There’s plenty of Welsh around Oswestry, quite a few of the cash machines are bi-lingual so I’ll always choose the Welsh option, Morrisons in Oswestry has bilingual signage to an extent (although they’ve spelt Croesoswallt incorrectly at the entrance to the shop) and we’ll regularly hear Welsh spoken in the town, especially on Wednesdays - market day.
Have any of you seen this film - Whiteblade - about the story behind how Oswestry got its name? I heard about it during last weekend when I was participating in the course about the development of Welsh literature in Snowdonia.
The 2011 Census recorded approximately 200 households in the area where Welsh was the family language. Whether any of these were native Shropshire families or whether they were immigrants from over the border, we cannot tell.
I have always thought this myself. Well, actually, I always used to think we should teach at least the basics of all the Celtic languages of these islands, although that may be less practicable.
I think I’d now go for a more nuanced approach, but I strongly feel that every child in England should be well exposed to at least one of the Celtic languages. The actual language could vary from place to place. (Obviously, Cornish children should have the chance to learn Cornish, for example).
My Welsh in a Week booklet was only Ninepence old money @Richmountart, I’m currently taking a slightly longer route and doing the 6 month SSiW course.
I have looked up the Welsh club in Oswestry and it sounds interesting but it’s closed between May and September and funnily no mention of annual cabaret!!!
Thanks @Deborah-SSi I will look up Whiteblade, sounds interesting, in fact interesting
info all round about welsh on the borders
I didn’t know much about Oswald until on a visit to Northumbria I saw a book about him “The King in the North” by Max Adams (which is an amazing book which brings that really brings the history alive), and it was fascinating the connections between Northumbria and Celtic kingdoms to the West (both Gaelic and Welsh) and helps explain the location of his death on the border between Mercia and Wales.
One of the previous kings of Northumbria Edwin, before becoming king of Northumbria was exiled to various kingdoms including Gwynedd and was likely to have been brought up in the house of Cadfan ap Iago. Cadfan’s son Cadwallon was effectively his foster brother, and he probably would have fought in the warband of Cadfan such as at the Battle of Chester against AEthelfrith of Northumbria (who possibly saw Edwin as a threat). However close Edwin and Cadwallon were in their youth it didn’t end well, Edwin, after he became king of Northumbria, conquered neighbouring British (Welsh) Kingdoms such as Elmet (now part of Yorkshire) and also Anglesey. Cadwallon later fought back, with military support from Mercia, and killed Edwin and others and conquered Northumbria at the Battle of Hatfield in 633 and held it for a year or so until Oswald, (son of the previously mentioned AEthelfrith), came back from exile (he had been brought up in the court of the Gaelic kingdom of Dal Riata in Western Scotland) and defeated Cadwallon in 634. Later Oswald was himself killed by an alliance of Welsh and Mercian forces at Oswestry (Croes Oswallt - Oswald’s cross). His exile in Dal Riata as a boy meant he could speak Gaelic - he helped St Aidan with translating as Aidan didn’t understand English (Aidan was brought over from Iona at the request of Oswald to introduce Christianity to Northumbria and founded the monsastery of Lindisfarne). Hope I got all that correct it’s a while since I read the book!
I will definitely have to get that book. I find it all really fascinating, and a lot of what you’ve written there was mentioned in the course with Harriet Earis over the weekend. I learnt so much!
As an occupant of Dalriada! (Now known as mid-Argyll) it is interesting that the Gaelic brought here came from Ireland. Yet Scottish Gaelic now is very different from Irish. I can only presume lots of changes over the centuries.
Yes, it’s strange that, isn’t it? Perhaps Scottish Gaelic got heavily influenced by the Brittonic Celtic (perhaps Pictic, in some places) that was spoken in Scotland before Gaelic took over.
Is it that different though? The spellings vary wildly, but many of the words and the structures are fairly similar (certainly more so than between either language and Welsh!).
I lived on the Isle of Lewis when I was a child and was surrounded by Gaelic (that I didn’t understand), but even now I can see a similarity between Irish and Scottish Gaelic.
I don’t think they’re any more different than, say, Welsh and Cornish, are they? I’ve heard Irish speakers say that people from the Outer Hebrides sound like they’re speaking Irish with a Viking accent.
I found the Sir John Rhys Memorial Lecture for 1951 last week given by Kenneth Jackson (authority on Brythonic languages etc) “Common Gaelic: The Evolution of the Goedelic Languages”. I have only browsed though it so far but he argues for a fairly late separation of Scottish and Irish Gaelic (partly by included comparisons with Manx and how that developed). I’m not sure how opinions have changed since 1951 but it might be online somewhere if anyone wants to read his views.
They seem closer to me than Welsh and Cornish - although a native Welsh speaker told me recently about seeing a Cornish film (somehow without knowing at first what it was - It was at a film festival I think) and being surprised at how much he understood. I’ve heard before that Cornish sounds like “strange Welsh” to native Welsh speakers.
And I’m guessing that Breton sounds like Cornish with a French accent. Certainly when I listened to some of the Breton Assimil course, the overall sound had a very French feel to it - with obviously a very non-French vocabulary and structure. And Cornish and Breton are supposed to be closer to each other than either is to Welsh.
Great explanation. Also I think, in between Hatfield/haeddfield and Oswestry battles (timewise), was the battle of Heavenfield. Did you visit the site when you went to Northumberland? It’s just up the road from where some my family live, and great Roman Wall scenery
Sorry, I was thinking relatively. No, not that different. And with very little ‘pictish’ (British, as was!). I see some in place names, And weird effects … Dun Eidin, now Caeredin. So went from Fort to Castle in our language! Only the Lord’s name lasts!
But of course Welsh and Cornish are closer, in every way, although I’m not sure how much Cornish has actually endured! As for Breton, when the last Legions left, Romano-Brits were obviously given the nod to go too, if they wanted. They set up Brittany, not deliberately, but just by settling where they landed. So they brought yr iaith Brideinig as it was spoken. They were drawn from south rather than all the way from the Wall, I would guess, so it was more like Cymraeg and Cornish than Cumbrian/Elnet!?
Yes I think that was the one in 634 in which Oswald defeated Cadwallon. I wasn’t aware of the site as I’d only just started reading the book while I was there.
I gather there are now-extinct dialects – Lowland Gaelic, Galwegian Gaelic, Rathlin Isksland dialect – that helped to form a chain from Ulster to South-Western Scotland; conversely, there were shared innovations in those central areas that didn’t spread so far north or south, so that there are apparently some points on which the Gaelic of, say, Stornoway agrees more with Southern Irish than with Northern.
I think it was Donald Craig – according to some accounts the last native speaker of the Isle of Arran dialect of Gaelic – who apparently decided, when the second-to-last native speaker died, not to speak Gaelic any more, but to switch to English rather than be expected to communicate in the horrid artificial normalised language of the schoolbooks (as he saw it). (I know I head this story of someone – I’m just not sure I’ve got the right last speaker of the right dialect.) As an English speaker I shall never be in that position, so I can’t know how it feels; but it seems like an odd choice, to me.
Ulster<->West Scotland is and was the easy route! Now, a lot of Ulster people are descended by Scots sent there to colonise for the British crown! Interchange in both directions… potato famine… even , more recently, girls wanting abortions…
