The Old North: Welsh? English? Scottish?
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- Опубліковано 10 лют 2025
- Who does the Old North belong to? And who belongs to The Old North?
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ONLINE CLASSES:
Tales of the Old North starts 29th Jan. PAY-WHAT-YOU-CAN tinyurl.com/TON25
Taliesin Connections starts 22nd February tinyurl.com/talcon25
PLEASE support me on Ko-fi! (or take a class). With the political and economic uncertainty at the moment, my teaching income has dropped. Please support me on Ko-fi at: ko-fi.com/krishughes Thanks!
You can always find out about upcoming classes at: tinyurl.com/GDclasses
Another great detailed video on Welsh , Brythonic, Briton culture Kris.
I've got some Welsh and more Scottish ancestry. Thanks for making these videos. You have great knowledge and are very articulate.
Blessings of the gods and not god's upon thee - Druid blessing
@@colddaze6680 Thank you!
I am Scottish and come from the ancient capital of Strathclyde. I live in the Hen Ogledd. The Alt Clut or the Y Ystrad Clut (the Welsh term). We used to speak Cumbric, which is a language similar to Welsh. We are on the river Clyde and have a lot of Welsh history here. I have only found this out myself by my own research into the history of my town. It is not something that has been talked about or taught so a lot of this history has been lost and forgotten but it is still there.
@@Jinty92 Cumbrian is Brythonic. No argument about that.
The 'Yan Tan Tethera' sheep counting numerals are a remnant of Brythonic that survived in the North of England into the Modern era, a memory of Yr Hen Ogledd.
@@urseliusurgel4365 Yan, is so close to the Scottish "yin," which I still use. So that may also be Brythonic, but yin is also close to the German "ein'
Am Welsh and lived in Glasgow for a year. I really enjoyed it, found the people extremely friendly and very similar to me - short, stocky, argumentative and familiar. No wonder. We're the same people!
Yes, that's the Glasgow I know!
Am Welsh (London Welsh) and have moved to Glasgow recently. I agree, very Celtic/Gaelic & open - many also friendly!
I was in Wales today delivering in the Heart of Snowdonia then on to Newtown and Welshpool.
Perfect timing for my lunch break. Thank you for the well researched video!
Thank you for a great video. I'ma classicist from Northumberland within view of one of the forts and near a Mithras shrine. I'm sorry some comments are rather toxic/naive and rude. I found this very interesting.
I'm glad you enjoyed it!
The comments on my videos are pretty tame. (have you seen the rest of UA-cam?) I'm okay, but thanks. Also, my comments section isn't a democracy - if they bother me, I just remove them.
Having gone down the genealogical rabbit holes, I have learned about my ancestors from the Old North such Clackmannanshire makes listening to your videos even better.
As a literary-inclined Welshman, it's hard not to think of the legacy of the Old North as, like, 'mine'. Many Brythonic names stand to this day, from Edinburgh and Cumbria (Literally just a Latin form of Cymru, the welsh name for Wales) to Penrith and Catterick.
Ive been to Cumbria (Kendal) and parts of Yorkshire (Howarth), and it sounds very cheesy, but having read the poems of Aneirin and Taliesin, i cant help but feel a connection to the place. But, whether the people in Northern England and Southern Scotland know it or not, they're just as connected to the old Brittonic culture of Aneirin, Urien, Rhydderch Eidyn and so on.
And id encourage anyone in those areas to maybe learn some Welsh (Or even the invented language Cumbraek) in order to read and gain a deeper connection for their past culture and language.
Upper Cumberworth/Pen Y Ghent.
I don't think it's cheesy at all.
Thankyou Kris. Thankyou for your eloquent words and wise thoughts. Love from a man of the old north.
Superbly lucid lecture, many many thanks for this!
As a Yorkshireman (with ancestry predominantly from the West Riding), I'm proud of my descending from the Brigantes and the Elmetians of the Hen Ogledd. Just as I'm proud to descend from the Northumbrians.
Try to tell that to kids these days, they'll never believe ya.
@danielthompson6207 When I have my own, I shall.
But, yes, children in Britain don't really get any proper education concerning their ancient past. It's very hard for people to feel rooted without a sense of self that transcends our modern, material world.
I'm a Yorkshire man too with the same ancestry you mentioned. I named my son Coel after Coel Hen!
Just signed up for the course! I've been looking for a class to take so I'm glad you posted about it!
Hey Lace! I saw your reg. I'll be in touch tomorrow. It will be good to see you again. I remember you as somebody who asks great questions.
Welsh is the only real British culture that survies today.
Cornwell and Bretagne
@@christopherellis2663 I take your point but in Wales Welsh is a real living language at the heart of the community.
And would you deny the Scots, who share the same island? I doubt the Scots wiped out the Picts, any more than the various Germanic/Scandinavian peoples wiped out the population in what is now England.
Not Welsh, and not British, Cymry. Aboriginal Cymry are not "Welsh" and there is no Britain until Rome came. The Scottish are Cymry, and the "Irish".
Thank you, from a pagan yank with a variety of brythonic-language cultural heritage, but none of the language itself. Currently I'm working to develop deeper practices. I like the encouragement to follow what I'm drawn toward, but at the same time, don't want it to be merely the shiny object of the moment.
I would agree that shiny things can be a problem. I think you have to know yourself. Is the problem shiny things? Is it commitment? Or have you not found what you're seeking yet? In my experience, the answer is depth. If you start really studying something, look at original sources, etc. - you know much more quickly whether or not you're in the right place. If you just skim the surface, it's much harder.
