46. STRANGE TALES ABOUT THE WELSH (TWELFTH CENTURY)
INTRODUCTION
Gerald of Wales, a member of the Barry family who were lords of Manorbier, Pemrbokeshire, accompanied Baldwin, the archbishop of Canterbury, to Wales in 1188 to preach the Third Crusade. Gerald was part Welsh—his grandmother was the (in)famous Nest, daughter of Rhys ap Tewdr of Deheubarth and mistress of King Henry I—and proud of both sides of his parentage. Nevertheless, he considered the Welsh to be largely in need of civilizing, especially in the Norman manner.
Gerald enjoyed including legends and bizarre stories in his descriptions of the Celtic lands of Wales and Ireland. He had a particular interest in the flora and fauna of both regions (although he often repeated the same stories for one as for the other) and considered the eccentric behavior of mythically large toads and hardworking beavers to be symbolic of human behavior in the same regions.
KEEP IN MIND AS YOU READ
In the twelfth century, the competition between native Welsh princes and the Anglo-Norman barons of the Welsh march was fierce. Nevertheless, through intermarriage, the two elite groups were becoming mingled. This is not the case with the nonelite population, which remained significantly separated. The novelty of an English archbishop coming to Wales to preach to the local population must have been somewhat surprising and Gerald was enlisted to provide assistance in dealing with the native Welsh.
Although Gerald of Wales’s works were read only in elite intellectual circles in the Middle Ages, his legacy continued far into the modern age. Indeed, his book on the Norman invasion of Ireland, Expugnatio Hibernia, was used as a justification for the seventeenth-century suppression of the Irish by Oliver Cromwell and his army. Gerald’s biases against the Celtic populations, despite his own Celtic ancestry, thus entered into the general culture of a formative period in British history.
Document 1: Book II, Chapter 2: Our Journey through Cemais and Our Stay in St Dogmael’s Monastery
I want to tell you about two events which happened in the cantref of Cemais, one fairly recently and the other some time ago. In our days a young man who lived in this neighborhood, and who was lying ill in bed, was persecuted by a plague of toads. It seemed as if the entire local population of toads had made an agreement to go visit him. Vast numbers were killed by his friends and by those looking after him, but they grew again like the heads of the Hydra. … In the end the young man’s friends and the other people who were trying to help were quite worn out. They chose a tall tree, cut off all its branches and removed all its leaves. Then they hoisted him up to the top in a bag. He was still not safe from his venomous assailants. The toads crawled up the tree looking for him. They killed him and ate him right up, leaving nothing but his skeleton. His name was Seisyll Esgairhir, which means Longshanks. …
In the same cantref, in the time of King Henry I, a rich man who lived on the northern slopes of the Prescelly Mountains dreamed three nights in succession that if he put his hand in a stone which stuck out above the gusting water of a near-by spring called the Fountain at Saint Bernacus, he would find there a gold torque. On the third day he did what he had been told to do in his dreams. He was bitten in the finger by a viper and died from the wound. It is true that many treasures have been discovered as a result of dreams, and in all sorts of circumstances. It seems to me that dreams are like rumors: you must use your common sense, and then accept some but refuse to believe others.
I must tell you about an extraordinary event, which occurred in our own time in Llanhyver Castle [Nanhyver or Nevern Castle], which is the chief stronghold in Cemais. After besieging it with a force of armed men, Rhys ap Gruffudd captured Llanhyver Castle from his own son-in-law, a young nobleman called William FitzMartin [married to Angharad, Rhys’s daughter]. He did this at the instigation of his son Gruffudd, a cunning artful man. It was a direct contravention of a series of oaths that he had sworn in person on the most precious relics to the effect that William should be left in all peace and security in his castle. Rhys then handed the castle over to Gruffudd. In doing so he broke another oath that he had sworn, mentioning Gruffudd by name and promising that he would never permit him to hold Llanhyver Castle. … “Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord,” through the mouth of His prophet. [Romans 10:19] God ordained that soon afterwards the castle should be taken away from Gruffudd, … and handed over to his brother Maelgwn, the man he hated most in all the world. About two years later Rhys was planning to disinherit his own daughter [wife of William fitzMartin], his grandsons and his two granddaughters. Instead he was made prisoner in a battle with his sons [in 1194] and locked up in this very same castle. God took vengeance on him in the most apposite way, for, as he well deserved, he was disgraced and discountenanced in the very place where he had perpetrated a base and shameful crime.
At the time when he suffered this misfortune, and this is well worth bearing in mind, he had stolen the torque of Saint Cynog of Brecknockshire and had it hidden in Dinevor. For this act alone he deserved to be captured and locked up, as an example of the judgment of God.
Source: Gerald of Wales. The Journey through Wales and the Description of Wales. Introduction and translation by Lewis Thorpe. London: Penguin Books, 1978. Pp. 169–172. Modified by editor.
AFTERMATH
Gerald’s interest in what he considered the cultural and ethnic peculiarities of the Welsh and the Irish, as well as his enthusiastic appropriation of stories of fantastical creatures, bizarre human malformations, and similar sensationalist lore, provided reading audiences for centuries with “proof” of the subordinate status of the Celtic people of those regions. Although Gerald’s motivations for including such stories is not really known, he presents the Welsh and Irish in ways that promote Anglo-Norman dominance as appropriate and right, even if the Celtic population being subordinated were, in his estimation, pious and hospitable.
The paragraph “in the same cantref … to believe others” appears also in The Conquest of Ireland in a slightly different form. This is typical of Gerald, who also repeated an elaborate story about how and why beavers build dams in both his Description of Wales and his Conquest of Ireland.
ASK YOURSELF
Why would Gerald include stories about giant murderous toads in an otherwise sober text?
The family of Rhys ap Gruffudd seems unusually bellicose. What is Gerald’s explanation for the intrafamily fighting?
What is the significance of the golden torque?
TOPICS TO CONSIDER
Like the reading from the Fenian Cycle (above) there is a golden torque—an arm-ring—that holds mystical qualities, although its exact powers are not articulated by Gerald. Compare the two stories and discuss what the golden arm-ring might signify.
Consider the ways in which locally and orally transmitted tales could be used as a propaganda tool for promoting the values of a conqueror.
Further Information
Bartlett, Robert. Gerald of Wales: A Voice of the Middle Ages. Stroud: Tempus Publishing, 2006.
Faletra, Michael A. Wales and the Medieval Colonial Imagination: The Matters of Britain in the Twelfth Century. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.
Holden, Brock. “ ‘Feudal Frontiers?’ Colonial Societies in Wales and Ireland 1170–1330.” Studia Hibernica 33 (2004/2005): 61–79.