Welsh History - Questions and Answers
Interesting to know:
Often English textbooks that deal with
e.g. “
This is the first sentence in the chapter on
For hundreds of
years
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What changes did the three and a half centuries of Roman control affect in Britain?
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What happened to
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In what area was
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What happened to
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How did the Acts of
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What were the 2 pillars that kept the struggle for Welsh independence alive?
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Why did Queen Elizabeth allow the Bible to be translated into Welsh?
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What unexpected influence did the translation of the Bible have?
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What was behind the enormous changes that transformed
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What was the general response in
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Why was it dangerous for the Welsh economy to be so dominated by the coal industry?
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Reasons for the failure to vote for the creation of the first Welsh Assembly in 1979
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What fields of Welsh life enjoyed benefits and which areas suffered after
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What right were Welsh language-activists fighting for in the 1960s?
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What were some of the means used by these language-activists to have their way?
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1997: The story of
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So what explains the success of the 1997 referendum versus the failure of the 1979 referendum?
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What part of
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What was it like for a Welsh student to attend British schools?
Where does the language of
the Welsh come from?
Most Celtic tribes living throughout
What was life like in Celtic
Britain?
There never was a unified Celtic kingdom or empire in
§
Mainly farmers, shepherds, and forest
dwellers
§
Religion: Druidism (Druids: religious and political
leaders)
What do we know about the
origin of Stonehenge?
The stones to build the religious worship place of
The Druids simply took this worship site over making it one of the “new”
centres of their religious ceremonies.
What changes did the three
and a half centuries of Roman control affect in Britain?
§
Conquered parts of
§
Built forts and stationed the 2 largest legions there:
§ Connected the forts with stone roads
What happened to
5th c.:
Celtic Christian monks arrive to spread the gospel in
St David (the patron Saint of
The Celts experienced a
cultural revival in the 5th century.
Interestingly enough, with very few exceptions, they did not move into
the hundreds of beautiful, luxurious villas or the many military barracks
abandoned by the Romans in the early 5th century. One of the few exceptions we know of was
King Arthur. He set up his court (or one
of his courts) in an elegant, imposing Roman amphitheatre in Caerleon,
south-eastern
King Arthur was a Celtic chieftain who personifies successful Celtic
resistance against the invading Anglo-Saxons in the early 5th
century.
Did the Anglo-Saxons manage
to conquer Wales?
No, they did not. Many Celtic tribes were pushed out of
present-day
It was in 615 that those living in
A good century and a half
later (780s) one of the famous Anglo-Saxon kings, king Offa
of Mercia, decided to have a dyke built all along the
border to physically separate the dangerous Celts from his kingdom. Offa’s dyke ran
roughly along the present border between
How did the Viking raids
affect Wales?
It was a fateful day for the
Christian monastic settlements of the
The sacking of the
monasteries went on for several hundreds of years reaching the holiest
Christian monastery in
Around the time when Alfred the Great of
In what area was
Welsh law and
customs were collected and codified under the reign of Hywel the Good ®
(the grandson of
Rhodri the Great), serving as a testimony to us today of how much further advanced the Welsh were with regards to
equality and justice, as well as common sense compared with the English. For instance, women “were guaranteed certain property rights, which did not
become part of the laws of
Though law as
practiced in Wales was a most democratic judicial system, through the
law known as Gavelkind, it specified
that a father's lands be divided among all his sons, rather than be given intact
to the eldest son. This led to unforeseen and tragic results for
What happened to
In the year 1200,
under Llywelyn the Great
It was Llywelyn the Last (ap Gruffudd) ® who, like his
grandfather (Llywelyn the Great), was able
to re-unite much of his country and was called Prince of Wales. He
was even acknowledged by Henry III in 1267 (at the Treaty of Montgomery,
recognizing the Welsh leader's claim to the three major kingdoms of Gwynedd, Powys, and Deheubarth).
