(Almost) Touching the Past - Medieval Welsh Documents

I spend an inordinate amount of time studying Anglo-Saxon charters, law codes, letters and chronicles. There is something about reading - albeit in translation - the original words; even if these primary sources are not completely contemporary, they are an echo of a voice from years, centuries ago, and it never fails to thrill me when I read them. 

They provide the connection between what we are told when we are being taught history at school, or elsewhere, and what we can discover for ourselves. Somehow, it makes the people from the past become 'real'. And I don't restrict this interest to Anglo-Saxon materials.

In 2012 I visited Strata Florida Abbey, or to give it its Welsh name, Ystrad Fflur. It's a ruin, as you can see. But 'round the back' are a line of grave markers. It is known that many members of the Royal house of Deheubarth were buried here. Was I looking at their grave stones?

It's not known, for sure. Standing in the grounds of the ruined abbey I certainly felt the past, but I edged much closer to it when I read a translation of a Deheubarth royal charter, dated 1198. 

Rhys ap Rhys confirms to Strata Florida Abbey all the lands which it received from his brother Maelgwn, together with his body for burial. [Dated at Strata Florida, original text in Latin.]

I don't know if I was looking at the grave, or marker, of Maelgwn, but it closed the gap between a weathered old piece of stone and a real person.

On that same trip, I visited the National Library of Wales at Aberystwyth and I saw an exhibit that made me shiver. In a good way...

Years ago, I had read Sharon K Penman's Welsh Trilogy, and swiftly followed that with Edith Pargeter's The Brothers of Gwynedd Quartet. The historical detail in both these series is reliable and impeccably researched. I then read a lot of non-fiction books about the Princes of Gwynedd, and holidayed in the area many times. I'd seen what is thought to be the sarcophagus of Llywelyn Fawr (Llewelyn the Great), and that of his wife, Joan, and visited a lot of sites associated with them, including their Royal Llys (house) at Rhosyr. To stand among the foundation stones of what was their dwelling added another dimension to my discovery of Welsh history.

But the moment I felt closest to this man was when I saw the exhibit that day in the National Library in Aberystwyth - his great seal.

The stories, told fictionally or factually, give a real sense of the man. To see his great seal attached to a document brought him nearer, and gave him real identity. Those who know his story, or who have read the novels, will understand how much more potent it is to read the translations of letters and other acts, which tell us that:

Llywelyn ap Iorwerth, prince of north Wales, agrees to indemnify King Henry III and the latter's men for injuries inflicted by Llywelyn and his men in the troubles surrounding the seizure of Kinnerley. Dated 7th October 1223.

Llewelyn was determined to bring the in-fighting in Wales to a halt, to strengthen it against England, and to establish once and for all its independent status. The above example shows how this was no easy, peaceful task.

If you do know the stories, you will know that Llewelyn and Joan had only one son together. How much more 'real' these characters become when you learn of the existence of a letter, "soon after May 1230", from:

Llywelyn ap Iorwerth, prince of Aberffraw and lord of Snowden, to Eva de Braose, concerning the marriage of her daughter Isabel to his son Dafydd.

Family squabbles amongst the Welsh princes continued, but Llewelyn's eventual successor was equally determined to champion the Welsh as an independent nation. How it must have pained Llywelyn's grandson, Llywelyn ap Gruffudd (spoiler alert - he was known at Llywelyn the Last) to agree, on 9th November 1277,

to pay 500 marks annually to his lord, King Edward I, for Anglesey and the land of his brother Dafydd. Dated at Aberconwy.

Poignantly, Aberconwy was the traditional burial place of the princes of Gwynedd. It no longer exists, a victim not of the ravages of time, but of Edward's order for the destruction of the abbey and to use the stones to build Conwy Castle and the surrounding walled town.

A letter from Eleanor, princess of Wales and lady of Snowden (Llywelyn's wife, and daughter of Simon de Montford) was written to Edward, sometime between 1279 and 1281,

asking him not to heed those who say damaging things to him about her and her husband. 

Eleanor died in childbirth, and by all accounts Llywelyn was devastated. He himself came to an end at Cilmeri, not far from Buellt Wells.

A letter from Roger le Strange to Edward I:

informs the king that the troops under Roger’s command fought with Llywelyn ap Gruffudd in the land of Built on Friday next after the feast of St. Nicholas (December 11th, 1282], that Llywelyn ap Gruffudd is dead, his army defeated, and all the flower of his army dead, as the bearer of the letter will tell. [French]

I visited Cilmeri on a damp and drizzly day and stood for a while at the spot where reportedly Llywelyn's head was washed,

and then I stood for a moment by his memorial.

It was a sombre moment, but for a glimpse of the man who was not known as 'the last' while he ruled, how about this prosaic letter, from 

Llywelyn, prince of Wales and lord of Snowdon, to Guncelin de Badlesmere, justice of Chester, asking him to defer the business of the corn in Anglesey until Llywelyn has received clarification from the king regarding a certain obscure word in the king's charter on this matter.

No blood, no guts, no tragedy, but a glimpse into the everyday medieval world, and a sense of the tension between proud Welsh Princes and their would-be overlords. This is when history comes to life for me.

