Anyone wishing to write about Wales and the Welsh in the early Middle Ages will face the challenge of definition. Wales as it would come to be known did not exist in this period, nor was the territory equivalent to the Wales of later centuries ever described as such. The names ‘Wales’ and ‘Welsh’ themselves fare somewhat better in that their precursors wealas and wylisc were used in English in this period, but with different and varying meaning.Footnote 1 The Welsh of the early Middle Ages, however, saw themselves as Britons and their territory as Britain, speaking the British language. Yet the exact territory that they inhabited fluctuated significantly over the course of the period. Referring to the Welsh on their own terms brings its own difficulties: how should we distinguish between the Welsh and the other Brittonic-speaking inhabitants that we might wish to discuss? Thomas Charles-Edwards has observed that it would be too ‘draconian’ to prohibit the use of Wales and Welsh in academic discourse, but that scholars need to be alert to the modern nature of these designations.Footnote 2
This contribution introduces readers to the names used to describe the Welsh and the territory that they inhabited in the early Middle Ages and attempts to disentangle some of the issues involved. Whilst drawing on significant recent research in this area, it also develops this work in two key ways. Firstly, previous work on this topic has tended to focus on specific aspects, clusters of texts, or periods. Notable examples include Huw Pryce’s investigation of the shift in nomenclature from Brit(t)ones to Walenses in the twelfth century, and Thomas Charles Edwards’s discussion of the meaning of Kymry in early medieval texts.Footnote 3 This article takes a broader approach to examine nomenclature across the Middle Ages in both Latin and the vernacular. In so doing, it not only provides readers with a convenient single access point for an extensive body of scholarship on specific aspects, but also contextualizes key developments and draws out trends. Secondly, this article investigates a wider corpus of material. This includes utilizing important recent resources, such as the Rhyddiaith Gymraeg 1300–1425 database and Ann Parry Owen’s ‘Concordance of the Poets of the Princes Poetry’, to undertake a more comprehensive study of vernacular material, as well as consideration of texts such as the Vita Griffini that were not previously known to scholars.
The article will begin by surveying the terms used by Welsh writers in the early medieval period, before proceeding to consider English nomenclature and the important shift from Brit(t)ones to Walenses in the twelfth century. As well as an examination of trends in Cambro-Latin texts, this second section will investigate to what extent this trend can also be seen in the vernacular material. The article will conclude with a brief foray into the early modern period, ultimately illustrating the continued relevance and significance of the identities fashioned in the early Middle Ages to writers in subsequent centuries. Before proceeding, it is prudent to offer comment on the use of the label ‘Celtic’, which is now used in scholarship to refer to the Celtic languages as a group and a variety of cultural practices which may or may not be associated with speakers of these languages.Footnote 4 In the Middle Ages, Celtic-speakers did not see themselves as Celts.Footnote 5 Indeed, the presentation of the Irish is often negative in medieval Welsh texts, and there is no indication that the Welsh saw themselves as having a particularly close relationship with the Irish.Footnote 6 The idea of ‘Celtic cousins’ is thus a modern one, whereas a ‘British’ affinity with other Brittonic-language speakers is highly relevant.Footnote 7 It is this affinity that will be at the centre of much of what follows.
I
The Romans referred to the island of Britain as Britannia – the land of the Britanni. This name is also given to the Roman province of Britain.Footnote 8 Ethnonyms used for the inhabitants fluctuate across late-antique texts. The earliest form is Britanni, later Britanni, Brittani, and Brittones. Footnote 9 As with Britannia, Thomas F. O’Rahilly observes that Roman writers came to use Britanni to refer to the inhabitants of the Roman province (rather than the island). Thus, Ammianus Marcellinus describes the Britanni as experiencing attacks by the Picts, Saxons and Scots in the fourth century.Footnote 10 Brittones is the most common form in Cambro-Latin texts, and forms with initial b- and a double -tt- gave Welsh Brython, which occurs often in poetry, especially in the Book of Taliesin.Footnote 11 In Welsh, Ynys Prydein is used to refer to the island of Britain. However, Pryden or Prydyn is used to refer to Pictland and the Picts, as in an elegy to Morien that forms part of the Gododdin, which celebrates the subject fighting against the heathen, Irish and Picts.Footnote 12 There is occasionally confusion between these forms and Prydein. Thus, we sometimes see Prydein for Pictland and Pryden/Prydyn for Britain.Footnote 13 One can look to the tenth-century Welsh poem Armes Prydein Vawr for an example of this confusion. Both Prydein and Prydyn are used here, but a reference to ‘ryfel heb dychwel y tir Prydyn’ (‘war will not return to the land of Britain’) is certainly a reference to the land of Britain, rather than Pictland.Footnote 14