“It seemed, for a short time at least,
that the dream of the Welsh people had been realized -- they had their own
prince, they governed their own territories, under their own laws and were able
to conduct their own affairs in their own language free from English influence.
Edward I ® was determined
to rule a united
Llywelyn suffered
a humiliating defeat and had to
stand by and watch as Edward I began building a ring of four castles at strategic places around his
reduced principality (Gwynedd). Edward not only stationed English soldiers in
these formidable castles but also moved their families as well as merchants there.
“In 1284, the Statute of Rhuddlan
confirmed Edward's plans regarding the governing of
“Following his
successes in
Describe the
Welsh War of
The rebellion had
been no mere peasant uprising, but a general uniting of feeling and action. Gwynfor Evans, a 20th century Welsh leader and author describes it as a "genuine War of Independence that ...
was the first in a series of extraordinary events to which the nation, which
was to be incorporated in imperial
Owain Glyndwr ®, Lord of Glyndyfrdwy (the Valley of the
At first, it seemed that Owain was attempting more
than he could handle; his raids upon the English boroughs were easily repulsed
and his supporters scattered. Repressive measures undertaken by the new
King Henry, however, and the penal
legislation of 1401 that further restricted Welsh civil rights at the expense
of English settlers gave Owain the support he had
previously lacked.
The comet that appeared in 1402 was seen by the Welsh
as a sign of their forthcoming deliverance from bondage as well as one that
proclaimed the appearance of Owain.
Three royal expeditions against Glyndwr had completely
failed. He (held Harlech and Aberystwyth
in the West, had extended his influence as far as Glamorgan
and Gwent in the South and East, and)was receiving support from
It didn't seem too ambitious for Owain to believe
that with suitable allies, he could even help bring about the dethronement of
the English king; thus he entered into a tripartite alliance with Henry Percy,
the Earl of Northumberland and
Edmund Mortimer to divide up England and Wales among them. Edmund had married Owain's daughter Caitrin after he
had been captured at Pilleth and gone over to the
Welsh side.
Henry Percy, (Hotspur) was killed at the Battle
of Shrewsbury, and the increasing boldness and military skills of Henry's son,
the English prince of Wales and later King Henry V,
began to turn the tide against Glyndwr. In
Owain's other main ally, the Scottish king,
was taken prisoner by the English. Saddest of all, like so many of his
predecessors, Glyndwr was betrayed at home. It is not too comforting for
Welsh people of today to read that one of the staunchest allies of the English
king and enemy of Glyndwr was a man of Brecon, Dafydd Gam.
A
sixth expedition into
The English response was predictable: again the imposition of harsh, punitive measures were enacted against any signs
of further resistance to their rule. The Welsh people were forced to pay
large subsidies; they were prohibited from acquiring land east of Offa's Dyke or even within the boundaries of the English
boroughs in
How did the Acts of
2. English
became the only official language
3. Welsh
last names had to be changed to English
4. Welsh
counties were reorganized
5. The
Eisteddfods were outlawed (most important cultural event in
6. The
Catholic Church in
Describe the
Reformation in
“After Britain's relatively peaceful conversion to Protestantism, certainly peaceful compared to what transpired on the Continent, threats of invasion from Spain and the fear of a return to what was considered a morally and spiritually bankrupt foreign church (or foreign rule, in the case of Mary and Philip) kept the majority of people in Wales closely allied to their fellow islanders in England.
It
was this sense of a shared religious destiny that slowly integrated itself into
the minds of the peoples of both countries so that they also began to think of
themselves as sharing a common British
heritage. Wales had no legal system of its own; its
religious organization was modeled after that of England, and as we have seen, no capital
city or center (or university) to serve as a center for its cultural life.
What were the 2
pillars that kept the struggle for Welsh independence alive?
To a large extent, language and to a lesser extent the Protestant religion, were the two pillars that kept the struggle
for independence alive, as dismal and as hopeless as it seemed after 1536 and
even more so after 1603. Both had been helped immeasurably by the fortuitous
arrival of and widespread
dissemination of the Welsh Bible.
