When I heard that, all I could think of was Monty Python's The Background To History "OH it's written in the village rolls, that if a plough team wants an oxen, and that oxen is lent...then the villeins and the ploughmen got to have the lord's consent"
Especially since I imagine this would be partially dependent on the skill of the ploughman^^ The Mycenaen Greeks on the other hand measured land in grain - aka the amount of grain you needed to sow the equiavalent amount of land. No idea whether this ended up being more standardised
@@djhalling I found one definition which suggested a ‘yoke of oxen in a day’ but I couldn’t find the other root words to look them up. Maybe in the Greek or Latin? 🤷🏻♀️
So you're saying if we want to get silly, Jimmy could do a tier list of the number of people who die per Welsh myth? Depending on the amount of detail Jimmy wants to do, could be a series
It's almost midnight here so in all honesty, all I took away from this video was "Magpie!", the random mutterings in Welsh, a sense of jealousy over Jimmy's eyelashes, and the fact that there was a cat somewhere out of frame. And also that the breakdown of land into ever smaller parts is even more complex in Wales than it is here in Sweden. I think we only have about six or seven ways of saying where someone lives or somes from, depending on if you use the old boundary terms or not.
I LOVE learning about why mundane things, or "uninteresting" things, or things you don't think about things, are the way they are. Usually, excellent logic there and gives meaning to life at that time. Like your example of how much can a team of eight oxen plough in a season. Right, because that would have been the best way for them to determine that. Would be different today with modern farm equipment.
You keep calling yourself a nerd... 😅 I can't speak for everyone, but i feel like birds of a feather... flock to youtube. Lol. Bring the nerdiness! 🎉🎉🎉 I love to learn about niche history subjects from people who are truly passionate about them❤
Love hearing you waffle on and speak Welsh❣️ The more details of the Welsh past the better- it’s all fascinating, thanks Jimmy 🥰 Hope things get easier for you✌🏼🙏
I do like learning about things like this. I remember being fascinated by a reference to my branch of the family being granted a 'bovate' (one-eighth of a carucate) of land within the Hundred of Amounderness by a more senior branch of the family back in 1281...
Not going to lie: I saw that the video was up during work and seriously considered how I could both avoid doing my actual job and act like listening to a discussion of 1000+ year old Welsh land laws was a thing I needed to be getting paid for. I hope life smooths itself out a little for you Jimmy💚
To be fair mysterious drowned villages/regions are a staple of Brythonic literature. Cornwall has Lyonesse after all though the name is obviously a later addition. Quite possibly linked to the fact that the Scilly Isles changed from a singular island into a series of islands sometime around the 500/600s drowning at least some older settlements and burials etc. in what is now effectively the inland sea between them all.
I'm so excited for a new Dr. Jimmy video!! thank you for sharing your knowledge with us! You are amazing and deserve to take all the time you need for yourself. Please keep sharing your knowledge with us, but please take of your self.
Can we all take a moment to appreciate that the thumbnail says, "with a very nerdy man"? Truth in advertising, man. 🤣 We love nerdiness of all types here!
Please don't apologize for being nerdy about anything related to Welsh history, of any kind; I've had a story burning a hole in my brain for a long time and one of the things keeping me from writing it is not being able to find enough sources on details of Welsh history, pre- and post-Roman. I will DEVOUR anything you upload, no matter how nerdy you might think it is.
I find this fine grained sifting of the way things actually work to be fascinating. Thank you. I live in Texas, in the USA, so our demarking of population and of land is vastly different from the ancient systems of Wales. The interest I find here is how the micro areas are adapted by the early European settlers. It is often subtle and almost invisible, but there are differences between areas of influence. Place names are often the first clue. The older the map the better the clue. :)
News on the attempted redistricting of Galveston county has even reached the UK. Racist and corrupt is only the start of it. You have to wonder why the Republicans thought they could get away with it. Will the Texas electorate punish them for being so blatantly anti-democratic, do you think, or will there be a backlash against the courts?
I love the historical minutia of administration, land division, who dispenses judgement and so forth, so this video hit all the sweet spots--looking forward for more of this! Sending all the good vibes for things to become easier for you, Jimmy; I hope you can put your own wellbeing first. We'll be here when you are ready.
Endlessly interesting, I love the cymydau and cantrefi, and I’ll be looking forward to any more future videos on the topic! The names that have survived are really interesting, although personally I’m more intrigued by the names we’ve lost. Out of the four cantrefi of Ceredigion in the Mabinogion for example, we only have one name (Penweddig), and I don’t think Is Aled and Uwch Aled were used as names in the medieval era. Being from Powys also, the fact that the number of Cantrefi there seems to change based on the story you’re reading is also pretty cool, although I may be biased on that one. An interesting topic if you do revisit it could be the cantrefi lost to modern day England. Places like Ergyng and Ewias are fairly famous, but there are some more towards Shropshire, and Cantref Goch somewhere across the border in the south if my memory serves me correctly.
You’d do a far better and more thorough job, I’m sure! The Aleds were used in the 13th and 15th centuries, so arguably high medieval/early modern, but they’re a good example of the use of Uwch/Is so I included them as a fun example anyway, and the names changed whenever someone nearby sneezed, so who even knows :) Yeah, I thought about doing things like Cantref Coch (in I think Gloucestershire?) and some of the now English areas, but my brain is in bits at the moment and I just forgot to even mention them. Probably why this video has flopped so dramatically!
@@TheWelshVikingHaha thank you, that’s very kind, but I certainly don’t have the knowledge like yourself! Perhaps we could collaborate:) Thanks for the information on the Aleds also, I recalled reading in one of those old county antiquarian journals a complaint about how they weren’t properly medieval, although the 13th century really should count so I suppose he was just having a moan.
Black cat strolling around, checking on it´s cantref of 100 mice families :-D Great to hear from you Jimmy, whenever the time is right for you, and pretty interesting topic - keep it coming.