How the identity of this gens referred to as Brittones developed is a contentious issue.Footnote 15 Evidence ranging from Gildas’s De excidio Britanniae to the language and formulae used on inscribed stones point to a complex negotiation of British and Roman identities.Footnote 16 To give one well-known example of the latter, a stone from Ffestiniog has the inscription: ‘Cantiori hic iacit Venedotis cive fvit [c]onsobrino Ma[g]li magistrati’ (‘Cantiorix, here he lies, he was a citizen of Gwynedd, cousin of Maglus the magistrate’).Footnote 17 In a single inscription we see a mix of Brittonic personal names, Roman titles, a Christian formula (hic iacit) and a reference to the kingdom of Gwynedd; all pointing to a complex interplay of identities.Footnote 18 In De excidio Britanniae the Britons and Romans are distinct gentes – indeed, comparison with the Romans serves to underscore the treacherous and cowardly nature of the Britons – yet the Roman takeover of Britain is presented as total, and for Gildas nostra lingua was Latin.Footnote 19 Nevertheless, certain key elements of an identity that would be subsequently expressed in early medieval texts were established in De excidio Britanniae, namely the importance of Britain’s island identity and its history as a series of invasions.Footnote 20
The relationship of the Britons with the island of Britain was a key component of their identity as presented in Cambro-Latin texts; the Britons were the original inhabitants of the entire island, the gens that had reached Britain first, their dominion over the island only gradually eroded through successive invasions by other gentes. This scheme for understanding the history of the island and its inhabitants is set out in Historia Brittonum, a Latin history of the Britons composed in Gwynedd in 829/30. Britain was first populated, Historia Brittonum explains, by Britto (a descendant of Aeneas of Troy) and his followers. After being exiled from Italy, Britto wandered far and wide before reaching and settling an empty island – called Britain after him. In so doing, the text is not simply drawing a distinction between the Britons and other gentes but also emphasising their superiority – it is they who arrived first; it is they who are intimately connected to the island by name.Footnote 21 Historia Brittonum proceeds to describe a series of successive invasions (by the Picts, Irish, Romans and Saxons), thus explaining the contracted contemporary position of the Britons relative to that of their ancestors who once possessed the island from sea to sea (a mari usque ad mare).Footnote 22 This depiction of the island’s history as a series of gormesoedd or invasions was commonplace in Welsh texts throughout the medieval period.Footnote 23 No matter how contracted their territory might become, these texts kept sight of what had once been – and, in some cases, what might be once more. The most famous example is Armes Prydein Vawr, which prophesies the eviction of the English from Britain by a grand coalition of peoples headed by the Britons.Footnote 24
Where are the Welsh in all this? They are Britons, presented as a single gens sharing a history and language. Brittones could, however, refer to the other Brittonic-speaking inhabitants of Britain – and often did. Thus, the Harleian Chronicle (the A-text of the Annales Cambriae) records a battle between the Picts and Brittones in 750, referring here to the Britons of Strathclyde.Footnote 25 English nomenclature will be discussed further below but, broadly speaking, prior to the ninth century forms of Brettas and Wealas are used without distinction. Thus, the D-text of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle refers to the Cornish king Geraint as Weala cyning (‘king of (the) Wealas’) in its annal for 710.Footnote 26 A similar ambiguity can be found in vernacular Welsh nomenclature too. Armes Prydein provides an insightful case study here. The poem uses Brython on occasion, but more often refers to these Britons as Kymry, which etymologically means people from the same bro (‘region’).Footnote 27 Armes Prydein is the first fairly-securely dated text to use this form, although it occurs too in Moliant Cadwallon, a poem of uncertain date in praise of Cadwallon of Gwynedd (d. 634).Footnote 28 It is borrowed into English by the seventh century as Cumbras (cf. Cumber-land), and Combrec to mean the language of the Britons (which occurs in Cormac’s Glossary) was borrowed into Old Irish by this point too.Footnote 29 It is consequently likely that Kymry was in use as an ethnonym among the Welsh themselves in this period. The reasons for its development as an ethnonym are unclear, although Thomas Charles-Edwards has suggested that it may be linked to a distinction that Brittonic-speakers drew between their own ‘local’ language and the Latin language of the empire and its trappings.Footnote 30 By the twelfth century, Kymry was being used to refer exclusively to the inhabitants of Wales, but its meaning in texts prior to this date is ambiguous and must be inferred from context.Footnote 31
In the context of Armes Prydein, Kymry is understood as a synonym for Brython (which is also used in the poem). However, it is also very clear that Kymry is elastic – the poet refers to the Cornyw (Cornish) and Cludwys (Cumbrians) as being included among the Kymry; they are a distinct components of a single gens. Footnote 32 As observed by Charles-Edwards, there is a ‘double sense’ here – Kymry can mean both Welsh and Britons.Footnote 33 This elasticity and ambiguity is also evident in the use of Britannia. In his Life of King Alfred, Asser very clearly uses Britannia to refer to both Britain and Wales.Footnote 34 Regarding the latter, he states that Offa of Mercia built a dyke ‘inter Britanniam atque Merciam de mari usque ad mare’.Footnote 35 Britannia in the broader sense did not necessarily cover the entire island either. Returning to Historia Brittonum, there is some evidence to suggest that Britannia, the kingdom of Gwrtheyrn, king of the Britons, did not include the third of the island that had been ceded to the Picts.Footnote 36 Armes Prydein Vawr may be expressing a similar view when the poet states that the prophesied land of the Britons will stretch ‘o Vynaw hyt Lydaw’ (‘from Manaw to Brittany’) – in other words, the land that will be possessed by the Britons will not include Alba.Footnote 37 It may be that such conceptions of Britannia minus Alba were influenced by ideas of the extent of Roman Britain.Footnote 38