A geological map of the UK is a good fit for the reducing extent of romanisation from southeast to north. Britain's rocks get younger the further south you go. This means increasing fertility from north to south overall, and the land also gets flatter makingf it easier to travel on. You can see why the Romans would have prioritised the southern half of the island.
All the names in Scotland beginning with or containing "Aber" are a dead giveaway to Brythonic speakers but also the "brox" element as in "Broxburn" badgers' burn or Ibrox=Ybroc, home of the badger.
Greetings from Erging!
As an Englishman who lives near the Welsh border, I see farm and village names that are Brythonic every day, and others that are obviously translations (good or bad) of Brythonic originals. But two things are often overlooked:
All the way down the Welsh border is a line of iron-age hill-forts, many of them in pairs - whether supporting or opposing each other, we'll never know - but it looks like a fossilised border from before the Roman Conquest.
The other is that English DNA is only about 5% "Anglo-Saxon" (not much more than is Neanderthal), and there was no England until 927 under King Æthelstan, around 500 years after the Romans left.
What these uncomfortable truths mean is that us English are NOT Anglo-Saxons. We are Celts who had only weak prehistoric affinity with the Celts on the other side of that line of hill-forts that was later reinforced by Offa's Dyke. We are Celts whose ancestors chose to stop speaking Brythonic in favour of the languages of Angles, Saxons and a few Jutes, which being related, became English - and that process took nearly a thousand years amongst the hill-farmers of South Herefordshire (formerly Erging), who mostly spoke "Welsh" until about the time of Henry VIII.
Thus the people of Great Britain are actually after all, still, Britons. So when I look out from my garden on the flanks of what was once Caer Rein (a giant fought by Arthur) to see Caer Gworthigernus (where Uther Pendragon defeated Gwrtheiryn), or I go to the Post Office at Wormelow Tump (where Arthur slew his own son Amr at Gamber Head Farm, formerly Licat Amr), I understand why Arthur was a hero to both the Welsh and the English. It's because we are all Britons.
The most recent genetics paper (Gretzinger et al.) puts modern English ancestry from 'North Sea Germanic' origins at between 25% and 47% and Iron Age British between 11% and 57%, varying geographically. They recognised a third major component, which resembles Iron Age Gaulish DNA, this makes up the balance.
This is fascinating. I would like to add that the kingdom of Erging is very ancient indeed.
Being so much further south than the Old North, I was surprised that it survived at all. Yet, survive it did. The Archenfield area of Erging was Welsh-speaking well into the 19th century. Yet, you would think it should not have been because it was in England. They C of E had to get clergymen from across the border to hold religious services in Welsh for this community. I was amazed, but saddened that these people just speak English now.
@@urseliusurgel4365yeah this is what I’d seen. With of course the east coast being more Anglo-Saxon and the rest more Brythonic
@John-qd5of The original title of the Bishop of Hereford was "Bishop of Hereford and of Erging". Its maximum extent was roughly from the River Wye southward as the River Severn, and eastward as far as the River Tarater (probably the River Frome), but there are very few Brythonic placenames in the Gloucestershire (Forest of Dean, formerly Cantref Coch) part, so the territory (alleged to have once been governed from Weston under Penyard) must have shrunk early in the dark ages.
It's a hill-farming area, and farm names in the hills indicate that hafod-and-hendre transhumance was common. Many churches are still dedicated to Celtic Saints, including two to S. Dyffrig (latinised as Tiburcius or Dubricius, he who crowned Arthur).
Despite the efforts of Henry VIII to assert Primogeniture, the inheritance custom called Gavelkind was continued informally into the 19th century in South Herefordshire. The practice is thought to have delayed the adoption of English, because the narratives of kinship had to be remembered using patronyms (and probably mnemonic tales).
However, allegiance to the kings of Mercia and eventually England was unwavering. The men of Erging would lead any expedition into Wales and guard its rear on the way out, the Welsh having sacked Hereford in 1055. Harold regained the territory, but my parish had been laid waste and was unpopulated still for Domesday Book. Some parts were still waste in the 18th century. The extent of the devastation can perhaps be inferred from an absence of 'Welsh' placenames along route corridors which suggests that English speakers moved in on abandoned land there.
Erging was probably more of a Cantref or even just several Commotes which were at various held by informal Viceroys, rather than a kingdom, but there are several folktales of a grandiose and.foolish king called Peibiau the Dribbler, who may also have ruled Ewyas and is featured in 'How Culhwch Won Olwen' (Mabinogion), the Legend of Dubricius (Lives of the Celtic Saints) and a tale about going to war against his brother over sheep grazing The Black Mountains (they were punished by Rheinwg Brycheiniog, IIRC, by being turned into oxen and yoked together to draw a plough).
And as you identified ‘Erging’ then you live in a part of England that is tangibly Welsh in nature, and was even part of the Diocese of St Davids for most of its history. Church notices were still produced bilingually in the Vale of Ewyas and in the Golden Valley (Dyffryn Dŵr) until the 19th century.
Great video my answer to the title question would be yes.
The Tees is interesting as a borderland, from connections to Doggerland, the Roman's Tees-Exe line, from the Saxon and Norse migrations (place names), the heart of the Dane Law to the Harrying of the North (genocide/ethnic cleansing) onto the border struggles between England & Scotland (being the direct border for a short time) and Durham/Yorkshire. Worth doing a video on.
When you consider that ‘Welsh’ is an imposed term by the Anglo-Saxons then it becomes clearer that the whole of Britain was basically ‘Wales’ or Prydein. The Welsh themselves used the terms Cymry / Cymru / Brutaniaid / Prydein etc interchangably, and this is evidenced in its earliest literature through to the early modern period. So was the Old North ‘Welsh’. Yes.
