Talk:Lloegyr

Untitled

Created. Used the medieval form "Loegyr" to provide some distance from the modern Welsh word for "England" ("Lloegr"). Notuncurious (talk) 20:40, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

Possible origins section

Not sure of the best treatment for this article section; it certainly seems pertinent. And while it is proper to note facts, especially when they are potentially compelling (such as the overlap of Lloegyr, pre-Roman coin-minting tribes, and the level of Romanization, all of them individually legitimate and properly cited on the Commons images), there is a slippery slope regarding improper Original Research and Synthesis ... I have not seen the article's current POV (qualified as "possible", at least) in scholarly sources. Eg, it is proper to cite entries in the ASC and the AC in a single article section, but synthesizing them into a POV is not proper ... tried to avoid that here (again, the entries are individually legitimate and properly cited on the Commons images). Discussion welcome. Regards, Notuncurious (talk) 20:40, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

Should be ok now; the section is gone and more neutral material replaces it. Notuncurious (talk) 23:09, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

Interesting article. My first thoughts are the need to reference the statement that "the region was culturally distinct from the rest of Britain in the pre-Roman Iron Age...", and to provide some approximate dating and references for the "Original Peoples of Britain (Traditional)" map. Ghmyrtle (talk) 14:31, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

...and a link to British Iron Age? Ghmyrtle (talk) 14:43, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

Good ideas all, thanks. Click on the "Orig Peoples (Trad)" map and the references are cited, but I'll add them to the title box of the map as well (image is on Commons, so the update will magically appear when I add them). BIA was there but buried in a wiki-link, I've made it explicit now, which is better. I've amended the statement re cultural distinction to say that the following material is the basis, as an alternative to duplicating the citations that are in the following material (also, I tried to avoid adding additional citations that merely say the same thing) ... but perhaps this needs more thought and improvement ... this issue is the basis for my earlier comments regarding POV. Ideas welcome, even to the effect of substantial changes. Regards, Notuncurious (talk) 15:53, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

Merger proposal

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

Having had no discussion for an extended period, I am closing this as no consensus and removing merge tags

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I propose that Welsh Lost Lands be merged into Lloegyr. The term "Welsh Lost Lands" is not commonly used outside discussions of the meanings of the word Lloegyr, and there is no evidence of any mentions of the term in reliable sources. Any discussion of the meaning and history of the term can easily be handled within the Lloegyr article. Ghmyrtle (talk) 14:41, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

• Your suggestion seems reasonable. Cagwinn (talk) 15:28, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

• (from the primary author of the Lloegyr article) Agreed, the suggestion seems reasonable. The present map showing Lloegyr's boundary going straight from the Humber to the Severn is intended to be "soft", so the original boundary might well be further west in places, but perhaps not to include the regions mentioned in the Lost Lands article (in which case the later-occurring term "Lost Lands" would be an extension of Lloegyr outside of its original medieval meaning, and thus a proper part of the Lloegyr article, since it helps define the meaning of modern Lloegr/England).

• Perhaps best to accompany the change would be a map change to note the Lost Lands more explicitly ... I'm on an extended break, but please nudge me to do it when I get back. Notuncurious (talk) 03:09, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

• Definitely not. LLoeg(y)r tends to refer to England in general in modern Welsh. The Lost Lands are a lot smaller than the area described in this article and date from the post-mediaeval period. That article isn't discussing the bulk of the land that was once Brythonic (which was Land's End to John O' Groats), but the areas along the border which Welsh nationalists consider to be part of Wales, and which the UK considers to be part of England. Many of them were Welsh speaking after the Reformation and the even the Industrial Revolution unlike, say Cumbria. As for Cornwall, that's an entirely separate issue. -MacRùsgail (talk) 17:53, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

By the way, can we please get rid of this idea that "Welsh nationalists consider [the area] to be part of Wales". It's nonsense - or, at best, the views of a microscopically small fringe group. Ghmyrtle (talk) 18:36, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

PS: The more I look at Welsh Lost Lands, the more redundant an article I think it is. The only statement seeking to justify its existence is the one that "The Lost Lands Liberation League run by Gethin ap Gruffydd is an organisation specifically dedicated to try and recover these lands for Wales." It's completely unreferenced, and this list of Gruffydd's blogs makes no apparent mention of the supposed organisation or the "claim". Gruffydd himself is a person of doubtful notability who now describes himself as a "retired activist". WP should really not be giving credibility to fringe articles like this. Rather than seeking to impose a merge, I now favour simply deleting the "Lost Lands" article. Ghmyrtle (talk) 19:17, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

It's not just Gethin ap Gruffydd, there are others. (I don't think he is a person of doubtful notability, he is one of the four - along with Cayo Evans, Jenkins and Coslett - whom many people would associate with the big period of militant Welsh nationalism) Welsh nationalism does exist beyond and outside Plaid Cymru. Just as in Scotland, the SNP is far from being the only show in town.-MacRùsgail (talk)

Both articles have a lot of problems. "Welsh Lost Lands" seems to have marginal notability, at best, and it does have some overlap with this article. This article, in turn, overlaps with the Arthurian "Logres", which similarly means "England" before the English took it over. "Logres" is plain and notable in Arthurian literature, and it's true that various scholars of the 19th century and before took it for granted that there was a pre-English Logres/Lloegr, but the definition as given in this article isn't the common view of modern scholars.