They have been mentioned in passing already, but something more must be said here about the Cumbrians. By the tenth century, sources such as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle were increasingly referring to Cumbria and the Cumbrians, superseding references to the kings and kingdom of Strathclyde (Stræcledwealas).Footnote 39 Fiona Edmonds has argued that this shift in nomenclature reflected usage among the Cumbrians themselves and was linked to the movement of the kingdom’s political centre away from the Clyde valley.Footnote 40 The shift was not respected by the Welsh of Wales, however – they continued to use Clyde-based terminology to refer to the Cumbrians, evident in Armes Prydein’s Cludwys quoted above. Edmonds suggests that this might stem from a reluctance to apply an ethnonym deriving from the broader and more elastic Kymry to refer exclusively to the Cumbrians, with the possibility of significant resultant confusion.Footnote 41
This whistlestop tour of early medieval ethnonyms applied to the Welsh and the toponyms applied to the territory that they inhabited has revealed significant shades of grey. Brit(t)ones and Kymry were flexible names, encompassing all Brittonic speakers of the island in some contexts, referring specifically to a narrower group in others. This speaks to a key component to the identity that these ethnonyms expressed that has not yet been discussed: language. Scholarship on identity construction in early medieval Wales is consistent in emphasising its importance.Footnote 42 It is clear from the sources that language was perceived to be a significant characteristic that bound the Britons or Kymry together and distinguished them from their neighbours. Thus, Historia Brittonum refers to the presence of a translator at an assembly of Hengyst’s Saxons and Gwrtheyrn’s Britons; and when Hengyst gives the order to attack, he does so in English.Footnote 43 Also important, and pertinent in this context, is the centrality of the island to the identity of the Welsh during this period. Their territory was Britannia, and although Asser may have set along the path of redefining its parameters, this broader association would remain important for centuries to come.
II
Identity is not simply a matter of self-perception – how one is perceived by others is also crucially important. How English texts referred to the Welsh has been touched upon already, and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle again offers a valuable case study. Although Brettas (singular Bret), a form likely borrowed from Latin, does occur, this is alongside the use of a form of wealas (singular wealh).Footnote 44 There is evidence that Germanic peoples used this word to refer to speakers of non-Germanic, specifically Romance, languages. In the context of the Britons, then, it may be that the English settlers perceived them to be Roman, or that wealh and wealas held the broader meaning of ‘foreigner’ – or someone who does not speak the same language.Footnote 45 It also later bears the meaning ‘slave’, but the connection between this sense and the ethnonym is unclear.Footnote 46 In the early entries of the Common Stock of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, forms of Brettas and Wealas are used to refer to the Britons in a fairly even distribution.Footnote 47 There is a shift in the ninth-century entries with a tendency towards greater specificity in references to the Britons. Thus, on occasion we find references to the Westwealas and the Norðwealas, likely distinguishing between the Britons of Cornwall and the Britons of Wales.Footnote 48 However, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is inconsistent on this point, with one reference to Hywel king of Westwealas likely referring to Hywel king of Dyfed.Footnote 49
This usage was, however, ultimately influential. Huw Pryce has identified a shift in the twelfth century, when Cambro-Latin writers were increasingly referring to Wales and the Welsh as Wallia and Walenses – names deriving from forms of English wealh. Footnote 50 This constituted a move away from the use of the Britannia and Britones which we have seen to be so characteristic of early medieval texts and central to constructions of Welsh identity in this period. This shift is paralleled in vernacular nomenclature, as it seems that by the late eleventh century Cymry was being used exclusively of the Welsh and Wales, in contrast to its earlier elasticity.Footnote 51 Thus, an anonymous poem in praise of Hywel ap Goronwy (d. 1106), Mawl Hywel ap Goronwy, imagines a circuit around Kimry which, from the places listed, is clearly understood as Wales.Footnote 52 Pryce also located this development in Latin and vernacular annalistic writing. A survey of the entries of Brut y Tywysogyon – three vernacular Welsh chronicles that are all translations of a Latin chronicle – found a shift from Brytaniaid to Kymry after 1135.Footnote 53 Subsequent references to Brytaniaid are rare, the last occurring in the obituary of the Lord Rhys in 1197.Footnote 54 The Red Book of Hergest version notes that ‘dolur a thrueni a doeth y holl genedyl y Brytanyeit’ (‘grief and misery come to the whole nation of the Britons’) and describes Rhys as ‘y gwr a oed ben a thar[y]an a chedernit y Deheu a holl Gymry a gobeith ac amdiffin holl genedlaeth y Brytanyeit’ (‘the man who was the head and the shield and the strength of the South and of all Wales and the hope and defence of all the nation of the Britons’).Footnote 55 The death of such a notable figure may have called for allusions to Britain and the Britons, but it is telling that no subsequent obituary uses the same nomenclature. Similarly, Pryce observes a drop-off in the use of Britones and Britanni in the Latin Breviate and Cottonian Chronicles (the B- and C-text of the Annales Cambriae) after 1136.Footnote 56 The significance of this trend in annalistic writing must, as Pryce emphasised, be caveated by the fact that there are extensive sections that simply do not make reference to Wales or the Welsh.Footnote 57 Nevertheless, these chronicles are characterised by a movement away from British terminology in the mid-twelfth century.