I 1st heard of cantref in the Ellis Peters Brother Cadfael series set in 1130's-40's about 40 years ago. Thank you for refreshing my memory about them. Love the Welsh language bits,I am trying to pick up the odd bit here and there. Take care Jimmy...and hope your bees don't get Varroa mites, they are starting to cause problems here in Australia. Look after yourself and hope the studies are going well❤❤
we have cheese, wine, raspberries and, now, plans to visit llangollen, because I have just discovered that Himself has never really Been to Wales, just done a reenactment in Amlwch. Which surprised me because I was sure he'd been at the New Year things in Brynamman. And I may have been singing International Velvet. And now I shall be showing him a clip of King Rollo if I can find one because that judge just reminded me of it and... Life is good.
Being a touring monarch is presumably a good way to keep your expenses down; no need to pay to keep your castle heated and it’s larders stocked when you can get your nobles to put you up in their gaffs, probably accompanied by a lavish feast or two. 😉 On the upper/lower topic, it’s similar to how Lower Egypt is _north_ of Upper Egypt, not south, because in this case upper/lower is referring to its relation to the Nile and it’s elevation (plus north being up and south being down universally is fairly recent).
I share your interest in land divisions and their administrative systems haha, glad you came through on your 'threat' 😅! Highly informative as always. Cambrian Chronicles did a video on Maes Gwyddno/Cantre'r Gwaelod a while ago if you do want to have the topic picked apart (not saying that you wouldn't, Jimmy, it just wasn't relevant to this video 😄), worth a watch 🤓
Very interesting, thank you. Given that I can't read modern Welsh, much less Middle Welsh, I'm very much indebted to you for all this excellent early mediaeval info. I have far more Cornish ancestors than Welsh, but I'd like to think that a better understanding of Welsh practices also sheds some light on the potential ways that the Cornish would have run their lives before first Wessex and then the Normans turned up. Given the obvious cultural and linguistic closeness of both goups 😅 You do have to be cautious of simply assuming, obviously. There's no direct cognate term for cantref, for example. If you calque cantref you get *kanstre, while the actual word used was keverang. But the cultures were still so similar that I'd contend it's highly probable that the two are closely comparable.
Oh! Just this morning, I showed my grade 8/9s a clip from one of your videos about hose. They're auditioning for a show, and there's a lyric about "manly hose" and they wanted to know what it meant. They were giggling. I assured them it was just clothing.
Of course! “Ho” being an African-American pronunciation of “whore” whose popularity has led to a widespread adoption of the phonetic spelling, and confusion with the gardening implement! Also, glad to be of service!
Slowly through the seasons, sun kissed to shadow dappled graveyard conversation will soon become cosy fireside chats as winter approaches. As always great video, diolch yn fawr.
A medieval Welsh address sounds like a lot to get on the front of an envelope. Really enjoyed this! It pretty much proves that you can be entertaining even when hardly anyone knows what you are talking about.
I've never clicked on a video so quickly before, I'm entirely fascinated by y Cantrefi, Cydweli is hands down the best, you may have the incredible Castell Caernarfon, but we have a little old lady that sells losin ddu and Gwenllian, not to mention the gates of Annwn itself.
Absolutely loved this one. I've never met a head of state, but I've had to deal with local council nonsense my whole life. Learning about the medieval equivalent probably tells you more about most people's lives than learning about a king. Definitely up for details of Ye Olde Industrial Injuries Compensation Scheme (YOIICS).
The story of Cantre'r Gwaelod really reminds me of the legend of Ys. Debussy wrote a piano piece about the submerged city rising above the waters and the bells ringing free before re-submerging. (La Cathedrale Engloutie).
As someone much more familiar with Bangor in Maine but who loved my one visit to North Wales pre-pandemic, this kind of history of the land and settlement is particularly fascinating to me. Really appreciate the specific sources and maps too. Very much looking forward to the next in this series. Hope things start to go easier for you as well! 💜
I went to a talk last Thursday by Jon Dollery where he talked about working on the Deep Mapping Project and showed the various kinds of maps compiled in it and what they've plotted onto it so that you can directly access information about the areas you look at without having to go searching through archives. It looks amazing. The topography layer is especially impressive and showed how accurate some of the shading done by a cartographer was, it perfectly matched up with the shape of the hills. I really hope they get the funding to do it for the rest of Wales too and complete their 'Historical Atlas'.
okay total nerd here but this video is FANTASTIC. absolutely fascinating and will be re-watching later to get more out of it because there are a lot of new terms here for me and i need to absorb them all slowly. the auto-captioning is an utter joke for the Welsh tho and that makes it much harder for me to understand sometimes. if and only if you really have the time and energy, or a welsh-speaking friend with such, getting that fixed would do wonders for my comprehension. otherwise you'll just get more hits from my re-watches. looking forward to the next videos in this series of utter high nerdery. this is the fun stuff! welcome back, jimmy.
Ta for including video of the cat! I studied a lot of this over 45 years ago, and it's really lovely to be reminded of it. And you go into a lot more detail than I remember! I'll happily watch as much of this as you care to make - it's the core of history, and us nerds find it fascinating. I wish you all the best with your troubles! ❤
I've heard quite a bit about cantrefs and commotes. But this was excellent. I love hearing how you pronounce things. I've only known southern Welsh people who have less "air" and more English in their accents. So fascinating that we have so many names here in the states (like Bangor) for towns and cities, not just the "new" (i.e. New Hamshire). Have you read the Rhys's book about Celtic symbolism? They talk about the division of the Celtic countries into five. The east in Europe was always the center of merchants and farms. Balance of power, Jimmy. I like different courts for different kinds of crimes, but seriously, please do a video about wergild and fines.
Thank you! I’ve not read the book but I’m not sure I subscribe to that theory. The idea of “Celtic countries” is in itself difficult, let alone the idea of their sharing a single monolithic culture or form of land division. The main powerhouse of Wales was in the northwest for many centuries, for instance, and I’m not sure the number five was as important as 3, 4, 7 and 8 traditionally. And the maerdredi of many cantrefi were in the west or north as well. Also Rome is on the west side. Many mercantile centres have been historically as well, like Glasgow, Hedeby, Liverpool, and places like Hamburg and Prague don’t fit the scheme. Farms generally occupy a vast amount of land in east, west, north, and south. The situation is probably more nuanced than they’re suggesting from the sounds of it
@@TheWelshViking I agree completely. I think that myths and patterns often persist, not because of a basis in reality, but because of some mapping compulsion in the "group" mind. Thanks for taking me seriously to discuss it, Jimmy! I dread going on TH-cam because so much of my information may be outdated, but comments like yours are always welcome, even if you say, "that's bullshit." You always have a reason for saying so, not just because you like to flame people (although that dragon does a good job of it. :D) I always find your videos thought provoking and leaving me with a great desire to spend hours talking with people like you! Thanks again!