This article suffers in that it combines accurate material on the Roman period with 19th-century views about the existence of a Brittonic "Lloegyr" in the early Middle Ages. During the Roman period, development was indeed largely concentrated south of the Humber and east of the Severn, however, I don't believe these borders were even conceptually established for "Lloegyr" in the Middle Ages. Several years ago at Talk:Logres, I gave some reasons for this:

• "Lloegyr" or "Lloegr" in medieval Welsh almost invariably referred to (English) England, not to a lost Welsh-speaking territory. Geoffrey of Monmouth popularized the concept of a Brittonic "Loegria" in the 12th century.
  
• Even Geoffrey did not stick to the Humber/Severn boundaries. In some places (for instance Book 3 and Book 4, ch. 19), he does indeed give the Humber as Loegria's northern border. But elsewhere, the border isn't clear cut. In Book 2, ch. 1 Loegria extends to Scotland (presumably north of the Humber), and in Book 2, ch. 7 Ebraucus, king of Loegria, founds York north of the Humber.
  
• Medieval Welsh references to "Lloegr" as Anglo-Saxon territory occur north of the Humber. The poem Y Gododdin uses Lloegyr and Lloegrwys in the context of the Anglo-Saxon enemy, though they lived north of the Humber. Similarly, the Welsh Triads refer to Edwin of Northumbria and Aethelfrith of Northumbria as kings of Lloegyr, though they lived north of the Humber.
  
• Following Geoffrey's references, French and Continental Arthurian works do often give the Humber as the border of "Logres", but the geography is utterly fanciful.

I can't find modern sources that define the subject in this way. Specifically, I don't find them (1) using terms like "Lloegyr" for Brittonic-speaking areas in present-day England, or (2) defining a distinct post-Roman territory with borders at the Humber and Severn. I think there could be a good article written on Romano-British England between the Roman withdrawal and the Saxon invasions, but I doubt "Lloegyr" would be a good title for it, nor would "Welsh Lost Lands".--Cúchullain ^t/c 20:40, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

Geoffrey of Monmouth's views on the boundaries of Lloegyr are completely irrelevant - he did not have good command of the Welsh language (despite his claims) and manipulated his sources to suit his own narrative in the HRB (which was more about the Normans than the Welsh).Cagwinn (talk) 21:06, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

I haven't thought of "Lloegyr" in the sense of the ethnicity of its people, and particularly not in the sense of whether the language or culture was either Brittonic or Anglo-Saxon, but rather a reference to the region not controlled by the Cymry – effectively (but not so-stated) the region under Anglo-Saxon control, whatever the characteristics of its people. Perhaps an explanatory example would be the area that became western Herefordshire, where the people were/are Welsh (and their laws, language and customs persisted into the 20th century, since the 1535 laws did not apply to Herefordshire), but it was a part of Anglo-Saxon England – ie, a part of Lloegyr. That seems to fit nicely with the distinction among "Saeson" (a people), and modern "Lloegr" (a place), and medieval "Lloegyrwys" (the people of Lloegyr, whatever their ethnicity), though I don't know if the the suggestion is defensible.

Geoffrey should be omitted from critical focus, as should the Historia Brittonum and the Matter of Britain, for similar reasons; these are stories that the general pulic knows, so references to them appear in various articles; that is not to give them any priority. If "Arthur" is mentioned in the Matter of Britain and the stories are held to be fictional, does that mean that "Arthur" is no more than a storyteller's fiction?

The Triads used the term; the Armes Prydein used the term; respected historians used the term (I doubt that Rhys and Lloyd considered Geoffrey to be more than a storyteller who weaved the landscape and its terminology into his stories); and it was used by medieval Welsh-speaking poets (the elegy to Owain attributed to Taliesin, Hywel Foel's 13th century awdl lamenting Owain ap Gruffudd's fate, etc.); so perhaps the term's provenance has some validity. And the fact that the term "Lloegyr" has been used to refer to territories outside of the medieval constraints perhaps calls into question the validity of the claims being made, and not the validity of the term itself.

That said, the article has weaknesses, most notably in the notice of a correlation with the pre-Roman-era and Romanised territories; that borders on synthesis (it's historicallly accurate, and certaily leading, but is it improperly so? ... if not, it is very close to the line). I would eliminate any references to Geoffrey in coming to a conclusion, and focus on the historical facts and credible historical references. That focus might still suggest that a major change is in order. Regards, Notuncurious (talk) 06:46, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

(non-admin closure)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

An origin?

• The Youtuber "Kings and Generals", who made the Youtube video "Ancient Celts: Anglo-Saxon Invasion of Britain DOCUMENTARY", thinks that "Lloegr" or similar is Celtic for "the lost lands", given by them to the lands which had become irretrievably Anglo-Saxonized.. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 16:15, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

  It would be great if this article addressed this supposed etymology/translation of "Lloegyr". My impression based on where I've seen it claimed is that it's probably a myth, but it's often asserted as fact. For example, in Bernard Cornwall's novel The Last Kingdom (or possibly one of the sequels). Tsmackinlay (talk) 18:46, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

  I came to this article specifically looking for information on the "Lost Lands" translation. Tsmackinlay (talk) 18:47, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

  Correct, it's a modern myth with no linguistic support whatsoever. M.Aurelius.Viator (talk) 00:49, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

  Sounds like etymology to me… 204.144.210.54 (talk) 17:02, 29 April 2024 (UTC)