However, this shift was not comprehensive and nor did it not equate to the abandoning of a British identity.Footnote 58 A brief foray into the poetry of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries shows a continued emphasis on the identity of the Welsh as inhabitants of the entire island of Britain in this material. The following analysis rests on Ann Parry Owen’s ‘Concordance of the Poets of the Princes Poetry’ – an invaluable resource for revealing patterns in nomenclature in this material.Footnote 59 Interestingly, no form of Brytaniaid is attested, and Brython occurs relatively infrequently – nine times in total.Footnote 60 This can be juxtaposed with Kymry, forms of which occur on twenty-six occasions.Footnote 61 Significantly, however, there are over a hundred examples of forms of Prydain, compared to thirty-seven examples of Kymry referring to Wales.Footnote 62 Although geographical indicators predominate, there is a great degree of fluidity between these and ethnonyms. In other words, there are frequent references to the inhabitants of Prydain or Kymry, and when a ruler is described as protecting Prydain or Kymry this presumably covers both land and people.
References to Prydain are scattered across the corpus and occur in varying contexts, but the island’s name is often used in praise of particular Welsh rulers. There are numerous examples of such usage in the poetry of Cynddelw Brydydd Mawr (fl. c. 1155–c. 1195) and Llywarch ap Llywelyn, called Prydydd y Moch (fl. c. 1180–c. 1220). In poems by Cynddelw, Owain Gwynedd is vugeil Prydain (‘Britain’s shepherd’), pria6denn Prydein (‘the legitimate ruler of Britain’), and even Owain Prydain. Footnote 63 Llywelyn ab Iorwerth is similarly described by Prydydd y Moch as dreic Prydein (‘the dragon of Britain’) and lly6 Prydein (‘leader of Britain’).Footnote 64 The poets thus emphasise the status of their subjects as rulers of the island of Britain, a status which stems from the identity of the Welsh as Britons, the original inhabitants of the entire island. The use of Prydain is not the only means by which the poets express this identity. Significant use is made of the historical and mythical past of the Britons, with references to figures such as Arthur and Urien Rheged. In so doing, the poets present their subjects as both successors and equivalent to the heroes of the past.Footnote 65 Thus, in Cynddelw’s ‘Arwyrain Owain Gwynedd’, a battle fought by Owain at Cardigan is compared to the battle of Mount Badon (lines 39–40), and the way the Welsh ruler is presented echoes the presentation of Owain ab Urien in the Taliesin poems.Footnote 66 We see examples of the association with the island of Britain and its past across the corpus, in poems to Owain Gwynedd and Llywelyn ab Iorwerth, but also to lesser-known Welsh rulers. Thus, in an elegy to Cadwallon ap Madog ab Idnerth, the lord of Maelienydd, Cynddelw questions who now will be Prydein oga6n (‘the glory of Britain’).Footnote 67 Crucially, however, the focus on these poems is not on Britain at the expense of all else. Cynddelw’s ‘Awdl Ddadolwch yr Arglwydd Rhys’ serves as a good illustration of this point. Here, Rhys is described as vugeil Kymry (line 84) and prioda6r Prydain (line 190), as well as being commended for protecting Deheubarth (line 37).Footnote 68 Different names might be used, and different associations and identities emphasised within a single poem.