I actually find this fascinating. I feel like in America there is so much space that reasonable boundaries are hard to wrap the head around. I've always maintained I want a property large enough I can't see my neighbors from my porch-which I've had the privilege of experiencing at one property I lived in. It made me really hate the crowding of cities and suburbia. I recently talked to someone who bought 150 acres, I'm so jealous... I'm in the market for property (me and everyother Millenial in America but whatever). Now I'm just rambling so. Thank you for sharing, Jimmy ❤
Loved this! (And I understood most of the Welsh, so feeling very smug!). Have you read The Book of Three series by Lloyd Alexander? Cantrefi (I can’t spell in either language…) are an important part of the story, and the Tylwedd Teg are a delight!
I’m sorry you’ve been going through a tough time, no apologies necessary. I hope things get better soon. Certainly, needing out on arcane topics helps me too, so I can certainly appreciate your efforts. As a fan of Time Team, I always found the landscape archeology fascinating. Stewart Ainsworth could practically rebuild entire villages from the lumps and bumps left behind, so I find this topic interesting as well. Thanks for sharing your hard work with us❤
I live in are area of the State of Pennsylvania (USA) near Philadelphia, which was settled by the Welsh. We have many of towns named (proportedly) in Welsh. I live in Wynnewood, near Bryn Mawr, and neighboring Bala Cynwyd. I can see a glimering of how some of these place names may have been chosen! Facinating!!
As a young farmer looking for land, I find old/historic land division fascinating. Land is very expensive where I live and there is a recent development of diverse way of renting from a commune or private in ways that are starting to feel more and more like a huber version of serfdom.
Yes, please do more videos about administrative matters! Truly fascinating, especially with your insights based on learning about administrative divisions by Romans, how this relates to political warfare, social organization, taxation, and so on.
This video made my slow progress in learning Welsh feel valid, I feel chuffed. Also, I found it eminently educational and straightfoward. The whole "how much land can a team of oxen plough in a season" reminded me of an apocryphal story about a man seeking land who strikes a deal with the Locals - they would cede all the land he himself could walk in a day. Quite pleased with himself, he strode ambitiously far before realizing he had to get back to his starting point before midnight to reclaim it. For narrative reasons I have forgotten, the return trip was dire and exhausting - likely pursued by beasts and phantasms - and he died of exposure, exhaustion, and terror within yards of the starting point, because folklore demands death for excessive vice. He would have failed this straightfoward standard of land management in Wales.
Brilliant! Diolch yn fawr! Can't wait to hear more. I recommend your channel to all my re-enactment and history-phile friends here in the US. I started to learn Welsh because of the old "word of the day." You used to do. Thank you, Jimmy.
Here in Monroe County, Michigan, USA, the original French settlers set the tone for the farms that are still kind of a thing almost 300 years later. Ribbon farms. Kind of narrow frontage, as long as the homesteader could walk in a day, in a straight line. Then, there's our insane roads with curves just to "adjust for the curvature of the earth." Plus following the spiderwebs of creeks that ran through the swamps... (Right above the Black Swamp around the Toledo Ohio area. Basically just what was gained during Lake Erie receding after the last Ice Age.) Things like that are interesting to me, just to see how places were divvied up. Thanks for the great video, Jimmy!
Love a good Welsh waffle. Welcome back, Jimmy! Enjoyed the topic as well, really interesting stuff. You’re so natural on camera we’d all enjoy listening to you go on about literally anything. Sending well wishes from Washington State, USA ❤️
That story of Cantre'r Gwaelod reminds me very much of the Breton Cêr Ys, which you probably already know it to parallel. I had no idea till now there was a Welsh iteration of the tale, and it's very interesting to see how they've diverged.
Fascinating as always, Jimmy! I love Wales and hope to move back there one day and actually, finally, learn the language. It sounds so beautiful! And your explanations help me understand some of the Mabinogion better as well, so thank you!
It's always great to see you!! It's always interesting to realise just how long things have been the way they are there. From a North American view point it's so different. You pick wonderful topics that give me context to bits and pieces I've learnt over the years. Thanks
Ive lived in New Westminster, canada and one of the main streets downtown is "Carnarvon". The city was also the original provincial capital before it moved for reasons i forget
For someone so detail-oriented, your presentations come off as ADHD-flavored. 😁 Listening to you is like trying to have a conversation with the dog, Doug from the movie "Up!" I caught the "magpie!" reference among the Cats, Squirrels!, and Bees. I'm sorry you're having a rough time, go give the cat a stroke and make it share its peaceful 'cat-ions' with you. The information you gave helps my fiction writing be better.
An English reaction. I absolutely loved this. I've always wanted to get cantrefi and cymydau sorted out, and you've done it for me. I must be a nerd too! I've always been interested in the English Hundreds, which lasted for a surprisingly long time. In the 'Church and King' riots in Birmingham in 1791, right-wing thugs caused a great deal of damage to the property of members of the Lunar Society, an internationally-famous grouping of makers of the modern world, including Erasmus Darwin, Matthew Boulton and James Watt, William Withering, Joseph Priestley, and many others. (They'd worded a poster incautiously.) Priestley's home was particularly damaged, so he left in disgust to America. But they did get compensation from the authorities for the riot damage. Birmingham wasn't then incorporated, so they had to go to the Hundred Court at a minor village called Kingsbury to get justice. So Hundreds were still important administratively even then. I really love listening to your Welsh, and the proper pronunciations. 'Bangor' still causes me problems, and I listened avidly to your 'Aberystwyth', which town I visited about a two years ago. I've long worked out that the common pronunciation, with an 'i' sound for the first 'y', had to be wrong. I can't do it right, but it surely should be more like an 'er' sound. ( I'm glad to say that the Tourist Information agreed with me! ) So I really enjoyed listening to your version.
