Medieval Welsh Weaponry
 

I'm currently working on a paper about medieval Wales and thought that it would be interesting to do a section on the waponry used by the medieval Welsh. I was wondering if anyone on here had any information on this subject or any links to information. Thanks for any help you can give me.

- Josh

Hi Josh,
This is going to be quite a paper, if you are covering the entirety of all the range of medieval periods and types of weaponry used by all aspects of warfare by all the tribal peoples living in the varied regions of Wales and the geopolitical situations involved :)

In any case, I agree, very interesting topics. For the study of the swords from earlier Middle Ages basically up to the Edwardian conquest in the 13th century, the Germanic tribes were regarded as 'saeson' (=saxons) inhabiting these regions. These tribes referred to themselves as I understand as Britons, and the regions were occupied by England for centuries, becoming part of the Kingdom in the mid 16th century. The kingdom joining England and Wales was known as the Angevin Kingdom.

I would recommend "The Sword in Anglo-Saxon England" by H.R. Davidson (1962), "The Archaeology of Weapons" E. Oakeshott, and "Weapons and Warfare in Anglo-Saxon England" (ed. Sonia Chadwick Hawkes, 1989), for the earlier centuries from post Roman Britain c.3rd century up to the 12th-13th.
After that I would rely on the "Records of the Medieval Sword" by Oakeshott along with his other works, and works by Davidson on swords of the Middle Ages. General warfare is covered in most of the works on medieval knights.

Admittedly you have a lot of work ahead of you but these references are likely the best to begin with. I believe that aside from very specifically identified weapons provenanced to certain Welsh figures or events, the weapons and warfare will generally follow the categories I have mentioned. I have not searched online for specifically attributed Welsh weapons, but there may have been articles with this theme at times.

I hope this will be of some help to get you started, and look forward to anyone else out there who might know of more specific references.
Best of luck, and very best regards,
Jim

And whatever you do, don't forget about longbows and brown bills!

Best,

F

I guess it should be remembered that one of the most legendary swords of all was Excalibur as known in French versions of Geoffrey of Monmouths 12th century work "Historia Regum Britanniae", of course with the legend of King Arthur. The Welsh term was Caliburnus (Latinized). It is further very interesting that last year near Monmouth, Wales there was a sword stud excavated, one of the very few finds on this extremely little known part of this history of the Anglo Saxon dark ages in these regions.

Another term for sword in Welsh was caladbolg which seems to have derived or been associated with figures in Irish mythology. The Excalibur legend seems to have counterparts in Norse and other mythology.
In Welsh tradition there was a dagger named Carnwennan as well as spear named Rhongomniad as well as a ceremonial sword of peace named Clarent.
No long bows found yet Fearn :) !! nor what thier names were. To me one of the most fascinating things is the Welsh language itself, and how completely unique it seems alongside the English language.

Just thought I would add this,
All the best,
Jim

Hi Jim and all,

It's a common story that the English longbow developed from a Welsh predecessor. I don't know the origin of this story, but I figure it's probably true, given how the English traditionally felt about the Welsh.

As for the others, "bolg" means belly, or possibly lightning, and caladbolg means "hard belly" or possibly "hard lightning. Cuchulainn had a spear called "gae bolg" (belly spear or spear of light) Not sure why Celtic mythology has so many bolgs (including the fir bolg) but there you have it.

Best,

F

Thanks Fearn, really never knew much of this aspect of the British history but its pretty interesting, glad Josh posted it.

Thank you all for your replies. I really appreciate the help. I will look into those books mentioned. I am really interested in the history of the area of Wales. I first became interested in it because my family has strong Welsh ties and I'm also interested in genealogy. I tried learning to speak Welsh a while ago, but never got far. Thanks again for the help.

- Josh

However,

In what I have read over the years regarding the "modern" Ed the Ist longbow development was Scandanavian southern plains Brit ish heritage and not the mountain Welsh tribes who used short hunting bows shown strung drawn to the chest and not man/long length bows drawn to the ear. If I recall correctly, it is actually Edward that first employed the longbow against the Welsh in early campaigns (I will find the battles if they seem scarce to others but this should be elementary history research for any). By the time of the 100 years war, Richard II was a darling amongst mid medieval Welshmen militaries and the infamous Cheshire archers that later blindly (and were falsely) led by the Percy camp to rise against Henry IV. Shrewsbury possibly being the epitome of British longbow warfare on both sides of that battle. Edward the oneth use of the longbow squads was to protect the more mobile and fellow spearmen. Again, I am abstracting but the notes of those actions of longbow development on the island are out there.

What particular age of medieval is the paper to address? We are looking at five centuries and more in that regard but the arms of the Welsh by 1066 and all that mostly regard the influences of other Norman and more Norse backgrounds. There is some mystical fancy in my mind that some seem to think the Welsh less organized or structured than the rest of the world. Check out Madoc on your way through mythologies as well.

