1 00:00:00,330 --> 00:00:06,390 Excellent. Right. But actually, my talk follows on very well from Lee says, honestly, we didn't. 2 00:00:06,390 --> 00:00:17,520 Didn't get in cahoots about this to start with. But but it does because I'm looking at narrative as a mechanism for creating a sense of space. 3 00:00:17,520 --> 00:00:24,660 And I would like to look at three Welsch, three particular Welsch sites. 4 00:00:24,660 --> 00:00:32,610 Matthai and its surroundings, Strata, Florida and Antaeus and the area which encompasses Dangote Qur'anic. 5 00:00:32,610 --> 00:00:37,680 Now, these are all sites where legend has been important. 6 00:00:37,680 --> 00:00:43,170 Let me do something a little more interesting than that. This is the this is the mother vice motherlode site. 7 00:00:43,170 --> 00:00:53,870 And this the Mervi Community Centre. It's one of the famous sites in Wales because of the links to the fairy bride. 8 00:00:53,870 --> 00:00:59,200 The fairy bride who comes out of thinner than dark returns eventually because her 9 00:00:59,200 --> 00:01:05,110 husband violates a taboo but returns again to give her sons the information, 10 00:01:05,110 --> 00:01:12,100 which becomes the is called the mother grandmother by the material, which makes them sort of great physicians. 11 00:01:12,100 --> 00:01:16,570 Now, there are a lot of interesting things that are happening happening here. 12 00:01:16,570 --> 00:01:23,960 One of them is the way in which the mother material is viewed. 13 00:01:23,960 --> 00:01:32,880 It's seen as it's an example how to how to express this sort of nicely, really, of romantic creation. 14 00:01:32,880 --> 00:01:38,230 The material was edited in the 19th century for the first time and translated into English. 15 00:01:38,230 --> 00:01:44,260 And the people involved in it were very involved in presenting Wales as a romantic place. 16 00:01:44,260 --> 00:01:52,460 John Q was a doctor, but a doctor who was interested in what we would now probably consider alternative medicine. 17 00:01:52,460 --> 00:01:58,480 So who edited this was very interested in Welsh Druidry and creating Welsh Druidry. 18 00:01:58,480 --> 00:02:03,970 And the third and really, really dangerous one involved in this, although he's not credited in the book, 19 00:02:03,970 --> 00:02:12,730 is Yolla Monarch, who supposedly copied a work of medicine by someone we can't really identify. 20 00:02:12,730 --> 00:02:17,260 And it's really full of sort of druid names for plants and things. 21 00:02:17,260 --> 00:02:22,270 So what one has is a very romantic view of the Welsh past. 22 00:02:22,270 --> 00:02:27,160 Immediately you start. The other thing about this, which impinges, I think, 23 00:02:27,160 --> 00:02:35,050 a great deal on the way the community has approached this, is that it's actually a re or realised folk tale. 24 00:02:35,050 --> 00:02:41,200 In other words, you can't really see the continuity. You can see kind of where it drops off and where it comes back again. 25 00:02:41,200 --> 00:02:50,890 When John Reese visited the area looking for these fairy bride stories and the fairy bride story is is actually quite a well-known one in Wales. 26 00:02:50,890 --> 00:02:56,260 Now, about two dozen examples, all associated with legs or bodies of water. 27 00:02:56,260 --> 00:03:00,770 But when Reese went to collect this, he didn't find anything in the thigh yet. 28 00:03:00,770 --> 00:03:09,250 Now it's become very, very popular. It's the most popular, anthologised Welsh folktale, certainly that I've come across. 29 00:03:09,250 --> 00:03:15,610 I haven't done a numbers count, but I'm quite sure this one would would would be the most important one. 30 00:03:15,610 --> 00:03:22,150 Even above the authoress and stuff, I suspect the realisation came after the First World War. 31 00:03:22,150 --> 00:03:28,390 And the reason why I suspect this is that the tail was included in a book of material 32 00:03:28,390 --> 00:03:33,790 given to Welsh speaking soldiers to kind of remind them of their Welsh ness. 33 00:03:33,790 --> 00:03:42,100 So you get this notion that this particular tale and this particular body of material is somehow essentially Welsh. 34 00:03:42,100 --> 00:03:44,590 I've never been able to get any one number of times. 35 00:03:44,590 --> 00:03:50,710 I've asked above English speakers and real speakers to tell me why exactly it's essentially Welsh. 36 00:03:50,710 --> 00:03:57,280 Mostly they talk about, ah, well, the antiquity, the idea that the Welsh were Celts and very close to the soil, 37 00:03:57,280 --> 00:04:01,690 all of which are, you know, sort of generic romantic notions at the moment. 38 00:04:01,690 --> 00:04:11,030 The Mithai Community Centre. And this is a picture that was dedicated in, I think, 2011 by Prince Charles. 39 00:04:11,030 --> 00:04:17,050 So there's a royal link there. And of course, Prince Charles is very interested in alternative medicine. 40 00:04:17,050 --> 00:04:24,460 It is used extensively. There is a shop which sells craft goods, very high classed craft goods. 41 00:04:24,460 --> 00:04:28,960 There is a bookshop. The things that are sold in the bookshop. 42 00:04:28,960 --> 00:04:35,530 Some of them are much more towards the romantic notion of herbalism. 43 00:04:35,530 --> 00:04:41,740 But there also has every year a conference in which academics are invited. 44 00:04:41,740 --> 00:04:52,000 Some of the lectures, I think, again, go more towards the healing wells, but they have published a book with a collection of academic essays. 45 00:04:52,000 --> 00:04:58,420 So there's a consciousness of an academic world as well as a popular world. 