Message #17518

[Bianca]

Welsh Speakers Outside Wales



We should remember that although the earliest literary sources referring to Arthur survived in Welsh, this was not a language restricted to what we now call Wales. In the 6th century, Welsh, or an earlier form of the same language, was spoken throughout Strathclyde, an area that stretched from north of the Clyde at least as far south as Carlisle and to roughly half way over Scotland.

Much of Central Scotland and the Lothians, at least as far as the current Border was occupied by another tribe, or set of tribes called the Gododdin, and they too spoke a similar language. It is in the one surviving battle epic of this tribe, called The Gododdin that the earliest dateable reference to Arthur comes from.

To the north and east of the Gododdin lived the Pictish tribes and they too had a related language. This is the reason why there are legends of Arthur survive in so many parts of Scotland - they were part of the common heritage of the Welsh-speaking tribes of Britain. In England there were other tribes from Cumbria to Cornwall who also spoke the same sort of language and would have had the same legendary material.