Wales: A Land of Medieval Outlaws

When people outside the British Isles think of rebellious medieval Celts, they think of the Irish and Scots, not the Welsh.

Welsh comedian Rob Brydon once quipped that while the Scots declared, "You may take our land, but you can never take our freedom!" the Welsh would say, "You can have our land and while you're at it, would you like our freedom, too?"

But as this week's article about 15th-century Welsh outlaw king Owain Glyndwr shows, there's a lot more to the Welsh than that. Especially the medieval Welsh.

If there is an aboriginal culture remaining in the British Isles, it lies in Wales. Evidence of settlement goes back before the last Ice Age to the Red Lady of Paviland (actually a young man) who was buried in a cave on the south coast of Wales about 28,000 years ago. When invaders from the Romans to the Saxons, to the Vikings to the Normans invaded the British Isles, the rugged Welsh marches proved an easily defended stronghold for the native Britons. As such, the Welsh are descended from every disenfranchised former inhabitant of southern England. They even once had a kingdom called "Strathclyde" up in Scotland.

Roman generals and English king Edward Longshanks both installed fortresses to keep the Welsh divided and weak. This worked well in a political sense; in fact, the Welsh still can't agree on how they feel about their past, let alone their future. In spite of this, the Welsh still have the most unadulterated and cohesive culture in the British Isles. While the Irish and Scots loudly proclaimed their independence in the Modern era and the Welsh quietly resigned themselves to agricultural poverty, provincial obscurity and political disenfranchisement, the cultural reality turned out differently. British "education" campaigns against Celtic language and culture in the 20th century reduced the influence of Irish, Scots Gaelic and Welsh as primary tongues and promoters of language, humiliating and marginalizing native Gaelic speakers in the name of British unity under the English tongue.

But this worked least well in Wales. Though native speakers of Welsh dropped to 16-24% of the population, this was still far more than in Scotland or Ireland, about 500,000 people. Since the 1970s, when official repression abated, the Welsh language has rebounded. A good example is the highly enthusiastic language site on BBC Wales. The Welsh are now debating how they should feel about the past (including recently getting their own parliament) and naturally, they still can't agree. But the medieval legacy of Owain Glyndwr continues to inspire his people. Maybe those who called him the return of King Arthur weren't so far off the mark.