Difference between revisions of "Wales"

Revision as of 09:26, April 19, 2007

Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Charles, son of Queen Elizabeth II, is the current Prince of Wales, a title normally bestopwed on the first-born son of the sovereign but implying noparticular monarchical role in the Principality. The Welsh flag has a picture of a dragon, usually called Idris. The Welsh flag forms no part of the Union Flag as at the time the flag was first devised Wales was considered as part of the kingdom of England.

English is universally spoken in Wales - however, the ancestral Celtic language of Welsh is still spoken as a first or second language by approximately a quarter of the population. The long-term decline in Welsh-speakers has stabilised since the early 1990s.

Druidry survived as a major force in Wales until the 18th century, and may never have completely died out. The first modern Welsh druids date from 1717, but they took many of their rites from existing practices.

The largest city in Wales is Cardiff, which was declared to be the capital city in 1955, against competition from Swansea.

The national sport is rugby union, the national emblems are the leek and the daffodil. South Wales was formerly heavily industrialised, with coal mining and steelworking, whereas North Wales is a pastoral area used mainly for sheepfarming.

Mining in South Wales has undergone a recent resurgence due to the discovery of new energy resources, particularly in the Crumlin area.

Welsh-derived surnames are common in the United States. The Welsh name Jones is in fact the fourth commonest surname in the U. S.^[1]; within the hundred commonest surnames, the Welsh names Evans, Edward, Morgan, and Jenkins rank 48th, 49th, 57th, and 83rd respectively.^[2] Names beginning with a double L, such as Lloyd and Llewellyn are almost certain to be Welsh, as is Floyd (the "Fl" being an attempt to imitate the sound of the Welsh double-L.

It is often said that the vowels in English are "A, E, I, O, U and sometimes Y;" however, in Welsh the letter W can be a vowel (pronounced roughly like a double-length U). Most English dictionaries contain some Welsh-derived English words such as cwm (a circular valley or cirque) and crwth (an traditional Celtic fiddle-like musical instrument). These can be very effective stumpers when playing word games, provided of course that they are actually included in whatever dictionary is the authority agreed on by the players.

History

Wales emerged as a nation from the collapse of Romano-British Britannia following the invasions of the Angles, Saxons and Jutes from the firth century AD onwards. What is now known as Wales was for a time known as 'North Wales', while Devon and Cornwall (in SW England) were 'West Wales' until their conquest. The Mercian king Offa (Mercia equates roughly to the English Midlands) created an earthwork (Offa's Dyke') running between the Irish Sea and the Severn estuary in the later eighth century to separate his kingdom from Welsh lands. The dyke broadly marks the Anglo-Welsh boundary to this day.

The Norman Conquest of England following 1066 gave rise to Norman attempts to occupy Wales; by the thirteenth century much of eastern and southern WAles were under Norman control in autonomous 'Marcher Lordships' owing loyalty to the English crown. What was left of independent Wales was not a unitary nation, but comprised a number of separate, often warring, principalities, and only late on, under English pressure, did these unite to acknowledge one 'Prince of Wales'. These princes were provided by the most powerful of the Welsh states, Gwynedd, in the mountainous NW of the country. Most notable was Llewelyn the Great (1173-1240; who unified the country, and gave it a code of laws). His grandson, Llewelyn ap Gruffydd, was unable to resist a powerful invasion mounted by the English king Edward i, and his death in battle in 1282 marked the extinction of independent Wales.

A major revolt against English rule was mounted in the early fifteenth century led by Owain Glyndwr, a member of the prosperous Welsh gentry who became embittered against the local English magnates for reasons which are uncertain, but probably owe as much to personla disputes as national sentiment. Glyndwr's rebellion achieved astonishing success, for a while. Beginning on Good Friday 1401, the rebels came to control much of the countryside and many Welsh towns, even advancing to Worcester in England. Glyndwr, who had been proclaimed Prince of Wales, held two parliaments at Machynlleth in mid Wales, and allied himself with the Duke of Northumberland and and the Earl of Mortimer in a plan to dismember the English kingdom once Henry IV had been conclusively defeated. He made an alliance with France, and created two (short-lived) universities, one each in north and south Wales. However, by 1408 the tide had turned. His Northumbrian allies had been defeated and English forces retook many Welsh towns. Te rebels resorted to guerilla warfare but by 1410 Glyndwr was a fugitive and he disappears from history, his fate a mystery.

Much as Owain Glyndwr emerged from the ranks of the Welsh gentry, so too did Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond, who in 1485, as a somewhat tendentious claimant to the throne of England through the Lancastrian line, led an army of disaffected English magnates to victory over the Yorkist king Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth Field. Henry became King Henry VII and the progenitor of the Tudor dynasty, the first Welsh king of England. Henry's son, Henry VIII, completed the absorption of Wales into England in 1536, when the remaining parts of Wales were formally annexed to England and 'shired' - that is, divided into counties (shires) with sheriffs and lords lieutenant, rather than being ruled as marcher lordships.

Notes and references

1. ↑ Smith, Johnson and Williams ranking first, second and third
2. ↑ Most Common Surnames in the U. S., website which claims its source is the U.S. Census Bureau, Population Division, Population Analysis & Evaluation Staff