Croeso Nol, Glad you are Bangor bred and not Caernarfon or I'd struggle with the Cymraeg, theirs is unique. And you failed to mention the other distinct dialect which is dysgwyr which has a flavour of it's own and shows how alive the language is . I've often wondered how the switch from our old laws to the Norman imposed ones - or Tudur -worked on a practical basis because one thing one thinks of the Normans is that they did not exactly integrate. There must have been pockets of their law in Sir Penfro but big gaps between. I suspect there would be people crossing boundaries to escape a justice system that was different ?
As I understand it, the Normans didn't impose their law upon wales, except with flemish settlers in Pembroke, Welsh special laws stayed around till Henry VIII and Elizabeth, gradually establishing English laws
I'm so sorry you're going through a rough time; I'm going through one as well. If we were on the same continent I'd offer my admittedly rusty skills as a drinking companion. I'm always game for a pint in a cemetery. Wishing you well across the globe.🥲 edit: Also I like your hair!
Fantastic video, Jimmy. I only have a master's but I know the struggles of academia. I hope that you're well and "keep on keeping on" as Joe Dirt would say.
Good to see you again Jimmy! You have chosen quite a lovely location for your video. It has a nice atmosphere. I love watching your videos and always learn something new. Keep up the great work!
Glad to see you on a video again, Jimmy, and in as full and fine a form as usual! ;) It embarrasses me to say that I have a Ph.D. in Celtic Civilizations, and yet at no point in my specifically Celtic-related education was any of what you covered here mentioned or defined in any comprehensive manner. (The info is there to look up, of course, but because it was not entirely "relevant" to the emphasis of what we were being tested on or discussing in the courses, it ended up being marginal, alas.) We read the Mabinogi, and in fact I had a course dedicated to it specifically, and so we heard often about the "seven cantreds [it was Anglicized] of Dyfed," but none of my professors ever said, "By the way, that's about this many households/people/etc." If one is not concerned with demography or geography specifically within Celtic Studies, I think these things are just getting a bit ignored these days, unfortunately. (Though I got my Ph.D. way back in '06, but anyway...!?!) I suspect that if my doctorate had been from Bangor, Cardiff, Aberystwyth, or Lampeter, this might have been on the syllabus, as it were; but because I was in Cork, it wasn't as important. (And even where Irish land divisions were concerned, we didn't get too far into it either, sadly...beyond that the 250-ish tuatha of medieval reckonings in Ireland roughly corresponds to the townlands of modern Irish geography.)
The dragon in your intro looks like my imagination of Smaug from The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien. Not movie Smaug. Movie Smaug is fine in a different way. Ahem. That is not what I am writing this for. What I meant to ask is, have you ever read The Book of Three by Lloyd Alexander, and what you think of it. It is the only book that I have read that has much to do with Wales. I thought of this because I think it mentions some of these words in it somewhere. I have another thought: I need to go and read some Welsh mythology. Do you know of any good English translations of Welsh mythology?
Absolutely fascinating, as ever. You mentioned working at Caernarfon Castle and it started me thinking that something that was built to oppress is now a wealth generator for the areas concerned so you got the last laugh. Keep going.
I had to come back since I watched this last week while I was still struggling to stay awake after coming back from Hastings, well worth the rewatch! Medieval administration is so fascinating, love it. Love hearing a lot of Welsh too, it's got a lot of sounds in common with Hebrew (which I kinda speak) and also interestingly Nahua (which I very much don't speak)
hey jimmy fantastic video i remember learning about this system but what intrigues me is the last part where the king would travel from court to court it struck me that is exactly how king Arthur did things I always found it odd Arthur and his knights where on the road than at Camelot but thats just how welsh kings did things one of the most fantastic things is one of the most normal things anyway love your videos
I love this kind of thing! I play Sims and mod it so I can play a historical-inspired game, but I prefer closer to the Iron Age and it's hard to figure out how to do a settlement layout from that time period. So I try to do my best approximation using things we do know, like medieval stuff.
![[LIVE] : ONE ลุมพินี 88 | คู่เอก "ป้อมเพชร vs อัสลามจอน"](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/1ZqTVVbMgbo/mqdefault.jpg)
In a graveyard with a cat, a couple of squirrels and maybe a bee hive. Sounds like the start of a Monty Python skit. Welcome back!
We need a cool wicked theme song for that skit 😂
Hahaha 😂 😂 😂
Jimmy never arrives late, only when he is meant to. I found it fascinating!
“ the amount of land a team of eight oxen could plough in a season” is a fantastically specific unit of measurement.
When I heard that, all I could think of was Monty Python's The Background To History "OH it's written in the village rolls, that if a plough team wants an oxen, and that oxen is lent...then the villeins and the ploughmen got to have the lord's consent"
I love those wacky units of measurement! As a science teacher, I end up having to explain why sometimes power is in units of horsepowers... 🤣
Especially since I imagine this would be partially dependent on the skill of the ploughman^^ The Mycenaen Greeks on the other hand measured land in grain - aka the amount of grain you needed to sow the equiavalent amount of land. No idea whether this ended up being more standardised
@@djhalling I found one definition which suggested a ‘yoke of oxen in a day’ but I couldn’t find the other root words to look them up. Maybe in the Greek or Latin? 🤷🏻♀️
So you're saying if we want to get silly, Jimmy could do a tier list of the number of people who die per Welsh myth? Depending on the amount of detail Jimmy wants to do, could be a series
Happening. On it.
@@TheWelshVikingso looking forward to this!
@@TheWelshViking I'm so excited!!
Yes. This.
When you include myths involving magic cauldrons, the number of deaths get really tricky to count
Ooooh the flowing into Welsh and back again - so lovely - Diolch yn fawr
I code switch like billy-o when I’m down a rabbithole!
It's almost midnight here so in all honesty, all I took away from this video was "Magpie!", the random mutterings in Welsh, a sense of jealousy over Jimmy's eyelashes, and the fact that there was a cat somewhere out of frame. And also that the breakdown of land into ever smaller parts is even more complex in Wales than it is here in Sweden. I think we only have about six or seven ways of saying where someone lives or somes from, depending on if you use the old boundary terms or not.
"Magpie!" And SO MUCH Welsh! Love it!
I LOVE learning about why mundane things, or "uninteresting" things, or things you don't think about things, are the way they are. Usually, excellent logic there and gives meaning to life at that time. Like your example of how much can a team of eight oxen plough in a season. Right, because that would have been the best way for them to determine that. Would be different today with modern farm equipment.