The Medieval Sourcebook web pages http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/Sbook.html might help any and any graced with JSTOR access has the informations at their finger tips. Welsh arms before Ed I also include Roman and other Scandanavian influences of arms. Swords were already well formed and implemented by those owing them and showed no real outstanding ethnographic traits before Norse intermingling of the islands at large.

Look also to the writings and compilations of earlier English history by Thomas Walsingham (toss Froissart in the bucket in regard to the Welsh, you'd be better off reading Shakespeare). Also the British history online site
www.british-history.ac.uk/Default.aspx with the old histories, as well as
www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ Also a great portal that pretty much began my internet interests early in the game is the Sir Clisto Tome and indexes
www.sirclisto.com/ Yes, SCCA but quite a list to browse and leads to the real depths of data well beyond poor old Ewart, et al.

Cheers

GC
:D :D

Josh,

If your interests of Welsh history is in the colonial American period, feel free to ping me as it is my heritage as well. Although my surname has been bound up by researchers insisting one source or another, the migration patterns from the Virginias, then south along known highways and byways then through the Carolinas and out through Cumberland shadowing Boone and others is a great escape to families histories. Look well to Charleston archives for entries as well but a lot of the settlement of families actually did migrate south as opposed to entry there.

Cheers

GC

Hi Hotspur,

You're probably right, but the deep archeological evidence from all over Europe (British Isles and mainland) shows that longbows were widespread throughout, from the mesolithic. For example the oldest longbow in the British Isles was exhumed from Ashcott Heath, Somerset dated to 2665 BCE (link).

There's a couple of things going on here. One is the physical size of the weapon itself, the other is fielding contingents of archers. It looks like the Welsh fighters were the impetus for the English longbows.

F

A wiki article? :shrug:

Thanks Hotspur for the links, I just glanced at them, but they look like they have a lot of information. I'll be sure to read them in depth. As far as the family history goes, I was extremely lucky and came across a guy who had already done a ton of research that included my own family line. Thanks again!

. Sure. If it has a reference, it gets you into secondary reference works. Since I don't currently have a university library system to draw on, and I didn't want to take more than three minutes finding out if you were probably right (which you were, according to Wikipedia), it doesn't need more.

Not good enough for writing a paper, but that's not the point here.

As for the longbow reference, I've seen pictures and reconstructions of the original meso/neolithic bows in other (primary) literature (most readily accessible in <i>The Traditional Bowyer's Bible</i> series, but the wiki link is a good start. Elm isn't yew, but it's a perfectly good bow wood if the bow is properly designed, and it was widely used in Europe.

English longbows were designed in part to maximize the number of bow staves they could get from a yew log (primary literature), as well as to maximize their weapon potential, and that is where the narrow, D-shaped cross section of the English long bow comes from.


F

Extremely well said Fearn!!! and true, Wikipedia is an excellent source to a field of other references which must be carefully considered to develop the material required in the study of a topic. It indeed saves many steps, and as I do recall the 'old days' of many months of research to find supporting evidence on subjects. Modern technology is great, and it seems standards have changed a lot......in my day, a calculator was not permissable in a math class (I think there were some invented by then, though there were some abacus' around :).

All best regards,
Jim

Perhaps what frustrates me is the trend to view and reference Wikis as a
primary source, when a good many of the articles are often poorly managed.

Cheers

GC

Hi Hotspur,

It's a good point. Wikipedia is not perfect. Thing is, accuracy was less important than speed, and I was more concerned with figuring out if you were probably right than what the truth was, in detail.

Besides that, Wikipedia can be updated. If you have serious concerns about the accuracy of pages that are important to you, why aren't you contributing? I have, on occasion.

Best,

F

A fast food philosophy I can only agree upon when shopping for fast food ;)

Correcting all of the bad wiki information might suit me as a paid job but as I participate unpaid on forums dealing with correct information and summations, a Wikipedia (the site) article is the last reference I would ever choose to offer another in a forum discussion. A step above Snopes perhaps.

There are a great many times I simply avoid other's inquests and research tips regarding homework and for exactly the result of these types of exchange. Hence a simple shrug. No big deal.



:shrug:

GC

These articles may offer a few starting points for further research about welsh weapons and cultural influences in the early mediaevil period.

http://www.britarch.ac.uk/ba/ba47/ba47feat.html

http://www.britarch.ac.uk/ba/ba40/ba40regs.html

I find the Wesh WW1 sword, inspired by the celtic leaf shaped blades, very interesting also.

some interesting links from that original wiki article posted by fearn. there is one referencing the use of the longbow in ww2 by an english commando officer who used it in an ambush of a german patrol and is the only certified longbow 'kill' of the war. he also carried a claymore into battle. :)

wiki articles can be starting points for research, as long as accompanied by valid and verifiable external references i see no reason that they should not be used as would any other research based on other forms of documents. some of them are pretty crappy tho ;)