We see some evidence of this too in vernacular prose texts. The Second Branch of the Mabinogi is the most striking example. Here, Bendigeidfran is described as ‘urenhin coronawc ar yr ynys hon, ac ardyrchawc o goron Lundein’ (‘crowned king over this island and invested with the crown of London’).Footnote 69 The island in question is Britain, but here called Ynys y Kedyrn (‘the Island of the Mighty’). Generally, the tale keeps this geographical focus and nomenclature, as in the recounting of Branwen’s death, who looks to Ireland and to Ynys y Kedyrn and laments the destruction of ‘two good islands’ (da a dwy ynys).Footnote 70 However, there is a cluster of references to Kymry that break with this pattern. These all occur when recounting Branwen’s time in Ireland. Firstly we are told that, in the second year, ‘llyma ymodwrd yn Iwerdon am y guaradwyd a gawssei Matholwch yg Kymry’ (‘there was a murmuring of dissatisfaction in Ireland because of the insult that Matholwch had received in Wales’).Footnote 71 Matholwch’s men then advise him to prohibit all boats ‘ual nat el neb y Gymry’ (‘so that no one may go to Wales’), and to imprison anyone who comes from Wales (‘ac a del yma o Gymry, carchara wynt’).Footnote 72 Finally, Branwen uses a starling to send a message to Bendigeidfran: ‘a’r llythyr a rwymwyt am uon eskyll yr ederyn, a’y anuon parth a Chymry, a’r ederyn a doeth y’r ynys honn’ (‘the letter was tied to the base of the bird’s wings, and it was sent to Wales, and the bird came to this island’).Footnote 73
It is intriguing that we find a cluster of references to Kymry in a tale that is otherwise framed entirely as a story of two islands: Ireland and Ynys y Cedyrn. This might simply be a slip, perhaps showing how interchangeable Britain and Wales could be in a mythological context. We see an example of this interchangeability in certain versions of Brut y Brenhinedd, the Middle Welsh translations of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s De gestis Britonum, which start appearing in manuscripts from the middle of the thirteenth century.Footnote 74 The Britons (Britones) are Geoffrey’s subject for most of De gestis Britonum, until they lose the island and their name.Footnote 75 The versions of Brut y Brenhinedd are fairly consistent in using some form of Brytaniaid until that change in name. However, there is one example where this is not the case. Geoffrey tells us that Cadwallon was wearing the crown of Britain in London, attended by all the English kings (Anglorum reges) and leaders of the British (Britonum duces).Footnote 76 In certain versions of Brut y Brenhinedd, this is translated as tywyssogyon Kymry. Footnote 77 Being the only example of using Kymry for Geoffrey’s Britones in these versions of Brut y Brenhinedd, this is unlikely to have been intentional. Rather, it illustrates the interchangeability of the ethnonyms when writing about the pseudo-historical past.Footnote 78 We might interpret the references to Kymry in the Second Branch of the Mabinogi in a similar vein. However, in the case of this text the pattern in the use of ethnonyms merits pause for thought. It is surely significant that each time Kymry is referred to, it is from the perspective of Ireland. Moreover, two of the references occur in the context of travel between the two islands. We might be seeing a contrast here, then, between how Ynys y Cedyrn is perceived by its inhabitants and how it is perceived by those looking over from Ireland. This contrast is at its clearest in the case of the starling, which is sent to Kymry but arrives y’r ynys honn. It may be additionally significant that the only other reference to Kymry in the eleven prose tales commonly referred to as the Mabinogion occurs in Culhwch ac Olwen, again in the context of travel from Ireland as the Twrch Trwyth goes ‘ar y mor parth a Chymry’ (‘over the sea towards Wales’).Footnote 79
Broadly, vernacular poetry and prose show that the island was still very much to play for, even as we see a clear shift in nomenclature in annalistic writing. Returning to our Cambro-Latin texts, it is intriguing that key writers of the twelfth century viewed this change in nomenclature negatively. Geoffrey of Monmouth linked the change in the name of the gens to the loss of their dominion over the island of Britain. Thus, from the late-seventh century, the Britons came to be called Welsh, either after their leader Gualo or queen Galaes; or from their barbarousness.Footnote 80 Whilst Gerald of Wales was closer to the mark in linking the name Welsh to the English word for ‘foreigner’, he likewise referred to the development negatively as a barbara nuncupatio (‘barbarous naming’).Footnote 81 The claim to the barbarous nature of these names likely rests on the understanding that they were names brought to Britain by the pagan Saxons.Footnote 82 Importantly, in both cases there is a sense that the Welsh had lost something through the shift in the name by which they were called. However, Huw Pryce argues that wealas had likely lost any negative connotations by the twelfth century and that the gradual nature of the shift suggests that, rather than being ideologically driven, the change was an experiment in pragmatism.Footnote 83 For an explanation, Pryce looks first to developments in the nomenclature employed in England after the Norman Conquest, where terms deriving from wealas came to be used far more consistently of the Welsh than before. This was likely because Britannia and Britones had other meanings – as well as the former referring to the island of Britain, it was these names that the Normans used for Brittany and the Bretons.Footnote 84