Yes apparently some of the last Welsh people of England were communities in the East.
@@Knappa22 In the north of the island. Celtic was an elite warrior language. It had not yet merged with ancient Pictish to become Gaelic.
@@eugenesullivan2863 Lowland Scotland spoke Brythonic. The last Brythonic kingdom was Strathclyde.
@ The Celtic warrior elite who had recently subdued northern Britain, spoke a continental Celtic language (SVO) that was neither Gaelic nor Brythonic.
@@eugenesullivan2863 what? When? And what do you count as northern Britain?
Brythonic was spoken throughout the whole of northern England and lowland Scotland.
Brythonic is Welsh if we are being honest with ourselves. All languages evolve but there can be no serious agrument that Brythonic and Welsh aren't the same language.
Do you suppose that everyone from Caithness to Cornwall and Cardigan to Colchester spoke the same? Even in the territory now known as Cymru/Wales, the language spoken in pre-Saxon times is unlikely to have been intelligible to a modern Welsh speaker, simply because languages evolve over time. Add to that the geographical isolation of communities hundreds of miles apart - most people living on the East Coast would never have met a person from the West - and, over many centuries, Brythonic would have diversified into lots of regional varieties, probably barely mutually intelligible - or at least, a broad continuum, with little mutual intelligibility at its extreme ends. You may call them all dialects of one language, but to call it 'Welsh' makes no sense, especially since that name was only given to the people and their language by Germanic invaders. We might as well call Latin 'French'.
@@rhapsag Lets look at the points you made one by one. The Wales / Welsh was given by the Germanic people we now know as the English. The Welsh names for the cuntry and language is Cymru and Cymraeg. Point 2 Nobody knows what Brythonic language would have sounded like but the same can be said of any ancient language, but what we do is that written Brythonic and modern Welsh are very similar you only have to look at the place names from Sctoland to the tip of Crnwall. Point 3 I only described the language as Welsh as we are using English on this site an we could use Welsh / Cymraeg if you prefer. Point 4 Wales is not a territory but a country as described by the international standards authority. Please get rid of your bias or agenda, open your eyes and give some respect to the Welsh culture and language which are some of the oldest in Europe.
@@timphillips9954 My use of the word 'territory' refers to the fact that, before Germanic tribes arrived in Great Britain, it was not a separate country, just part of Brythonic Great Britain. I acknowledge that it is now a country.
@@rhapsag Thank you.
I am from the northwest of England, and I recently had an ancestry DNA test done. It turns out I have no English (anglo-saxon) DNA. Just Welsh, Scottish, Irish! A family member is a researcher and has traced our more recent family history to Wales. My 2x great-grandfather was a Welshman, and also my 2x great-grandfather on the paternal line was an Irishman from Cork.
Then you have a 30,000 year history on these Isles, aboriginal, pre colonial dna.
Before radio, television and modern technology languages were largely Lingua Francas where common words were used to communicate with difficulty.
I would contest that Lothian and Berwickshire are culturally and linguistically as Germanic as is Northumberland, then yiu have more Danish influence from Yorkshire down.
Did I say that? Is it important?
@@KrisHughes no you didn't say it, that's just me.
I’m a scouser born and bred , dna is over 70% Celt (north wales , ulster , and Scottish . I’m also English , Italian (8.7% ) and German .
I’m less than 15mins away from Llangadwaladr.
Only a few years between Catraeth and Cadfan ap Iago’s (569? -625?s) stone in Llangadwaladr church, which is only 3miles from Aberffraw, the nearest llys of the kings of Gwynedd, and believed to be their royal burial ground. It all depends on who taught you in school.
Incidentally, Aberffraw school was the last one to get rid of the Welsh Not, in the 20th Century.
Sorry to be nitpicky about the artwork, but at 2:35 from the reading I've done I gather that there's no evidence that Hadrian's wall had a walkway or crenellations. No part of the wall retains its upper portion, but similar walls in North Africa which fully survive have a simple pointed top. The Roman way was to emerge and fight the enemy in the open, where they felt they always had the advantage. (There's a tendency to project Mediaeval warfare onto the Romans.)
I'm sure you're right - sometimes, I just need a graphic and the architecture of the wall is a long way from my topic here.
What doesn't get much coverage by historians is movement from Ireland to Britain. The Scots of Ireland going to northern Britain is better covered but the movements into England and Wales is less covered/known. Given the proximity of the islands it is no surprise that there has always been movement. How Irish the fringes of Wales, NW England and Cornwall were in the distant past we will never know but there are hints in such things as Wales being called Ireland in old accounts about Stonehenge and NW England being populated by the Irish sounding Setantii.
The Channel Cambrian Chronicles has made a few vids on Irish migration into Wales and the Irish kingdoms that arose in the country as a result (it's a channel about Wales, so he hasn't spoken much about the migration into Scotland). Would definitely recommend giving them a watch~
Before the Great Famine in the 19th Century, there was trivial migration from Ireland to Britain. Ireland is largely populated by people (Indo-Europeans) who migrated from the continent replacing the Neolithic people of Britain who then migrated to Ireland replacing the Neolithic people there. In other words, the great majority of the population of Ireland is due to migration from Britain. It's written in our DNA.
@jacobparry177 Yes I'm a subscriber I've seen those videos 👍
@kevingriffin1376 We really don't know the numbers or the extent it's lost to us. For example a later documented migration of Irish people happened in the tenth century when Vikings expelled from Ireland settled Merseyside. A distinct group of these settlers were Irish and the English engaged in discussions with them as fellow Christians when the pagan Vikings became more ambitious for territory. These Irish impacted on place names (Irby) and religion (St Bridget's Church, West Kirby). It makes sense to me that people will have gone back and forth across the Irish Sea for thousands of years.
