon belief similar enough to Brythonic belief, through shared origins (shared origins?) to be able to 'fill in' some blanks about early Brythonic belief or are the similarities to few and far between to say anything worthwhile about Brythonic belief? Eeeeh, probably. On the other hand, I wouldn't privilege A-S beliefs and practices over, say, those of the contemporaneous Balts and Slavs.
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Post by Craig on Jun 18, 2011 15:36:24 GMT -1
Way back in the mists of time, when we were pondering the formation of Brython this subject of eras and belief systems that were contemporaneous, and thus mingled, was discussed.
My own opinion was, and still is, that we must come to understand all the belief systems that lay across this land from the earliest right up to the present day. Only then can we begin to understand the beliefs and celebrations of the ordinary folk on this, our sacred land.
Thus we must understand the bronze and iron age as it is slowly pieced together by our marvellous corps of British archaeologists. We must pay attention to the beliefs of the pre-Roman British as well as the Romano-British (as recorded by often partial classical writers) and the British of the 5th-6th centuries. Then the beliefs of the Angles, Danes and Norse each left layers upon our beliefs.
To understand the Christian documentation of all the above is particularly important.
Unweaving each layer will slowly take us back to where we began. Each layer has its wisdoms and values to share with us, even the British Christian. Each will contribute to the Brython project as it develops and matures.
To ignore a single layer simply because of our own prejudices will blind us in one eye and leave us as lost as the mainstream organizations of modern paganism seem to be.
Every one of us has Brythonic ancestors, and Danish ones, and Norse ones, Romans, French, Germans and host of others. To ignore some of them is just disrespectful.
Brython is an attempt to take these old wisdoms and bring them back to use, to give our current lives greater purpose in an age of spiritual conflict and confusion. It asks us to open our eyes and ears to the gods and spirits that never left our shores and our hearts.
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Post by redraven on Jun 18, 2011 22:18:34 GMT -1
Way back in the mists of time, when we were pondering the formation of Brython this subject of eras and belief systems that were contemporaneous, and thus mingled, was discussed. My own opinion was, and still is, that we must come to understand all the belief systems that lay across this land from the earliest right up to the present day. Only then can we begin to understand the beliefs and celebrations of the ordinary folk on this, our sacred land. With the greatest of respects, that would be akin to being a geologist attempting to identify the individual layering of a cliff of sedamentary rock. We can see how the layers are physically built up but to identify the conditions of their layering would be a masive task and one I believe that Brython, as it is now, is not equipped to do to a satisfactory degree yet (not that it should not be a long term goal). Thus we must understand the bronze and iron age as it is slowly pieced together by our marvellous corps of British archaeologists. We must pay attention to the beliefs of the pre-Roman British as well as the Romano-British (as recorded by often partial classical writers) and the British of the 5th-6th centuries. Then the beliefs of the Angles, Danes and Norse each left layers upon our beliefs. To understand the Christian documentation of all the above is particularly important. Unweaving each layer will slowly take us back to where we began. But as I said, one that I believe would result in a very large body of work that would be quite shallow in context (without wishing to suggest the quality of the work from the individuals concerned would neccessarily be poor quality, the "sample" size may be too big). Each layer has its wisdoms and values to share with us, even the British Christian. Each will contribute to the Brython project as it develops and matures. To ignore a single layer simply because of our own prejudices will blind us in one eye and leave us as lost as the mainstream organizations of modern paganism seem to be. And by what criteria do we use to determine the relevencies of these other traditions? (I am not tryng to be argumentative here, I understand where you are coming from, it's just that if we don't have an agreed set of criteria by which to make the call as to what constitutes "wisdoms and values" then the result can be nothing more than personal subjective interpretation.) Every one of us has Brythonic ancestors, and Danish ones, and Norse ones, Romans, French, Germans and host of others. To ignore some of them is just disrespectful. I refer you to Oppenheimer's Origins of the British here Craig, and the fact that just 5% of the DNA of the modern British originated after the Roman invasion. Brython is an attempt to take these old wisdoms and bring them back to use, to give our current lives greater purpose in an age of spiritual conflict and confusion. It asks us to open our eyes and ears to the gods and spirits that never left our shores and our hearts. I would broadly agree with these sentiments. RR
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