Why did Queen
Elizabeth allow the Bible to be translated into Welsh?
In 1563 a bill was passed
ordering that the Bible be translated into Welsh. This act was not undertaken
with any royal love or respect to the language, but one that, according to Dafydd Johnston, formed "an essential part of the program of the Protestant Reformation in
The Government
thinking that by having Welsh translations placed next to the English texts in
Church, the congregations would learn English. It was also a good method to
firmly establish Protestantism in
A parish priest by the name William Morgan ® was the one who led the tremendous work of translating the Bible into Welsh publishing the first copies in 1588 – just a mere 2 years before Gáspár Károli completed the first complete Hungarian translation called the Vizsolyi Biblia in 1590.
“The Welsh Bible was
so successful that all one thousand copies quickly became worn out (or
stolen) and a new edition was desperately needed. In
1620.”
What unexpected
influence did the translation of the Bible have?
Its influence
upon the subsequent religious direction of the Welsh people was totally
unexpected; it had enormous effects upon their language and literature. Many
historians believe that it was this book alone that prevented Welsh from becoming nothing more than a bundle of
provincial dialects or of even disappearing
altogether. Perhaps it is mainly to this that much of the strength of
present-day Welsh is owed, compared to Irish (which did not get its own
Bible until 1690), and Scots Gaelic (which had to wait until 1801). “
When did Wales
become a Nonconformist nation?
With
the arrival of
Methodist preachers in
Due
to religious persecution by the Anglican Church whole villages fled to
What was behind
the enormous changes that transformed
“In the 19th
c.
According to
historian Gwyn Williams,
The rural
northwest and central areas of
“Living
and working conditions were poor for industrial and agricultural workers. A series of Rebecca Riots” in
What caused the general
decline of the Welsh language?
1.
English-only secondary schools all over
2. Huge
immigration from
What was the
general response in
“There is an
effort made by certain well-meaning but ill-advised friends of
Why was it
dangerous for the Welsh economy to be so dominated by the coal industry?
“From 1880 up to the First World War it seemed that
nothing could stop the expansion of industrial production in
In the 1880's and 90's more and more
immigrants came to settle in the long, narrow valleys that rapidly filled with the characteristic terraces with
their long rows of miners' houses. There was trouble ahead.
It was somehow ignored that Welsh coal was almost entirely dependent upon world markets. If the whole of
What is Lloyd George most remembered for?
§
Who were the 2
Welshmen who introduced far-reaching welfare legislation (e.g. NHS) after the second World War and what did they provide?
“¬ James
Griffiths
and Aneurin Bevan
®
worked hard and long to produce the National
Insurance Act of 1946 that compelled all workers to insure themselves
against ill-health or unemployment.
This revolutionary measure was, in turn, followed by the Industrial Injuries Act of 1948 that
took as its model local welfare schemes that had been practiced in the South
Wales coalfield's long tradition of self-help and co-operative health
organizations.
The same year saw
the introduction of the National Health
Service that provided free medical treatment, prescriptions, and
(A. Bevan) prosthetic devices such as eyeglasses
and false teeth to all who needed
them.
Reasons for the failure to vote for the creation of
the first Welsh Assembly in 1979:
“Many reasons
were offered for the failure of the Welsh people to vote in favor of devolution
in their big chance of 1979, their long-awaited opportunity to assert their
nationhood. As at so many times in their history, they were divided against
each other. Perhaps they had become too dependent upon handouts from
Perhaps, too,
there were all those memories still very much alive of a proud, unified
The referendum
took place on St. David's Day 1979, when
Kinnock was yet
another who mistrusted those who liked to conduct their affairs in the Welsh
language. Though married to a Welsh speaker from
What fields of
Welsh life enjoyed benefits and which areas suffered after
Closures of
plants:
Since 1988, 138
plants had closed, with only 73 new enterprises starting up. In Aberdare alone, male unemployment was listed at 29 percent,
with a rate nudging 50 percent in some housing estates. Near Aberdare, Tower, the sole remaining
What right were
Welsh language-activists fighting for in the 1960s?