You keep calling yourself a nerd... 😅 I can't speak for everyone, but i feel like birds of a feather... flock to youtube. Lol. Bring the nerdiness! 🎉🎉🎉 I love to learn about niche history subjects from people who are truly passionate about them❤
Love hearing you waffle on and speak Welsh❣️ The more details of the Welsh past the better- it’s all fascinating, thanks Jimmy 🥰 Hope things get easier for you✌🏼🙏
I do like learning about things like this. I remember being fascinated by a reference to my branch of the family being granted a 'bovate' (one-eighth of a carucate) of land within the Hundred of Amounderness by a more senior branch of the family back in 1281...
Not going to lie: I saw that the video was up during work and seriously considered how I could both avoid doing my actual job and act like listening to a discussion of 1000+ year old Welsh land laws was a thing I needed to be getting paid for. I hope life smooths itself out a little for you Jimmy💚
To be fair mysterious drowned villages/regions are a staple of Brythonic literature. Cornwall has Lyonesse after all though the name is obviously a later addition.
Quite possibly linked to the fact that the Scilly Isles changed from a singular island into a series of islands sometime around the 500/600s drowning at least some older settlements and burials etc. in what is now effectively the inland sea between them all.
I have to say, your passion for Welsh medieval History is really contagious. Anyway, I'm looking forward to the next episode!
I'm so excited for a new Dr. Jimmy video!! thank you for sharing your knowledge with us! You are amazing and deserve to take all the time you need for yourself. Please keep sharing your knowledge with us, but please take of your self.
Not a doctor! :) Thanks, will do!
Excellent! Land delineation is super fascinating and super underrated. Very important and very cool! Thank you for making this!
This is actually SUPER HELPFUL in my personal medieval welsh research! Thank you SO MUCH! :D ♥
Oh da iawn! I’m so pleased to have helped!
Can we all take a moment to appreciate that the thumbnail says, "with a very nerdy man"? Truth in advertising, man. 🤣 We love nerdiness of all types here!
we all have so much respect for you!
Please don't apologize for being nerdy about anything related to Welsh history, of any kind; I've had a story burning a hole in my brain for a long time and one of the things keeping me from writing it is not being able to find enough sources on details of Welsh history, pre- and post-Roman. I will DEVOUR anything you upload, no matter how nerdy you might think it is.
I find this fine grained sifting of the way things actually work to be fascinating. Thank you. I live in Texas, in the USA, so our demarking of population and of land is vastly different from the ancient systems of Wales. The interest I find here is how the micro areas are adapted by the early European settlers. It is often subtle and almost invisible, but there are differences between areas of influence. Place names are often the first clue. The older the map the better the clue. :)
News on the attempted redistricting of Galveston county has even reached the UK. Racist and corrupt is only the start of it. You have to wonder why the Republicans thought they could get away with it. Will the Texas electorate punish them for being so blatantly anti-democratic, do you think, or will there be a backlash against the courts?
This was actually far more fun than it should have been! Waffle is a good term, lovely little rises and falls. AND CATS!!!!!
I love the historical minutia of administration, land division, who dispenses judgement and so forth, so this video hit all the sweet spots--looking forward for more of this!
Sending all the good vibes for things to become easier for you, Jimmy; I hope you can put your own wellbeing first. We'll be here when you are ready.
Endlessly interesting, I love the cymydau and cantrefi, and I’ll be looking forward to any more future videos on the topic!
The names that have survived are really interesting, although personally I’m more intrigued by the names we’ve lost. Out of the four cantrefi of Ceredigion in the Mabinogion for example, we only have one name (Penweddig), and I don’t think Is Aled and Uwch Aled were used as names in the medieval era.
Being from Powys also, the fact that the number of Cantrefi there seems to change based on the story you’re reading is also pretty cool, although I may be biased on that one.
An interesting topic if you do revisit it could be the cantrefi lost to modern day England. Places like Ergyng and Ewias are fairly famous, but there are some more towards Shropshire, and Cantref Goch somewhere across the border in the south if my memory serves me correctly.
You’d do a far better and more thorough job, I’m sure!
The Aleds were used in the 13th and 15th centuries, so arguably high medieval/early modern, but they’re a good example of the use of Uwch/Is so I included them as a fun example anyway, and the names changed whenever someone nearby sneezed, so who even knows :)
Yeah, I thought about doing things like Cantref Coch (in I think Gloucestershire?) and some of the now English areas, but my brain is in bits at the moment and I just forgot to even mention them. Probably why this video has flopped so dramatically!
@@TheWelshVikingHaha thank you, that’s very kind, but I certainly don’t have the knowledge like yourself! Perhaps we could collaborate:)
Thanks for the information on the Aleds also, I recalled reading in one of those old county antiquarian journals a complaint about how they weren’t properly medieval, although the 13th century really should count so I suppose he was just having a moan.
Black cat strolling around, checking on it´s cantref of 100 mice families :-D Great to hear from you Jimmy, whenever the time is right for you, and pretty interesting topic - keep it coming.
I 1st heard of cantref in the Ellis Peters Brother Cadfael series set in 1130's-40's about 40 years ago. Thank you for refreshing my memory about them. Love the Welsh language bits,I am trying to pick up the odd bit here and there. Take care Jimmy...and hope your bees don't get Varroa mites, they are starting to cause problems here in Australia. Look after yourself and hope the studies are going well❤❤
we have cheese, wine, raspberries and, now, plans to visit llangollen, because I have just discovered that Himself has never really Been to Wales, just done a reenactment in Amlwch. Which surprised me because I was sure he'd been at the New Year things in Brynamman. And I may have been singing International Velvet. And now I shall be showing him a clip of King Rollo if I can find one because that judge just reminded me of it and... Life is good.
Have you seen Cambrian Chronicles, they've done an excellent video on Cantre Gwaelod. A colab between the 2 best Welsh TH-camrs would be amazing
I’d be down
Being a touring monarch is presumably a good way to keep your expenses down; no need to pay to keep your castle heated and it’s larders stocked when you can get your nobles to put you up in their gaffs, probably accompanied by a lavish feast or two. 😉
On the upper/lower topic, it’s similar to how Lower Egypt is _north_ of Upper Egypt, not south, because in this case upper/lower is referring to its relation to the Nile and it’s elevation (plus north being up and south being down universally is fairly recent).
