Wales and its History

Gruffudd ap yr Ynad Coch The heart of oak is cold behind the gates of Aberffraw.  The hand that gave gold  is still now – I cannot wear it,  the apparel he put about me.  This grief for my lord is a cloud on my soul  This grief for the fate that his wounds brought us  confounds the red spear of Cadwalader’s keeping.  For us now the darkness,  the hatred of Saxons  A time of lamenting  in the life left to us  A time now to praise him  to think of his glory  to reproach even God  who has left us without him;  For him life eternal.  What now for us left  with a full load of weeping?  The dark hand that felled him  haunts his kingdom; his hall now the grave.  A long vista of fear stretches before us.  Lord Christ deliver him  for the sake of our sorrow,  Heavy the sword blows that struck him to earth  Heir of brave princes, his flame  bu...

Armes Prydein  ( Welsh pronunciation:  [ˈarmɛs ˈprədəin] ,  The Prophecy of Britain ) is an early 10th-century  Welsh  prophetic poem from the  Book of Taliesin . In a rousing style characteristic of Welsh heroic poetry, it describes a future where all of  Brythonic  peoples are allied with the  Scots , the  Irish , and the  Vikings  of  Dublin  under Welsh leadership, and together succeed in driving the  Anglo-Saxons  from  Britain  forever. Leaders of such ventures are always given names in heroic poetry, and in this case they are said to be Cadwallon and Cadwaladr, implicitly inviting the audience to connect them with two famous leaders from the distant past,  Cadwallon ap Cadfan  and  Cadwaladr ap Cadwallon . The inclusion of the non-Celtic Vikings and the non-Brythonic Scots and Irish as full allies in a Welsh traditional poem is a remarkable oddity. The poem is common...