@ Yes, it's a good channel. I must look for his vids on early Irish immigration. It's something I teach about in my classes.
Lovely video. Wonderful presentation.
Well done 👏👏
🙏☘🇮🇪🏴🏴🏴🙏
Thank you.
very interesting video of welsh celtic perspective thanks ... i say it like one from east europe, many stuff there of indoeurope .. i'd add the comet of 6th century cataclysm
sits to learn a thing.
I was born in Brigadoon. The mythical capital of albaland. We speak disneywegian and only have borders now and then. Brigadoon existed long before the Romans and when, eventually, the Romans (led by centurian Berlusconi) arrived. We were made to speak bung bunga.... Which later became the native language of yorkshireland.
Brigadoon is more believable than the Book of Invasions! Btw, are you sure the language is bunga bunga? I thought the scholarly authorities, who coined the exceedingly gracious and reverential name--"Primitive" Irish--for the language of our ancestors, dubbed its precursor to be ooga booga. Perhaps bunga bunga is the southern dialect and ooga booga is the northern dialect?
I have to question whether there was ever the linguistic homogeneity you suppose. One clue is an early Roman map of Britain (pre invasion) which names the people of the Yorkshire and Durham coast the "Parisi" - which is linguistically remarkably similar to the Farisi (Frisian) people who lived directly across the North Sea. It was not unusual for "tribes" to exist both sides of seas and channels - we know of Irish tribes who lived in both Britain and Ireland and of course Belgic tribes that lived on both the continent and southeast England. However there is a particularly good explanation for Frisians and other Dutch tribes (among whom I would include the Angles and Jutes) to disperse both sides of the sea - the gradually rising sea levels and disappearing land in the Low Countries and before that Doggerland. In other words, lowland "Germanic" people would almost certainly have relocated to the east coast of Britain at several times iin prehistory - just as they did in Roman, post Roman and recent times. Whether they were actually "Germanic" linguistically is another matter (since we don't know what "Germanic" people spoke before modern Germanic languages appeared, and it could easily have been Gallic or something else.
I also believe that the "Saxons" were originally Gallic speaking and imparted that language to the Welsh who, before 1000BC, were not. However, by the mid Medieval period they had largely adopted Frankish - just as was happening on the near continent at the same time. It was not the Normans who brought French to England. The old stories are too simplistic and we need a serious rethink about our history.
The Parisi were a tribe in Gaul based near (you guessed it) modern day Paris. They also had a base in East Yorkshire. These are the people known for their elaborate wagon burials.
@@KrisHughes I'm not sure if all these people are related or not since the Romans were in the habit of using descriptive terms that were later interpreted as "tribal names" but may not have been used by anyone else. For example, they identify "Brigantes" in both central Britain (the Peak district) and southern Ireland which is weird until you realise that the word 'brigantes' can just mean "highlanders" or "brigands". There are also "Dumnonii" in Devon, Strathclyde and the Dublin area - nobody really knows if these people are related or just the word used by the Romans to describe them. In the case of Dutch and Belgic tribes however, we know there is a very clear motivation for migration - rising sea levels. Its entirely possible that some ended up giving their name to Paris while relatives sailed to Yorkshire. But in the absence of a rationale for migrations ?I am inclined not to believe them. Which is one reason why I think the suggestion that the Jutes/Saxons/Angles/Frisians all lived in little Denmark and abandoned it for no apparent reason is ridiculous. Rather most of these linguistic groups can be traced to Holland, which makes sense of their migration.
I think there’s quite a lot of evidence that the Romans also simply tried to reproduce in Latin the local peoples’ names for themselves - which would lead to some very odd approximations as Latin simply didn’t have the sounds of eg the Brythonic languages (just as the “dd”, “ch” “gw” or “ll” sounds of modern Welsh have no equivalent in any Romance language). So the Bryneich would become the “Berniciae” and the Gododdin the “Votadini”
@@KrisHughes What is now east Yorkshire, unless your implying that Yourkshire is pre Roman. Can you see how easy it is to fall into miss informing, with the best of intentions. Your work is great, but foundations matter, post Roman history is less complicated, very well documented. eight out of ten people asked, think 'Boudicca' lived in East Anglia, and was English.
We stir it together and call it Woglish of course.
To put it simply Welsh
It reminds me of something from Middle Earth or Westeros.I'm curious if there was some equivalent term for other lost Welsh lands outside the North, like "the Old East" or "the Old South."
Lloegyr, was the Medieval Welsh term for a 'lost' part of Britain, it is believed to have indicated southern and Eastern England.
@@urseliusurgel4365 Lloegr is the modern Welsh word for England
Middle earth and Westeros are partially based on this
@ But it first occurs in Medieval Welsh sources. It is not contemporary term to the period, which saw Common Brythonic becoming Old Welsh - Maglocunus becoming Maelgwn, for example.
@@urseliusurgel4365 sorry, I wasn’t contradicting you, just adding information.
When I was at school in Edinburgh (56-62 years ago) this Brythonic history certainly wasn't taught but we did know that the old name for Edinburgh was Duin Eddyn, anglicised to Dunedin.
I learned about this history in later years through taking an interest in it prompted by reading Peter Beresford-Ellis's book "Celt and Saxon - the Struggle for Britain 410 AD - 937 AD". I have to say I now find it slightly irrititating when Scottish or Welsh people deny that they are British because they associate the term with the creation of the Kingdom of Great Britain in the Acts of Union of 1706/1707. Very many of them, if not most ( certainly in the case of the Welsh), ARE genetically British in the purest and most original sense of the word - if they but knew it. Very many of the English too. DNA research has shown that they are more Brythonic Celtic than they imagine.