I share your interest in land divisions and their administrative systems haha, glad you came through on your 'threat' 😅! Highly informative as always. Cambrian Chronicles did a video on Maes Gwyddno/Cantre'r Gwaelod a while ago if you do want to have the topic picked apart (not saying that you wouldn't, Jimmy, it just wasn't relevant to this video 😄), worth a watch 🤓
And here I go again, shouting on horseback, about Jimmy's return
Very interesting, thank you. Given that I can't read modern Welsh, much less Middle Welsh, I'm very much indebted to you for all this excellent early mediaeval info. I have far more Cornish ancestors than Welsh, but I'd like to think that a better understanding of Welsh practices also sheds some light on the potential ways that the Cornish would have run their lives before first Wessex and then the Normans turned up. Given the obvious cultural and linguistic closeness of both goups 😅
You do have to be cautious of simply assuming, obviously. There's no direct cognate term for cantref, for example. If you calque cantref you get *kanstre, while the actual word used was keverang. But the cultures were still so similar that I'd contend it's highly probable that the two are closely comparable.
sorry to hear you've been having a rough time recently. sending you virtual hugs
Oh! Just this morning, I showed my grade 8/9s a clip from one of your videos about hose. They're auditioning for a show, and there's a lyric about "manly hose" and they wanted to know what it meant. They were giggling. I assured them it was just clothing.
Of course! “Ho” being an African-American pronunciation of “whore” whose popularity has led to a widespread adoption of the phonetic spelling, and confusion with the gardening implement!
Also, glad to be of service!
Slowly through the seasons, sun kissed to shadow dappled graveyard conversation will soon become cosy fireside chats as winter approaches.
As always great video, diolch yn fawr.
"information information information magpie continued information" ha!
You always make me want to go back to Wales! Hadrians wall is amazing!
Would love to hear about the medieval small claims courts, both the laws themselves and the stories (real or legendary).
I loved all the Welsh, and information about land division. Any rambling you want to do about medieval welsh law would be very welcome :)
My experience with the word Cantref was from Lloyd Alexander’s Taran novels. Very interesting to learn more. Thank you!
A medieval Welsh address sounds like a lot to get on the front of an envelope. Really enjoyed this! It pretty much proves that you can be entertaining even when hardly anyone knows what you are talking about.
I've never clicked on a video so quickly before, I'm entirely fascinated by y Cantrefi, Cydweli is hands down the best, you may have the incredible Castell Caernarfon, but we have a little old lady that sells losin ddu and Gwenllian, not to mention the gates of Annwn itself.
Personally I’m an Aberffraw stan and always will be. Though your walls are very pretty!
Not too impressed with that little old lady. She gave me 10 sweets for a halfpenny but I saw her give my friend 11!
@@gota7738 So the rumours are true, hmm this changes everything
@@TheWelshViking I can't argue with that Aberffraw is top tier, nothing can beat the birthplace of Gwenllian, I concede.
Absolutely loved this one. I've never met a head of state, but I've had to deal with local council nonsense my whole life. Learning about the medieval equivalent probably tells you more about most people's lives than learning about a king. Definitely up for details of Ye Olde Industrial Injuries Compensation Scheme (YOIICS).
The story of Cantre'r Gwaelod really reminds me of the legend of Ys. Debussy wrote a piano piece about the submerged city rising above the waters and the bells ringing free before re-submerging. (La Cathedrale Engloutie).
As someone much more familiar with Bangor in Maine but who loved my one visit to North Wales pre-pandemic, this kind of history of the land and settlement is particularly fascinating to me. Really appreciate the specific sources and maps too. Very much looking forward to the next in this series. Hope things start to go easier for you as well! 💜
I went to a talk last Thursday by Jon Dollery where he talked about working on the Deep Mapping Project and showed the various kinds of maps compiled in it and what they've plotted onto it so that you can directly access information about the areas you look at without having to go searching through archives. It looks amazing. The topography layer is especially impressive and showed how accurate some of the shading done by a cartographer was, it perfectly matched up with the shape of the hills. I really hope they get the funding to do it for the rest of Wales too and complete their 'Historical Atlas'.
DMP is soooo cool
my wanting to go to Wales is ever increasing, love the videos and topics
THank you for another interesting vid. Glad to hear some Welsh, too, and to learn more about Welsh history.
Liked, played through on silent, comment posted, the algorithm has been fed
You’re so good
Always love your infodump-style videos. This was great and we look forward to hearing more from you when things are easier.
Waffle away, Jimmy 😂 You make even a potentially dry subject fascinating. And never worry about taking time out from doing videos x
Very interesting. I did not realize that Welsh was so small, and with so much history, thanks.
okay total nerd here but this video is FANTASTIC. absolutely fascinating and will be re-watching later to get more out of it because there are a lot of new terms here for me and i need to absorb them all slowly. the auto-captioning is an utter joke for the Welsh tho and that makes it much harder for me to understand sometimes. if and only if you really have the time and energy, or a welsh-speaking friend with such, getting that fixed would do wonders for my comprehension. otherwise you'll just get more hits from my re-watches. looking forward to the next videos in this series of utter high nerdery. this is the fun stuff! welcome back, jimmy.
Ta for including video of the cat! I studied a lot of this over 45 years ago, and it's really lovely to be reminded of it. And you go into a lot more detail than I remember! I'll happily watch as much of this as you care to make - it's the core of history, and us nerds find it fascinating. I wish you all the best with your troubles! ❤
It's a deep sense of, I'll call it comfort, that people have changed very little 😅
jimmy has such a way with rabbit holes. and words.
I've heard quite a bit about cantrefs and commotes. But this was excellent. I love hearing how you pronounce things. I've only known southern Welsh people who have less "air" and more English in their accents. So fascinating that we have so many names here in the states (like Bangor) for towns and cities, not just the "new" (i.e. New Hamshire). Have you read the Rhys's book about Celtic symbolism? They talk about the division of the Celtic countries into five. The east in Europe was always the center of merchants and farms. Balance of power, Jimmy. I like different courts for different kinds of crimes, but seriously, please do a video about wergild and fines.
