Wales
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It seems that while watching the new two-part hit Netflix series Wednesday (I’ve never heard of it, but apparently it stars Welsh actress Catherine Zeta-Jones as Morticia Addams. 🙄) an expert on folk music noticed that it included an ancient Welsh tune. See here. The article goes on to state “….The tune is also recorded…
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Antony Woodville, quite early in his career, had an affair with Gwenllian Stradling which led to the birth of a daughter, Margaret Woodville. As it turned out, although he subsequently married twice, this was his only child. Or certainly, his only child who grew up. The Stradlings were a long-standing Glamorgan gentry family, based at…
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Today a hundred years ago, George Herbert, fifth Earl of Carnarvon, died, about five months after the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun, which he funded. Herbert was also, of course, the surname of the Earls of Huntingdon/ Pembroke, who included Richard III’s son-in-law William. The earlier of these families dates from the fifteenth century,…
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Oh, the power of folklore. I was brought up in Cilfynydd, near Pontypridd. A mountain/very large hill rose behind the village and high on it was a spring which everyone called Paddy’s Well. I was told it got its name because St Patrick passed that way and drank from it. No doubt there are as…
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Recently I went on a little jaunt to visit some fine Welsh Castles. One of those happened to be Carew in Pembrokshire, an impressive limestone fortress overlooking Carew inlet, which is part of the Milford Haven Waterway. Built by the Norman Gerald of Windsor, the site stands on the lands of his wife, the…
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Have two lost islands been traced off the Welsh coast….?
Atlantis, Bermuda Triangle, Brutus, Cantre’r Gwaelod, Cardigan Bay, Conwy Bay, Cornwall, Dunwich, Edward IV, Gough Map, Henry IV, Hy-Brasil, Ireland, Iseult, islands, lost lands, Lyonesse, past maps, Ravenspur, Richard II, Scilly Isles, Seithenyn, South Devon, Suffolk, tristan, Trojans, Tyno Helig, WalesThe thought of lost/sunken lands has always fascinated me, beginning with the legendary land of Lyonesse, once believed to be off the coast of Cornwall, between Land’s End and the present Isles of Scilly. It features prominently in the story of Tristan and Iseult. And, like many such sunken lands, the bells of its…
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What? 😧 The Irish are claiming Mumming to have been their custom first??????? I thought everyone knew mummers originated in Wales! Ha! Apologies. Joking apart—truly, I wasn’t in earnest with the above. I know there have always been mummers all over our islands. And if anyone wants to point out that Europe has/had mummers…
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Well, of course Geoffrey of Monmouth wrote the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. But if, by any wild chance, his Historia Regum Britanniae is a flight of immense fancy, well that’s alright by me because it’s a wonderful work. 😊 To read more, go to this link.
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Pembroke didn’t pop the Weasel when it should have….!
“Perkin”, “Princes”, “Tudor” propaganda, Arthur, attainders, Battle of Bosworth, Brittany, Cadwallader, Catherine de Valois, Edmund “Tudor”, Edward IV, Edward of Warwick, Elizabeth of York, French mercenaries, Henry V, Henry VII, Jasper “Tudor”, Lady Margaret Beaufort, parsimony, Pembroke Castle, pike wall, Richard Duke of York, Richard III, statues, Titulus Regius, WalesWell, the first part of a riveting, absolutely factual series about Henry VII was warning enough. I confess to having had to read the first sentence twice, because first time around I thought Edmund Tudor was fighting against the Duke of York’s men and Edmund’s own wife, Margaret Beaufort, who was Henry’s underage mother. Shame on…