The Welsh certainly have the cultural memory of it as Daffyd Iwan's popular song Yma O Hyd testifies. It starts by harking back to Magnus Maximus (Macsen Gwledig) the Celtiberian who ruled in Britannia in AD 383. ua-cam.com/video/fkBQAvAFjus/v-deo.html
Life took me away from Scotland and when I went to South West Wales in my mid 20s I was struck by the cultural similarity to much of Scotland and felt a strange affinity to the place and people. I married one of them! I'm mostly a Scot but 25% Irish through 2 Irish great grandfathers and I have a dash of English so our family covers all four nations of the Isles.
The pre-Roman, Roman and Dark Age history of Britain is fascinating. Beresford-Ellis's book ends in 937 AD - the year of the Battle of Brunanburh which is possibly more significant in British history than the Battle of Hastings for it was the outcome of Brunanburh which guaranteed the future of England and ensured that there would be two kingdoms - England and Scotland - on the mainland of Britain for the next 770 years. Yet so little is known about it, including even where exactly Brunanburh was.
This was very well presented. I'll watch the course.
I'm south west Wales too, Pembrokeshire, I thought I was cymru until I did my DNA, I'm Norse
Yes we have many hillforts, I went to visit a restored Iron age village yesterday
I love our history ❤️
Pembrokshire, where I'm from, become an Irish lead kingdom for a few hundred years 😊
Still born on the land should be proud of your heritage regardless.
Normans conquered south Wales, and the inhabitants there was taught to speak English. Instead of their native tongue.
The terms “Scottish” “English” and “Welsh” were all pretty meaningless much before the 9th century.
Except that the Anglo-Saxons may have been calling the indigenous people something like “wealsc” - a word that crops up in various Germanic-language forms all over Europe (Walloon, Wallachia, Vlach, Welsch) and seems to have meant not just “foreign” but specifically “romanised foreign”. The best modern example of that is in Switzerland where the German name of the francophone Swiss is “Welschschweiz” and those francophone Swiss call their part of the country “la Suisse Romande” = Roman Switzerland.
It also means or implies wretch or foreigner
Legend is the welsh are Greeks, and that's why they have curly perm 'like' hair and thick curly beards compared to the other celts with long curly hair and straight wirey and bristly beards, the Greek comes from an outcast king and rentinue that settled there before romanisation apparently. No idea how true that is what so ever or how true I've been to what I read whenever I read it.
Who was it that said that the Picts came from Scythia? And everyone has taken this as a complete myth because Scythia was in central Asia. HOWEVER, instead of Scythia ('skithia') in central Asia, he could have meant Scythia to be pronounced 'scootia'. This would be significant, as 'Scutia' could mean the same area in IRELAND that the 'Scots' came from. Hence the seeming ease with which the Picts and the Scots got along together, and were subsumed into later Alba ('Scotland'). Because the Picts didn't actually speak Brythonic but Gaelic, like the Scots. That's what I think anyway.
Diddorol iawn 🏴✊⚔️
Diolch yn fawr.
The translation turns the Welsh flag into an English one 😭😭
As a Scot, the comment about the Romans, conquering Scotland, in about 122 AD, the Romans lost a Legion, against the Picts, a lot of Scottish history comes from biased English historians.
They got as far as Sterling. I would prefer ignorant over biased. Similarly, Brexit.
The Romans had bases up as far as the North East coast e.g. Birnie in Elgin, and quite a significant one at Kintore.
There's also the Antoine Wall in the central belt.
They may not have sustained dominance here but they explored and mapped and had power. They left as there was nothing really of value and a lot of aggravation.
Was the Legion lost or was it just a story. There's no evidence. Like Mons Grampus
@@christopherellis2663 Sterling ?😂
And a lot of English history comes from Bede, a Latin speaking monk who never left Jarow.
People like this author seem to think before Latin arrived we were all a blank slate.
Bullshit
Gle mhath ann Alba we won't forget our Brythonic heritage 😅after all Dumbarton Peebles Sanquhar and lanark are real places. Tioraidh
Gu dearbh!
Alba a deas bha torr sean canan Agus Merlin cuideach.
Peebles pabell? Cymraeg
Sean Cathair Sanquhar=old seat Cymbrian gu leor
I agree with you totally about not getting too caught up in DNA results. You don't get the DNA of all your ancestors. I personally wouldn't get an ancestry DNA test. I'm English with some Irish ancestry. I'm 99% sure a DNA test would just tell me what I already know.
I thought that too, until I did a DNA test, I'm Norse, there's a lot of Viking DNA here
@heathfairbairn2460 well that wouldn't surprise me because the English, Scottish and Irish all have Norse ancestry. That is one of the main groups that is an ancestor of the British.
@@chesterdonnelly1212 absolutely 💯
Celtic languages before getting to the islands started with the subject. The verb-precedence is Berber, the matrilineal descent is Berber and the proficiency of building in stone is North African. It seems that the same language was spoken all the way from Libya to John O Groats, although it may not of been the only language spoken in that part of Europe. It appears to me that two different but related groups are referred to as the PICTs 1. The pre-Celtic inhabitants of the island and 2. The hybrid people of northern Britain, who were partly conquered by Celtic warlords. There seems very little doubt that the Gaelic language is Celtic with a strong Berber/ Pictish substratum. Britannic is similar, but with a higher proportion of Celtic /Latin.