Further, rather than being a change imposed upon the Welsh, it is likely that Welsh rulers especially saw the advantages of adopting this nomenclature in their communication with the wider world. Pryce points to Owain Gwynedd (d. 1170), for example, styling himself as ruler of Wallia in communication with the archbishop of Canterbury and the king of France.Footnote 85 Alongside practicality and pragmatism, Pryce makes an additional observation that has not received enough attention. He suggests that:
it is even possible that Owain (and perhaps his father, Gruffudd ap Cynan, before him) sought to appropriate and promote Wallia as an ideological statement of the hegemony claimed by Gwynedd over Wales, just as their thirteenth-century successors did.Footnote 86
Turning to the sources, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that this is not only possible but highly likely. Thus, we see Gruffudd ap Cynan addressing Ralph, archbishop of Canterbury, together with ‘universus clerus totius Gvalis et populus’ (‘all the clergy and people of Wales’), requesting the consecration of a bishop-elect.Footnote 87 Owain would go further in a letter to Bernard, bishop of St Davids, styling himself rex Wallie. Footnote 88 In a separate publication, Pryce refers to the elegy for Gruffudd ap Cynan by Meilyr Brydydd (‘Marwnad Gruffudd ap Cynan’) and the thirteenth-century Welsh biography of the king (Historia Gruffud vab Kenan) as further evidence of the promotion of this idea of Wales-wide hegemony.Footnote 89
The latter source merits further attention in this context. The Historia Gruffud vab Kenan is a thirteenth-century Welsh translation of the Latin biography of Gruffudd ap Cynan (d. 1137), the Vita Griffini filii Conani, which was composed during the reign of Owain Gwynedd (d. 1170).Footnote 90 Most of the text is dedicated to describing how Gruffudd, who had been born and brought up in Dublin, sought to seize Gwynedd and retain the kingdom in face of numerous threats. Gruffudd’s legitimacy is a key theme, with much time spent on elucidating his royal status and the support he received from other kings.Footnote 91 The exact date and circumstances of the Latin biography’s composition and the production of the Welsh translation remain unknown.Footnote 92
When Pryce published his article on twelfth-century nomenclature in English Historical Review, it was only the Welsh translation of the biography (the Historia Grufud vab Kenan) that was known to scholars. The original Latin text was subsequently uncovered by Paul Russell, whose edition of the biography was published in 2005. Close comparison of the texts continues to yield interesting results. Curiously, the Welsh translation appears to be more firmly focused on the kingdom and inhabitants of Gwynedd. Thus, the status of the church of Clynnog Fawr is elevated, the men of Gwynedd are listed as additional participants in the pivotal battle of Mynydd Carn in 1081, and potentially derogative phrases are removed.Footnote 93 Paul Russell has consequently suggested that the Latin Vita was not in fact composed in its subject’s kingdom, citing St Davids as a possible alternative. Among the positive evidence for St Davids as the site of composition, Russell points to the Vita’s frequent references to forms of Cambria and Cambri. These were used alongside Wallia and Walenses in the twelfth century, but less frequently so and largely in texts associated with St Davids.Footnote 94 Geoffrey of Monmouth’s influence should not be underestimated, however. Although clearly a Latinization of Cymry, it is in De gestis Britonum that we see Cambria and Cambri first used of the Welsh. Geoffrey’s influence on the Vita Griffini can be detected in the biography’s themes and structure, and so it seems likely that his work also inspired the nomenclature used.Footnote 95
The significance of this explanation for the Vita Griffini’s use of Cambrian terminology has not been fully unpacked or appreciated. The biography is, after all, an account of how its subject obtained his status as king of Gwynedd. This status is emphasised from the very beginning, with both Gruffudd and his father described as rex Venedotiae. Footnote 96 Those ruling the kingdom during Gruffudd’s period of exile in Dublin are described as usurpers (male possessores) and a foreign people (gens extranea), whilst Gruffudd is hailed as king of Gwynedd and liberator of the kingdom after their defeat.Footnote 97 There is no doubt in the biographer’s mind, then, as to Gruffudd’s status (and that of his descendants) – a clarity of thought that the Vita Griffini seeks to share with its audience. In this context, the decision to utilise Geoffrey’s Cambrian terminology is intriguing, and one which complicates our understanding of the biography somewhat.
The use of Cambrian terminology is best elucidated when placed alongside the Vita Griffini’s account of the battle of Mynydd Carn, a victory for Gruffudd and Rhys ap Tewdwr (d. 1093), king of Deheubarth, over Trahaearn ap Caradog and his allies. The Vita describes Gruffudd landing in the port of Porth Clais to be met by Rhys ap Tewdwr, and the bishop and entire community of St Davids:
Ad cuius adventum Rysus ap Theodvr, rex australium Cambrorum, Menevensis episcopus, doctores, chorus universus Sancti Davidis, clericique omnes Menevenses, in portum sunt profecti Rysusque Griffinum sic est allocutus: ‘Salve, Cambrorum regum rex, ad te confugio; tibi genua flecto supplex auxilium suppetiasque petens.’… Auditis vero nominibus oppressorum, ira indignationeque aestuans Griffinus quaerit quondam illi laboris praemium constitueret, si hostes eius oppugnaret. ‘Dimidium’, inquit, ‘ditionis meae tibi dabo, homagiumque tibi praestabo’. Conditionem accepit Griffinus.