Thank you! I’ve not read the book but I’m not sure I subscribe to that theory. The idea of “Celtic countries” is in itself difficult, let alone the idea of their sharing a single monolithic culture or form of land division. The main powerhouse of Wales was in the northwest for many centuries, for instance, and I’m not sure the number five was as important as 3, 4, 7 and 8 traditionally. And the maerdredi of many cantrefi were in the west or north as well. Also Rome is on the west side. Many mercantile centres have been historically as well, like Glasgow, Hedeby, Liverpool, and places like Hamburg and Prague don’t fit the scheme. Farms generally occupy a vast amount of land in east, west, north, and south. The situation is probably more nuanced than they’re suggesting from the sounds of it
@@TheWelshViking I agree completely. I think that myths and patterns often persist, not because of a basis in reality, but because of some mapping compulsion in the "group" mind. Thanks for taking me seriously to discuss it, Jimmy! I dread going on TH-cam because so much of my information may be outdated, but comments like yours are always welcome, even if you say, "that's bullshit." You always have a reason for saying so, not just because you like to flame people (although that dragon does a good job of it. :D) I always find your videos thought provoking and leaving me with a great desire to spend hours talking with people like you! Thanks again!
Honestly most of the time it's not really about interesting, but enrapturing. It was a good watch and very informative.
Always a good day when yu boi uploads. Love to see it, great Disney princess vibes with the woodland friends
Facinating! I don't think I've ever paused a video so many times, to have a look at all the maps!
I actually find this fascinating. I feel like in America there is so much space that reasonable boundaries are hard to wrap the head around. I've always maintained I want a property large enough I can't see my neighbors from my porch-which I've had the privilege of experiencing at one property I lived in. It made me really hate the crowding of cities and suburbia. I recently talked to someone who bought 150 acres, I'm so jealous... I'm in the market for property (me and everyother Millenial in America but whatever). Now I'm just rambling so. Thank you for sharing, Jimmy ❤
Mate, keep these Welsh history/Welsh lessons coming. Absolutely love them! Thank you so much!
So interesting! thanks for the chat!
Loved this! (And I understood most of the Welsh, so feeling very smug!). Have you read The Book of Three series by Lloyd Alexander? Cantrefi (I can’t spell in either language…) are an important part of the story, and the Tylwedd Teg are a delight!
I’m sorry you’ve been going through a tough time, no apologies necessary. I hope things get better soon. Certainly, needing out on arcane topics helps me too, so I can certainly appreciate your efforts. As a fan of Time Team, I always found the landscape archeology fascinating. Stewart Ainsworth could practically rebuild entire villages from the lumps and bumps left behind, so I find this topic interesting as well. Thanks for sharing your hard work with us❤
I live in are area of the State of Pennsylvania (USA) near Philadelphia, which was settled by the Welsh. We have many of towns named (proportedly) in Welsh. I live in Wynnewood, near Bryn Mawr, and neighboring Bala Cynwyd. I can see a glimering of how some of these place names may have been chosen! Facinating!!
As a young farmer looking for land, I find old/historic land division fascinating. Land is very expensive where I live and there is a recent development of diverse way of renting from a commune or private in ways that are starting to feel more and more like a huber version of serfdom.
Yes, please do more videos about administrative matters! Truly fascinating, especially with your insights based on learning about administrative divisions by Romans, how this relates to political warfare, social organization, taxation, and so on.
More of all the above! (Excepting of course the memory card tanking)
💜👾💜
This video made my slow progress in learning Welsh feel valid, I feel chuffed. Also, I found it eminently educational and straightfoward. The whole "how much land can a team of oxen plough in a season" reminded me of an apocryphal story about a man seeking land who strikes a deal with the Locals - they would cede all the land he himself could walk in a day. Quite pleased with himself, he strode ambitiously far before realizing he had to get back to his starting point before midnight to reclaim it. For narrative reasons I have forgotten, the return trip was dire and exhausting - likely pursued by beasts and phantasms - and he died of exposure, exhaustion, and terror within yards of the starting point, because folklore demands death for excessive vice. He would have failed this straightfoward standard of land management in Wales.
Brilliant! Diolch yn fawr! Can't wait to hear more. I recommend your channel to all my re-enactment and history-phile friends here in the US. I started to learn Welsh because of the old "word of the day." You used to do. Thank you, Jimmy.
Fascinating bit of Welsh history, Jimmy! Thank you for posting and please continue! 👍
Here in Monroe County, Michigan, USA, the original French settlers set the tone for the farms that are still kind of a thing almost 300 years later. Ribbon farms. Kind of narrow frontage, as long as the homesteader could walk in a day, in a straight line. Then, there's our insane roads with curves just to "adjust for the curvature of the earth." Plus following the spiderwebs of creeks that ran through the swamps... (Right above the Black Swamp around the Toledo Ohio area. Basically just what was gained during Lake Erie receding after the last Ice Age.)
Things like that are interesting to me, just to see how places were divvied up. Thanks for the great video, Jimmy!
Love a good Welsh waffle. Welcome back, Jimmy! Enjoyed the topic as well, really interesting stuff. You’re so natural on camera we’d all enjoy listening to you go on about literally anything. Sending well wishes from Washington State, USA ❤️
That story of Cantre'r Gwaelod reminds me very much of the Breton Cêr Ys, which you probably already know it to parallel. I had no idea till now there was a Welsh iteration of the tale, and it's very interesting to see how they've diverged.
Fascinating as always, Jimmy! I love Wales and hope to move back there one day and actually, finally, learn the language. It sounds so beautiful! And your explanations help me understand some of the Mabinogion better as well, so thank you!
yes, please share
It's always great to see you!! It's always interesting to realise just how long things have been the way they are there. From a North American view point it's so different. You pick wonderful topics that give me context to bits and pieces I've learnt over the years. Thanks
Ive lived in New Westminster, canada and one of the main streets downtown is "Carnarvon". The city was also the original provincial capital before it moved for reasons i forget
For someone so detail-oriented, your presentations come off as ADHD-flavored. 😁 Listening to you is like trying to have a conversation with the dog, Doug from the movie "Up!" I caught the "magpie!" reference among the Cats, Squirrels!, and Bees. I'm sorry you're having a rough time, go give the cat a stroke and make it share its peaceful 'cat-ions' with you. The information you gave helps my fiction writing be better.