[all photographs by and copyright of the author]

Further reading:
English Historical Documents Vol II Ed. D Douglas
Handlist of the Acts of Native Welsh Rulers - KL Maund
The Taming of the Dragon - Bartlett
The Welsh Kings - KL Maund
The Welsh Princes - Turvey
Here Be Dragons, Falls the Shadow, The Reckoning - SK Penman
The Brothers of Gwynedd Quartet - Edith Pargeter

The Many Faces of Arthur - A Reader's Viewpoint

King Arthur: real person, a myth, a legend, a Welshman? A Northerner? A novelist's delight?

My grandfather was an English teacher, and subsequently the headmaster of a boys' grammar school. That's all I need to tell you for you to imagine the number of books he had in his house. Periodically he would have a partial clear-out, and he used to give me the lion's share of his books about the early medieval world. Consequently I became the owner of several books about the Celts, and not a few about King Arthur, almost all of them written by Geoffrey Ashe. 

My A Level project was about the Celts, and I have continued over the years to research and take an interest in them. But Arthur? Not so much. Beyond scarcely believing that he was ever even a real figure, I thought about him only when I got cross with interpretations which focused on the magical, the medieval, the Malory version of the tales. Nope, Arthur wasn't for me.

And yet, on one shelf alone, I have six novels, by four authors, and they are all stories of Arthur.

So, why? What is it about these books that caught - and held - my interest? I've tried to list these books in the order in which I first read them, but memory plays games, doesn't it? 

The only one I can pin down with any certainty is Parke Godwin's Firelord, because I remember my sister recommending it to me, along with Sharon Penman's The Sunne in Splendour, for something to read to fill the evenings when, having recently graduated and in my first job, I was living on my own for the first time.

I know I read Helen Hollick's books after I'd discovered Sharon Penman, and the date inside my copy of the first in her trilogy suggests that I came to them nearly a decade later. I would swear I read Persia Woolley while I was still a student, but I graduated in 1985, and my copy is dated 1988.

Thus, I think the first of these books to entertain me was The Mists of Avalon by Marion Bradley (my copy is dated 1983)

Now, despite what I've just said about not liking too much magic and mysticism, this novel is told from the point of view of Morgaine, who has the gift of 'sight'. In some respects this is a fairly faithful recreation of the Arthurian legend, but there are twists, most of which I can't reveal for fear of spoiling the plot. 

Morgaine is not an evil witch, and although she remains responsible for much of what happens, she is given a believable and poignant backstory. Some characters from the legend are fused, so that Galahad is also known as Lancelot, but others become three dimensional; in particular, Gwenhwyfar, who has a more powerful reason for her betrayal of Arthur than simply being smitten by a dashing knight. The clash between the old and new religions adds a powerful dimension to the story, too, and roots it more firmly in its historical context.

Bradley's story is told through the eyes of the women, but Parke Godwin went completely the other way and made Arthur the narrator. My copy of Firelord is dated 1980 but I must have read it around 1986-87.

Arthur lies dying, and looks back over his life, dictating to the young monk, Brother Coel. It's a surprising reworking of the story: 

"Damn it, I haven't time to lie here. Whatever comes, there's more for a king to do than squat like a mushroom and maunder on eternity."

Godwin gives Arthur a distinctive voice, and his tale is one based on such history as consensus suggests we have; that Arthur sprang from the dying embers of Roman Britain. Again, Morgana (as she is called in this version) is a sympathetic character. The love stories do not play out quite as expected, and while there are still certain elements of the legend, I recall that my sympathies ended up lying in unexpected places. The characterisation was sharp, different, and refreshing. 

Persia Woolley's Child of the Northern Spring shifts the focus back onto the female perspective. This is volume one of a trilogy, and for reasons long-forgotten now, I didn't ever read the other two volumes. Much of the first volume is taken up with Guinevere, daughter of the Cumbri, whose leader is the king of Rheged. She journeys from her homeland to marry Arthur, recounting tales from her past as she goes. Characters from the legend appear, such as King Mark and Tristan, along with Uther, King Lot and Igraine. I remember as I read this book that it didn't feel like I was reading the tale of Arthur necessarily, but a book set in similar times and with similar characters. Years later, watching the film First Knight, with its emphasis on Guinevere having come from a different country, I was reminded of Woolley's book.

Helen Hollick's Pendragon Trilogy dispenses with all the fantasy/magic elements of the tale. In this version, Gwenhwyfar is still the daughter of a foreign king, but in this instance she is the progeny of Cunedda, king of Gwynedd. To describe Hollick's Gwen as 'feisty' is to do her a disservice. She is courageous, and she is more than a match for Arthur.

The love story is far from simple and is satisfying, but what really struck me about this telling of the legend is that it simply didn't feel like I was reading about fictional characters at all. Removing the sorcery and leaving behind just the swords, the author paints a picture of a time in history, just as believable as anything from the pages of a Penman or a Chadwick historical novel. 

Unlike with Child of the Northern Spring, I never lost sight of the fact that this was the Arthurian tale, but I believed in these characters as real, historical figures. It was an indulgent delight, too, that just as with Penman's Welsh trilogy, I was able to settle down with not one, but three chunky volumes. I stayed with these people so long, that they occupied my thoughts for a long while afterwards.

So, no, I'm still not a huge fan of the non-fictional Arthur. I make a vague mental note when yet another theory emerges about him, that he was a Welshman, a Scot, a Yorkshireman, but where his appeal lies for me, is in his capacity to be so many things to so many different authors, and the proof that a tale can be retold in numerous ways, and always have something new to say.

Which Arthurian novels have you read, and loved, and why?