Upon his arrival Rhys ap Tewdwr, king of the southern Welsh, the bishop of St David’s, scholars and the whole choir of St David’s, and all the clerics of St David’s, set out to the port, and Rhys addressed Gruffudd as follows: ‘Hail, king of the kings of Wales, I take refuge with you; I bend my knee as a suppliant to you seeking your help and support.’… When he heard the names of the oppressors, seething with anger and rage Gruffudd asked what reward he would offer for his efforts, if he were to attack his enemies. ‘I shall give you,’ he said, ‘half of my kingdom, and I shall offer you homage’. Gruffudd accepted the arrangements.Footnote 98
Rhys ap Tewdwr addresses him as Cambrorum regum rex, bends the knee and offers half his kingdom and homage if Gruffudd agrees to assist him against the enemy. This is a highly stylized retelling of events, and implausible too – Rhys ap Tewdwr was king of Deheubarth; Gruffudd ap Cynan a king without a kingdom.Footnote 99 Indeed, J. Beverley Smith has recently drawn attention to the literary strategies at work in this passage, together with its anachronisms.Footnote 100 This passage contributes to the argument for Gruffudd’s royal status that runs through the biography, but it also goes further. Here, Gruffudd is not simply king of Gwynedd but foremost among the kings of the Welsh. There are hints of this status elsewhere too, as in the biographer’s statement that Cambri, Hyberni ac Dani lamented Gruffudd’s death.Footnote 101 This is consistent with the emphasis that the biographer places on Gruffudd’s close relationship with other kings and the support that he receives from them – including kings of England, Ireland, and Man and the Isles. He is presented as their equal, which goes hand-in-hand with his presentation as the king of all Welsh kings.Footnote 102 It should be emphasised that this does not eclipse the presentation of Gruffudd as king of Gwynedd, but it is an additional, significant layer.
In this context, it seems likely that the use of Cambrian terminology specifically was a deliberate choice. Through presenting Gruffudd as Cambrorum regum rex and referring to Cambri lamenting his death, the biographer evokes the inheritance of Geoffrey’s Camber who, in De gestis Britonum, received Wales on the death of his father Brutus. The later use of this strategy by Llywelyn ap Gruffudd’s council in a letter to Archbishop Pecham is well known: Llywelyn is presented as the heir to Camber son of Brutus, and Wales his rightful inheritance.Footnote 103 To return to Pryce’s point, this can easily be construed as an ideological statement of the supremacy of Gwynedd during the reign of Owain Gwynedd. This raises the question of the biography’s audience, intersecting with Pryce’s argument that Welsh rulers adopted ‘Welsh’ nomenclature partly due to interaction with the wider world. The intended audience of the Vita Griffini is a thorny issue. There are two key points here – it is a Latin text, and it is the only extant biography of a Welsh king. Through the text’s form, Gruffudd ap Cynan is placed alongside the English kings whose deeds were catalogued by William of Malmesbury in his Gesta Regum Anglorum; through its language, these deeds are accessible to an audience beyond Wales.Footnote 104 Indeed, it is an interesting contrast that Meilyr Brydydd’s elegy for Gruffudd ap Cynan, which, although containing a reference to Gruffudd leading the Kymry, also describes its subject more broadly as the true possessor of Britain.Footnote 105 This is entirely in keeping of course with the preoccupation of the poets with the island of Britain discussed above – a preoccupation that continued even after the shift in nomenclature seen in other sources.Footnote 106 However, it may speak to the Vita Griffini’s audience and purpose that attention is here more firmly focused on the king of Gwynedd as the primary king of the Welsh, a ruler of importance alongside the other kings of Britain and Ireland. There is a broader point to be made here too about patterns in nomenclature. Significantly, it is in vernacular poetry intended for consumption by a Welsh audience that we see the most grandiose claims for contemporary rulers to the island of Britain. In Latin texts – either certainly intended for broader consumption in the case of letters, or perhaps so in the case of the Vita Griffini – the focus is narrower. This likely speaks to both political considerations and the expectations of the audience.