That is pure speculation. People were building with stone in Scotland and Ireland in neolithic times - before any Gaelic speakers arrived.
@ That’s exactly what I’m saying. The native people on the islands were building in stone before the CELTIC speakers arrived. The Gaelic speakers did not arrive. Gaelic is a mixture of Celtic and the native island verb-president language. Do you speak any Gaelic or welsh?
@eugenesullivan2863 I do happen to speak some Scottish Gaelic and I have also studied languages and some historical linguistics. There is absolutely no evidence that the Insular Celtic languages were SVO before they arrived on the islands.
Brittonic (aka Welsh) and Gaelic are closely related to each other in many respects, and they were much more similar to each other 2,000 years ago. The main fault line between them 2,000 years ago was that Gaelic was "Q Celtic" and Brittonic was "P Celtic". Originally all Celtic languages were "Q Celtic". Brittonic and Gaelic are Verb/Subject/Object order languages, and as you say Berber languages are also VSO order languages. But that seems to be just a coincidence. They are not closely related to Berber. Although that was a theory of an Irish academic in the 1970s, I don't think his theory ever gained popular acceptance.
@ This P-Celtic / Q-Celtic hypothesis is coming under increasing doubt. Also, Welsh and West Cumbrian during the fifth and sixth centuries were increasingly influenced by Gaelic from the north and west.
We also know from inscriptions that Gaulish and other continental Celtic dialects started with the subject and the evidence appears to be that Celtic and Latin were mutually intelligible. (Several British Celtic chieftains regarded the Romans as ‘ their own people’ at the time of the initial Roman conquest, and there is a whole question of Caratacus’ oratory - a proficiency that’s not exactly easy in a strange language.
VSO on its own might coincide with Berber, but add in matrilineal descent, the tradition of building in stone and finally the DNA evidence, and it looks like the same people populated the Atlantic coast all the way from North Africa to the Orkneys. I speak Gaelic fluently, and there is definitely a kinship between it and some of the Berber languages.
Where do you come from?
Your accent is blended.
Well spotted! I was born in Colorado, but lived much of my life in Edinburgh (Scotland).
@@KrisHughes
Ah that makes sense!
I was sure that you had an American background, but throughout some of your segments of speech, you sounded decidedly Insular, namely Scottish.
The accent does jump between Scottish and American influence, or sometimes wholly reflects one or the other.
So, you must have lived in Great Britain for a long while.
Around 15 years ago a small display of pictish stones were put on display in St Vigeans near Arbroath. They had an informative map showing Scotland in Pictish times with Gaels, Picts, and Anglos Saxons but mysteriously in the entire area of what is now Strathclyde and the western borders the map was blank!
No surprise there. I took it as another piece of acting out by those dedicated to the myth of Gaelic as the ancient language of Scotland. It is not a historical argument in isolation. Jobs and money are in the game. And the bilingual signage. How we on the East coast scorn it. Piece of nonsense.
I enjoyed your video, I would not use 'Brython' as a description, the people did not have a name, other than 'people of the same' you also confuse the issue by using "Welsh" Scottish. Cymry would better cover all groups before separating. I'm aware it's difficult to do, every time we use incorrect terminology it benefits the English establishment, by them clouding history with 'British' kumbri, Cymry covers all but the Pictish, as it simply means 'we are all of the same'. British, Brython, Brittany, Britannia, Prydain all have to be taken out of pre Roman colonisation.
Cymry and Brythonic are both correct and come from the Old Welsh Kymryw (people) Kymraeg (language) and Brythoniaid (people) Brythoneg (language). Both used interchangeably.
The Pictish were Britons/Cymry before Romanisation. The Picts were seen as a separate people in sub Roman Britain. But all that separated them was they had not been under Roman rule, so culturally and linguistically they began to divert from the Romano-Britons (or the other way around, depending on perspective). Although the Pictish language in the middle ages was probably intelligible with the Cymraeg of the rest of Britain but with less Latin influence.
Similar to Old English of the peasantry and the Middle English of the rest of England following the Norman occupation after centuries. Eventually all spoke Middle English but a language recognisable as Old English would have been spoken by English peasants for a few generations.
@dafydd1722 With the greatest respect Dafydd, not correct, as it includes Britain, within 'Brythoniaid' or 'Brython', if we are to discuss pre Roman era, we have to remove Britain, it was a name given. The English establishment love it as it conveniently implies Britishness with England. Its complicated and we the Cymry give our heritage away everyday. Diolch
@nautilus1872 England controls the media.
Frustrating when *everything* is explained from a English perspective not a UK one.
@Owen-92 Every time I examine the old history, to my own detriment, I'm abused by both sides, very little interest by the "Welsh" we have given one of the richest of histories away, and yet we sing the first line of the national anthem. How often do I read "I'm Welsh, not British" imagine "I'm happy to be called foreign, and I'm not indigenous". That is the depth of our national knowledge.
I can't speak much Welsh to be honest I didn't go to a Welsh speaking school. Even though, there's loads around Wales.
Welsh history isn't taught much well not in the south and the capital of the nation is in the south?
If people in Wales knew more about there country's history it would make a difference most people just couldn't give a shit.
I have Pict DNA
The British of that time and most of us even today are R1b, coming to Germany France Britain etc around 2000 BC. We are the same people .
Beaker people. Although we don't know what they called themselves.
Yes.@@chesterdonnelly1212
Cymry have a 30,000 history on these isles, they don't share the same dna. They are a separate group, pre colonisation.
@@chesterdonnelly1212Beaker people, are just trading transient peoples, who interwove into the predominantly Cumbric (Cymry). There was no replacement of population.