“In the face of
much hostility from passive locals and prosecution from the authorities, they
pressed for the right to use Welsh on all government documents, from Post
Office forms to television licenses, from driving permits to income tax forms.”
What were some of
the means used by these language-activists to have their way?
“1962, a Welsh language activist (Cymdeithas yr Iaith Cymraeg) decided to ignore an English language summons to appear in court for allowing his girl friend to ride side saddles on his bicycle. A series of protests and civil disobedience followed that was to last for the next twenty years.
Undeterred by
their forcible removal, arrests, and prison sentences for disturbing the peace,
and led by such activists as Fred Francis and folk-singer Dafydd
Iwan, the society began a serious campaign. English only road signs were spray
painted or removed. It became
increasingly frustrating and expensive for local authorities and the Ministry
of Transport to remove, renovate or replace damaged signs.
What was the
fruit of their campaign?
“Eventually, in
1963, faced with an ever growing campaign, increased police and court costs,
destruction of government property, and the vociferous demands for action, the
central Government decided to establish a committee to look at the legal status
of Welsh. Its report, issued two years later, recommended that the Welsh
language be given equal validity with English, a diluted version of which
was placed into the Welsh Language Act of 1967. The older
generation began to reconsider their passiveness in letting the language die. Dafydd Iwan and his
contemporaries had inaugurated a whole new movement in Welsh music. Even the revered Eisteddfod entered into the spirit, each year erecting a Roc Pavilion where such groups could
attract the young audiences who had previously been sorely neglected.
In 1962, BBC Wales had been producing a meager
six hours a week of Welsh language programs the effects of the Welsh Language Act of 1967. Of crucial
importance has been the success of Welsh television, and for that, much of the
credit is due to Gwynfor Evans
®. … When demands came for a separate channel for all-Welsh programs
ironically, many English speakers were in full support as they resented Welsh
language broadcasts "interfering" on what they considered their
channels.
When the Government refused to honor its commitment to the proposed channel, a vigorous protest movement developed, with thousands of Plaid Cymru members vowing to refuse to pay their television license fees (and their subsequent fines) and prepared to be imprisoned. When Evans, the much-loved and highly respected leader of Plaid announced that he would undergo a hunger strike to the death, the Government capitulated.
On
(The new attitude towards Welsh has helped make
1997: The story of
The propaganda
campaign prior to the 1997 referendum in
Questions posed by the average voter in
• Would the setting up
of the Assembly lead to the break up of the
• Would the Assembly
force everyone living in
• Would the Assembly be
yet another gang of politicians to feed at the public trough?
• Would it be dominated
by the Anglicized, eastward-gazing professional politicians
from
So what explains
the success of the 1997 referendum versus the failure of the 1979 referendum?
“The trade unions
in
What powers and
benefits will the Welsh Assembly have?
“Devolution
offers ordinary people some control and influence over decisions affecting
their lives and communities. It is about democratic accountability, where those
who take the decisions and spend the money are required to face the people in
elections. Devolution gives a proper sense of identity to
“The Welsh
Assembly, apart from the opportunity it will give to improve education, health,
and so on, the most important consequence will be to give the Welsh people more
confidence in themselves.”
What part of
“The majority of
the "yes" votes came from the western, Welsh-speaking areas and from
the Welsh-thinking former industrial valleys of the south. The turn out was
just over 50 percent, reflecting the general apathy of so many of the eligible
voters; thus the plan for the Assembly was approved by only 25 percent of the
Welsh electorate. “
An embarrassing reaction of an English newspaper to
the ‘yes’ vote in
“A quintessential
English newspaper, the Guardian,
stated that "the final 'yes' vote was delivered by
What was it like
for a Welsh student to attend British schools?
”Born in