It's All Welsh to Me

Today, Zahra (flatmate) showed me the name of one of the towns in Wales.

Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch

I kid you not. It means "St. Mary's Church (Llanfair) in a hollow (pwll) of white hazel (gwyngyll) near (goger) the swirling whirlpool (y chwyrndrobwll) of the church of St. Tysilio (llantysilio) with a red cave ([a]g ogo goch)."

Wales is called Cymru by the Welsh (the Cymry), and is the more politically correct name, though Wales is still used by the English. "Welsh" actually means "slaves" or, a little more correctly, "foreigners" in Old Saxon, rather ironic considering the Saxons were the ones invading. 97.1% of the population of Llanfairpwll speak Welsh, and a little less than 30% of the UK population speak Welsh fluently. Some UK websites are bilingual or have a button you can click to have the entire web page translated into Welsh. Here's a picture of the Cymry flag.


Here's a picture of the Welsh flag. Here's what Wikipedia has to say about it:

"The flag was granted official status in 1959, but the red dragon itself has been associated with Wales for centuries; indeed, the flag is sometimes claimed to be the oldest national flag still in use, though the origin of the adoption of the dragon symbol is now lost in history and myth. A plausible theory is that the Romans brought the emblem to what is now Wales during their occupation of Britain in the form of the Draco standards borne by the Roman cavalry, itself inspired by the symbols of the Dacians or Parthians. The green and white stripes of the flag were additions by the House of Tudor, the Welsh dynasty that held the English throne from 1485 to 1603. Green and white are also the colours of the leek, another national emblem of Wales.

The oldest known use of the dragon to symbolise Wales is from the Historia Brittonum, written around 830, but it is popularly supposed to have been the battle standard of Arthur and other ancient Celtic/Romano-British leaders. It is particularly associated in Welsh poetry with Cadwaladr king of Gwynedd from c.655 to 682.

Many legends are associated with the Welsh dragon. The most famous is the prophecy of Myrddin (or Merlin) of a long fight between a red dragon and a white dragon. According to the prophecy, the white dragon would at first dominate but eventually the red dragon would win, this eventual victory and recapturing of Lloegr would be, according to Welsh legend, brought about by Y Mab Darogan. This is believed to represent the conflict in the 5th and 6th centuries between the British Celts (who later became the Welsh) and the invading Saxons."

So here's food for thought: Notice in the last sentence of the first paragraph, "the leek, another national emblem of Wales?" So one of the kennings I listed in my earlier post, "In Which I Unlock My Word-Hoard," has "sword" as "onion of war." The other translation for this particular kenning is "leek of war." Connection? I think so.