By the twelfth century, then, whatever the political realities, we find prominently the idea of Wales as a territory broadly corresponding to the modern territory, and of the Welsh as its inhabitants.Footnote 107 While Gerald of Wales may have disparaged the terminological change, Wales as a unit within Britain is of course a concept he espouses and contributes towards creating, most obviously in his Itinerarium Kambriae (c. 1191) and Descriptio Kambriae (c. 1194).Footnote 108 In the latter, Gerald follows Geoffrey of Monmouth’s account of the division of Britain between Brutus’s sons (i.8) and, whilst noting that the Welsh maintain that they will one day reoccupy the entire island, observes that this is completely wrong (ii.7). Yet a more central part in the invention of Wales was played by the law, described by Michael Richter as ‘an integrating element in Welsh native society’.Footnote 109 The medieval Welsh laws, attributed to tenth-century king Hywel Dda but extant only from the thirteenth century onwards, are explicitly presented as a product of Wales. In their preface, Hywel Dda is king of Kymry oll ‘all Wales’, and he draws upon clergy and learned men from every part of his kingdom to emend the laws of Wales.Footnote 110 This feeds into a final point for consideration, namely what did such writers understand Wales to be? The poem in praise of Hywel ap Goronwy discussed above illustrates its breadth through its imagined circuit around Wales, but the most potent symbol in the sources is Offa’s Dyke.Footnote 111 Thus, in a development of Asser’s initial reference to the Dyke demarcating Wales (Britannia) from Mercia, Gerald of Wales notes that Offa separated the Britons from the English by a long dyke (‘et fossa finali, in longum extensa, Britones ab Anglis exclusit’).Footnote 112 Similarly, the Llyfr Iorwerth redaction of the Welsh laws presents Offa’s Dyke as a border beyond which foreigners dwelt.Footnote 113 By this point, then, Wales and the Welsh had found definition.
III
Despite this increasing focus on Wales and the Welsh, the island of Britain and the identity of the Welsh as its original sole inhabitants remained important to the end of the Middle Ages and beyond.Footnote 114 This identity reveals itself across a variety of different sources and contexts. Prophetic poetry continued to fixate on the reclaiming of the island of Britain. Particularly notable in this regard is the depiction of Henry Tudor as the son of prophecy (mab darogan) in the work of fifteenth-century poets such as Dafydd Llwyd of Mathafarn.Footnote 115 The conflict that would culminate at Bosworth is couched as a conflict between the English and Welsh, with allusions to the treachery of the long knives and the age-old prophecy of expelling the English from Britain.Footnote 116 As Gruffydd Aled Williams has observed, from Armes Prydein onwards Welsh political prophecy unfolded ‘on a British stage’.Footnote 117
The enduring importance of this identity in the early modern period can further be seen in historical writing.Footnote 118 In this context, the illustrious history of the Britons, the forebears of the Welsh, was to be defended. Doubts cast by Polydore Vergil in his Anglica Historia (1534) on the reliability of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s De gestis Britonum elicited a robust response from Welsh antiquaries such as John Prise and Humphrey Llwyd. Whilst Vergil was also challenged by English antiquaries such as John Leland, Huw Pryce observes that the Welsh antiquaries went further in emphasising the position of the Welsh as the descendants of the Britons who had been the original inhabitants of the island.Footnote 119 This period also witnessed the writing of two influential histories of Wales – Humphrey Llwyd’s unpublished Cronica Walliae (completed in 1559) and David Powel’s The Historie of Cambria, Now Called Wales a part of the most famous yland of Brytaine… (1584), which used, expanded, and revised Llwyd’s text. These histories have been recently scrutinised by Huw Pryce for their role in the development of Welsh historical writing.Footnote 120 Both aimed to centre the history of Wales and emphasise its importance to the history of Britain; both emphasised the identity of the medieval Welsh kings and princes as successors to the ancient Britons. Importantly, however, Pryce observes that both too presented this history as a ‘prelude to the political assimilation with England’.Footnote 121 In other words, the identity of the Welsh as descendants of the ancient Britons is important, but for underscoring the significance of their history and their status within the union with England. Indeed, the most recent study on Welsh nationhood in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries has emphasised the importance of Britishness and the positioning of Wales within Britain.Footnote 122
A distinction must be drawn between modern Welsh nationalism and its pre-modern precursor, Gruffydd Aled Williams has argued. The latter had an important British dimension, rooted in the ancient relationship between the Welsh and the island of Britain.Footnote 123 This article has explored the centrality of this relationship in sources from the sixth century to the sixteenth. When writing of Wales and the Welsh in the early medieval period, we need to do so with an awareness that these were not the words contemporary writers used nor were they the main signifiers of identity – as far as our sources show, Wales was not the unit that was important to the Welsh at this point in time. While the concept of an island-based identity for the Welsh appears to have declined in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, it cannot be said to have disappeared altogether. Indeed, when Gorsedd Beirdd Ynys Prydain (the Gorsedd of the Bards of the Island of Britain), the cultural society established by the eighteenth-century antiquarian Iolo Morgannwg, was swiftly renamed Gorsedd Cymru (the Gorsedd of Wales) in 2019, this move provoked significant criticism.Footnote 124 The relationship of the Welsh to the island of Britain remains a matter of discussion.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Professor Huw Pryce and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful feedback on an earlier version of this article. All errors remain my own.
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