@@nautilus1872 the ancient people , the hunter gatherers, yes must have been in Britain from let's say 10,000 years as soon as the ice went. Dark haired? Came back up from Iberia where they were. Cro magnon possibly I'm not certain. We're in Pictland before the beaker farmers arrived too
You'll never know but it's just an idea without any proof 😊
'It is certainly true that England has a lot of influence from the Anglo-Saxons', she said, in English 😂😂😂
They came and went in cruel wind of history.
South of Scotland like n of England are largely a Germanic speaking set of places. It's called Scots, ken ? As in Kennen,German , to know. Also Northumberland of course. Gang Doon the road, Germanic too. Gae, is to go, Germanic. No Gaelic language in any o that. 😊
Love this
Unlike the rest of the nations of Britain and Ireland, Scotland is a hybrid nation, like Switzerland.
Culturally its:-
- Gáidhlig in the Highlands
- Cumbraek in the Lowlands
- Pictish in the North East, right up to Shetland
Geographically, those 3 ancient cultures meet at Stirling. No coincidence Id say.
In whats now England however, British tradition speaks of “Loegric” being spoken in whats now South Eastern England. Loegric was probably a form of Belgic which was spoken across the Straits of Dover in Belgica.
Note, the name today for England in Welsh is “Lloegr”
I have never before heard the term "Loegric".
It seems to me Britain is plenty mixed in its own way - Angles, Saxons, Britains, Romans, Normans, plus the ubiquitous Vikings.
Thanks for your reply.
Research “Loegria” and “Loegric” in Welsh tradition. And “Locrinus” / “Logres”. That was the culture of whats now South East England, who also had their own P-Celtic language version.
And note the Welsh for England today “Lloegr”.
Whereas whats now Wales, North of England and South of Scotland was “Cymru / Cambria / Cumbria”.
Furthermore, note the Belgic tribes in whats now South East England, such as the Belgae and Atrebates
Yup and …
She keeps referring to the "Irish". The people were called "Scots" that island was called "Scotia" . Ireland comes from "iar" the west, & Irish is not a term that was used historically It is only now , anachronistically, applied to the extent that Bede & the Anglo Saxon chronicle are being revised & edited.
In 2025 we have history informed by DNA study. It makes more sense to call populations that are no longer prehistorical, thanks to DNA, with DNA related terminology. For example, the Neolithic populations of Britain and Ireland were nearly completely replaced by Indo-European migrants around 4500 years ago. That migration is highly associated with the R-L21 Y DNA haplogroup. That haplogroup is still very common in Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Brittany, and less so in England proper. So, before the Romans invaded, the people of Ireland and Western Scotland were primarily R-L21 Indo-Europeans (or Celts or Gaels) with likely Brittonic influence in Eastern and Southern Scotland (Picts also largely R-L21). The border between Britons in the South and Gaels/Picts in the North was likely long standing by the time the Romans arrived. Thus, it was a natural place for the Romans to stop progress. (Who in their right mind would want to go toe-to-toe with the ancestors of the Gallowglass?)
"She" is in the room - don't talk over her.
^^This guy^^ needs to take a look at some modern linguistics and/or some early Irish manuscripts, and throw out his copy of Forbes outdated 'Gaelic Grammer'. Ireland doesn't come from the same root as 'iar' and appears to have been in use from at least the time of Ptolemy.
In addition the word "Brythonic" was manufactured in the late 1800s by a John Rhys.
Y Gododdin
Gwyr a aed Gatraeth odd ffraeth eu Llu; glasfedd ei hancwyn a gwenwyn fu; tri chant trwy beiriant yn catau; a gwedi elwch tawelwch fu; cyd elwynt lannau i bennydu; dadl diau yn ei treiddu.
Pryd odd y bardd hwn ?
@@jameshazelwood9433Ganed y bardd, Aneirin, yn y 6ed Ganrif (500s). Os dach chi isio mwy o wybodaeth amdano, sw'n i'n awgrymu chwilio rywbeth fel, 'Aneirin CBAC' ar google.
@ Y Gododdin? Aneirin so early 6th C I believe (topic of much debate). Sir Ifor Williams’ book Canu Aneirin is very good. includes an introduction, notes, and indices to the notes, place names and personal names. First published in 1938.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ifor_Williams?wprov=sfti1
ua-cam.com/video/TRYlWiQocIo/v-deo.htmlsi=tiQzCFqFp0smPXce
Arthur was not a person and meant Chieftain, someone who would rise up and send the invaders back from whence they came! So was I told.
I like to joke that the French language and the Welsh need to exchange vowels and consonants. 😉🤣
The opening statement is ridiculous. With no written record, how on earth can anyone say an entire archipelago once spoke the same language when even today there are many on the west coast of Ireland who do not speak English.
5,000 years ago what is now the main island of Britain became separated from Europe as the north sea eroded Doggerland.
This didn't happen overnight, and would have been characterised as flooding and general widening of channels through the land bridge.
Living in stilt houses and developing proficient sailing skills would have become a great advantage during this time.
There is zero evidence that the people of eastern Britain ever spoke Brythanic, and lots of genetic and archeological evidence that East Britons always were a separate nation, divided from the Western groups by the impracticality of overland trade and topographic obstacles.
There is ZERO evidence the eastern English were ever majority Brythonic speakers, and not always more closely connected with their cousins around the new North Sea coastline.
The Romans never did subdue the Germanic tribes and the Saxon coast forts they built along the east coast of England could just as easily be trading custom's points to regulate the cross sea trade in goods to ensure the English of the day stayed loyal to Rome.