His face and facial expressions immediately put a smile on my face! 😍❤
An English reaction. I absolutely loved this. I've always wanted to get cantrefi and cymydau sorted out, and you've done it for me. I must be a nerd too!
I've always been interested in the English Hundreds, which lasted for a surprisingly long time. In the 'Church and King' riots in Birmingham in 1791, right-wing thugs caused a great deal of damage to the property of members of the Lunar Society, an internationally-famous grouping of makers of the modern world, including Erasmus Darwin, Matthew Boulton and James Watt, William Withering, Joseph Priestley, and many others. (They'd worded a poster incautiously.) Priestley's home was particularly damaged, so he left in disgust to America.
But they did get compensation from the authorities for the riot damage. Birmingham wasn't then incorporated, so they had to go to the Hundred Court at a minor village called Kingsbury to get justice. So Hundreds were still important administratively even then.
I really love listening to your Welsh, and the proper pronunciations. 'Bangor' still causes me problems, and I listened avidly to your 'Aberystwyth', which town I visited about a two years ago. I've long worked out that the common pronunciation, with an 'i' sound for the first 'y', had to be wrong. I can't do it right, but it surely should be more like an 'er' sound. ( I'm glad to say that the Tourist Information agreed with me! ) So I really enjoyed listening to your version.
Croeso Nol, Glad you are Bangor bred and not Caernarfon or I'd struggle with the Cymraeg, theirs is unique. And you failed to mention the other distinct dialect which is dysgwyr which has a flavour of it's own and shows how alive the language is .
I've often wondered how the switch from our old laws to the Norman imposed ones - or Tudur -worked on a practical basis because one thing one thinks of the Normans is that they did not exactly integrate. There must have been pockets of their law in Sir Penfro but big gaps between. I suspect there would be people crossing boundaries to escape a justice system that was different ?
As I understand it, the Normans didn't impose their law upon wales, except with flemish settlers in Pembroke, Welsh special laws stayed around till Henry VIII and Elizabeth, gradually establishing English laws
I'm so sorry you're going through a rough time; I'm going through one as well. If we were on the same continent I'd offer my admittedly rusty skills as a drinking companion. I'm always game for a pint in a cemetery. Wishing you well across the globe.🥲
edit: Also I like your hair!
Next time you’re over we’ll have a jar in a graveyard :) Hope tgings improve!
I love this info! It is amazing how different cultures organise their societies and areas!
Fantastic video, Jimmy. I only have a master's but I know the struggles of academia. I hope that you're well and "keep on keeping on" as Joe Dirt would say.
Actually, genuinely, fascinating. Thank you! Love these deep niche dives.
As someone who is looking into their family history and found out there's a Welsh branch is is fascinating thank you so much.
Absolutely fascinating, Jimmy. I'm a bit of a nerd for the details.
Good to see you again Jimmy! You have chosen quite a lovely location for your video. It has a nice atmosphere. I love watching your videos and always learn something new. Keep up the great work!
Petition for Jimmy to do a breakdown/video discussing the Mabinogion 🙏😁
Glad to see you on a video again, Jimmy, and in as full and fine a form as usual! ;)
It embarrasses me to say that I have a Ph.D. in Celtic Civilizations, and yet at no point in my specifically Celtic-related education was any of what you covered here mentioned or defined in any comprehensive manner. (The info is there to look up, of course, but because it was not entirely "relevant" to the emphasis of what we were being tested on or discussing in the courses, it ended up being marginal, alas.) We read the Mabinogi, and in fact I had a course dedicated to it specifically, and so we heard often about the "seven cantreds [it was Anglicized] of Dyfed," but none of my professors ever said, "By the way, that's about this many households/people/etc." If one is not concerned with demography or geography specifically within Celtic Studies, I think these things are just getting a bit ignored these days, unfortunately. (Though I got my Ph.D. way back in '06, but anyway...!?!)
I suspect that if my doctorate had been from Bangor, Cardiff, Aberystwyth, or Lampeter, this might have been on the syllabus, as it were; but because I was in Cork, it wasn't as important. (And even where Irish land divisions were concerned, we didn't get too far into it either, sadly...beyond that the 250-ish tuatha of medieval reckonings in Ireland roughly corresponds to the townlands of modern Irish geography.)
The dragon in your intro looks like my imagination of Smaug from The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien. Not movie Smaug. Movie Smaug is fine in a different way.
Ahem. That is not what I am writing this for. What I meant to ask is, have you ever read The Book of Three by Lloyd Alexander, and what you think of it. It is the only book that I have read that has much to do with Wales. I thought of this because I think it mentions some of these words in it somewhere.
I have another thought: I need to go and read some Welsh mythology. Do you know of any good English translations of Welsh mythology?
Absolutely fascinating, as ever. You mentioned working at Caernarfon Castle and it started me thinking that something that was built to oppress is now a wealth generator for the areas concerned so you got the last laugh. Keep going.
I had to come back since I watched this last week while I was still struggling to stay awake after coming back from Hastings, well worth the rewatch! Medieval administration is so fascinating, love it. Love hearing a lot of Welsh too, it's got a lot of sounds in common with Hebrew (which I kinda speak) and also interestingly Nahua (which I very much don't speak)
I have stayed a weekend in that little white pub next to Caernarfon castle! It was awesome - so quirky and great food! 🥰
Wonderful, my evening is made!
Wonderful nerding, I love learning about this stuff. (And I keep regretting having missed my chance to learn Welsh)
I hope things look up soon though.
hey jimmy fantastic video i remember learning about this system but what intrigues me is the last part where the king would travel from court to court it struck me that is exactly how king Arthur did things I always found it odd Arthur and his knights where on the road than at Camelot but thats just how welsh kings did things one of the most fantastic things is one of the most normal things anyway love your videos
I love this kind of thing! I play Sims and mod it so I can play a historical-inspired game, but I prefer closer to the Iron Age and it's hard to figure out how to do a settlement layout from that time period. So I try to do my best approximation using things we do know, like medieval stuff.
Buckle up, y'all!! (honestly excited about this, thank you Jimmy)