I never mentioned an archipelago. This is not a response to my video. It is a response to your own preoccupations. You're also confusing lots of different historical periods.
The Storeĝga slide says it would have happened over night.
Were they really "Celts"?
"Celts: art and history British Museum and national Museum Scotland
“The word Celt has had many meanings. It was first used to label outsiders, a shorthand to describe barbarian peoples whose lands lay to the north of the civilised Mediterranean world inhabited by the Greeks and Romans. In recent centuries the word has been actively claimed to express a sense of belonging. Today, many people living in Scotland, Ireland, Wales, Cornwall, Brittany and Isle of Man define themselves as Celts, an identity shared by people in diaspora communities across the world. Languages, art, music, dance, sport and belief can be Celtic. This scope is a problem: There is no single Celtic people and no simple Celtic history.
As modern ideas of the Celt are intimately bound up the Scottish, Irish and Welsh identity: one feature of the classical texts is of particular interest: the people of Britian and Ireland were never described as Celts; they were Brittanni and Hiberni. The word is also absent from the surviving literature of early medieval Britain and Ireland, which speaks of Gaels, Scots Picts and Britons. In fact it was not until the eighteenth century that the term Celt was linked to the inhabitants of these islands.
At this time scholars noted similarities between languages spoken in Brittany, Cornwall, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and the Isle of Man. This, they thought, was evidence for an original ancient language shared between Britain, Ireland and France. The people occupying these lands must have been the Celts recorded by Caesar. Their language could be given the name Celtic.
Antiquarians who were struggling to understand the prehistory of Britain and Ireland seized upon this new term, describing ancient stone circles, such as Stonehenge and Avebury, as Celtic temples (although we now know that they date to the third millennium BC, long before the first recorded mention of the Celts). Later, in the mid-nineteenth century, the distinctive decorated objects of Iron Age Europe and early medieval Britain and Ireland were labelled Celtic art for the first time.
Elements of ancient languages that we now call Celtic, can be recognise from Ireland to Turkey. They survive as fragmentary inscriptions, which reveal a vocabulary and grammar related to those of languages spoken in Brittany, Cornwall, Ireland, Scotland and Wales. But he identification of long lived language family across Europe does not help us to define the identifies of the people who used them. Today, we call these languages Celtic, but this does not link them to a single group, les still to the ancient Celts. The name is only applied to those languages recently, and in any case a shared linguistic heritage need not reveal a shared cultural identity. The ancient Celtic languages may have been related, but they need not have been mutually intelligible. In the early medieval period, when we have more evidence at our disposal, it is clear that the Celtic languages are characterised by their diversity, not their unity. St Columba, traveling from the west coast of Scotland to the east in the sixth century, required an interpreter. “
Whenever I encounter Celtosceptic screeds like the above, I ask myself "who does this opinion serve?" Why is it important to this individual that certain people not be called Celts, or not be allowed to call themselves Celtic. "Celtic" as it exists in academia today is primarily a linguistic term, and the vast majority of linguists are comfortable with that. Naturally, language and culture have close ties, since it is relatively difficult to disseminate abstract ideas across linguistic divides.
Generally, Celtoscepticism serves a few interests. 1) People who don't wish to be considered Celtic because that would group them with people they don't want to be associated with. 2) Outsiders who are antagonistic to people gathering under that umbrella. 3) People who believe that Celticicity can be measured by genetics, who may, or may not, be somewhat racist. 4) People who don't understand the nuance of the discussion around the term 'Celtic' in academia, but having read one popular piece like the one you quote, become overnight experts on the internet. 5) They are organising an exhibition about The Celts at the British Museum.
I suggest you read this response from a highly respected scholar: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v21/n21/patrick-sims-williams/how-are-you-finding-it-here
A couple of quotes:
"Colonialism, as Siân Jones explained in Archaeology of Ethnicity (1997), commonly involves ‘the critical scrutiny of a minority group’s identity and history by the dominant society, rather than vice versa, ultimately perpetuating the relations of power between groups’. It would be odd if English and French study of the Celtic-speaking peoples of Britain, Ireland and Brittany were somehow a benign exception - especially as the negative tone had already been set by classical writers. "
"So Britain and Ireland were perceived as distinct from Celtica in the same way that, say, Ceylon was always seen as distinct from India. From this basically geographical viewpoint, the inhabitants of Britain and Ireland were not Celts like the Gauls, any more than Sri Lankans are Indians. On the other hand, there were clearly plenty of linguistic and cultural connections, some of them noted by Caesar, Tacitus and others, between Gaul and Britain (and Ireland, to the extent that it was known). Does ‘Celtic’ not remain a convenient label for these, at least as valid as most such labels (‘Germanic’ for instance, which is applied to many peoples who never regarded themselves as Germani)?"
"The importance of language in ‘Celticity’ reflects the re-emergence of the term in 18th-century linguistics in connection with the discovery that ancient British (the ancestor of Welsh, Cornish and Breton) and ancient Gaulish, which had been known to be related since the time of Tacitus, were also related to the Gaelic language of Ireland and Scotland. "
@@KrisHughes That text is from an exhibition I attended at the National museum of Scotland.
I'm a native of North East Scotland and live a few miles from the Pictish stronghold of Burghead. And I think I'll remain a sceptic of the term.
@@SlydeilPlease yourself.
I think you'll find that the exhibition was on tour/loan from the British, which provided the literature.
@KrisHughes It was a joint venture, the British Museum AND Museum of Scotland. I hardly think that the Museum of Scotland would show something without it being validated and corroborated.
Secondly why would involvement by the British museum be an issue? It is itself a respected institution representing the whole of the UK.
I would be interested to know why you exclude the English ?