46 00:04:58,420 --> 00:05:08,260 In addition to the mother of a story in the church is and I have a picture of it here, the tombstone for the last physician of Mother VI. 47 00:05:08,260 --> 00:05:18,970 The last one. Now, there are references to mother and Mervi in early in earlier earlier sources, not very, very early sources. 48 00:05:18,970 --> 00:05:25,630 And there's a suggestion that they have been linked to the court position of the Lord Reece. 49 00:05:25,630 --> 00:05:32,560 So, again, you have it worked into Welsh history, but they're not they're only ever called doctors. 50 00:05:32,560 --> 00:05:39,910 Whereas what you have operating in maths VI much more recently, it's really what Lisa was talking about is the Dannion hospice tradition, 51 00:05:39,910 --> 00:05:50,260 the conjuror tradition and the actual documents which are recorded in the Red Book of her guest are not particularly Welsh. 52 00:05:50,260 --> 00:05:53,280 They belong to the kind of medical documents. 53 00:05:53,280 --> 00:06:00,480 Find in the Middle Ages the sorts of things which, as medicine became professionalised and therefore more expensive, 54 00:06:00,480 --> 00:06:05,970 turns into the kind of popular medicine which was practised by Indian hazardous. 55 00:06:05,970 --> 00:06:15,810 So you have this very interesting bifurcation that here is this collection of documents which are not anciently welsch, but very mediaeval, 56 00:06:15,810 --> 00:06:26,820 giving way towards modern professional medicine and yet being retained and given this sort of new identity as ancient Welsh medicine, 57 00:06:26,820 --> 00:06:32,250 ancient Welsh herbalism. And of course, Mervi is very much connected to that. 58 00:06:32,250 --> 00:06:37,320 It's a small town, obviously no industry, and it's remote from other other places. 59 00:06:37,320 --> 00:06:41,760 So you can see why this particular thing is very important. 60 00:06:41,760 --> 00:06:48,480 This is littered, Anvar. And there is one of the many illustrations of the story of Lynn of Vannevar. 61 00:06:48,480 --> 00:06:52,350 It's in the centre of an important sort of walking area. 62 00:06:52,350 --> 00:06:53,850 So you get a lot of hill walkers. 63 00:06:53,850 --> 00:07:03,660 You get a lot of climbers climbing the mound and using Mervi really as a centre from which to set out or come or come back. 64 00:07:03,660 --> 00:07:11,250 So, again, there is this this interesting problem that the narrative provides a context. 65 00:07:11,250 --> 00:07:17,220 It provides depth that provides interest is an exciting and fascinating narrative. 66 00:07:17,220 --> 00:07:24,900 But it's a narrative which really comes in in the in in the romantic period. 67 00:07:24,900 --> 00:07:31,970 As I say, and I can't stress this often enough, it's a re or realised narrative rather than a narrative of continuity. 68 00:07:31,970 --> 00:07:39,690 And the reason I'm going on and on about this is because the last site ideal with has a much more continuous narrative. 69 00:07:39,690 --> 00:07:50,230 So the traditions are there. The mother gun were collected to the Lord Reese, an important thing, important ruler in Wales. 70 00:07:50,230 --> 00:07:53,880 The community centre has now a modern royal heritage. 71 00:07:53,880 --> 00:08:03,840 They have commissioned a stained glass window, also dedicated by Prince Charles, called the legend of Linda van Duff and Healing Waters. 72 00:08:03,840 --> 00:08:08,590 Lots of activities occur there. Now, of course, in abeyance. 73 00:08:08,590 --> 00:08:09,870 But one can understand, 74 00:08:09,870 --> 00:08:23,950 given where they are and given the sort of reputation of the stories of the mother and why there is this emphasis on the natural. 75 00:08:23,950 --> 00:08:28,210 The story has been in an uproar. It's been in a ballet. 76 00:08:28,210 --> 00:08:34,850 It's been a children's sort of thing. There is a novel written on it by Hilda Vaughn. 77 00:08:34,850 --> 00:08:45,100 And this is one of the posters which again goes back to this notion of antiquity, a notion which it is it is largely constructed, it has to be said. 78 00:08:45,100 --> 00:08:56,720 So an interesting place, a place which is sort of up and running as a going concern will undoubtedly be up and running once Kofod stops again. 79 00:08:56,720 --> 00:09:05,230 The lectures will start again. People will come back. And indeed, the site sort of says, yes, finally, we are about to open and I hope it stays open. 80 00:09:05,230 --> 00:09:10,030 But one which kind of draws on romanticism as well as history. 81 00:09:10,030 --> 00:09:15,880 The second site I want to look at is nontax in Stratton, Florida. 82 00:09:15,880 --> 00:09:25,760 And particularly that UNTAET US cut. I've done a lot of collecting here over a number of years and only recently the 83 00:09:25,760 --> 00:09:32,530 Capan 90 US has been given to the National Library where it is now on display. 84 00:09:32,530 --> 00:09:43,100 It starts off in just after the Reformation, when the startling family bought the site of the state of Florida Abbey and built a house. 85 00:09:43,100 --> 00:09:48,850 They are house which is still there. Enough like him, enough. Flug became a farm house. 86 00:09:48,850 --> 00:09:53,170 Originally, it was a house that the family lived in when the family married the Powles. 87 00:09:53,170 --> 00:09:59,230 They moved to the much posher mansion of ninety US, which I think is the next one. 88 00:09:59,230 --> 00:10:04,390 There it is. That's what they moved to. And this is Manocha blog about what happened. 89 00:10:04,390 --> 00:10:13,990 Menar Flag, the building that was there, built largely out of stone from the abbey at some point in the 19th century, 90 00:10:13,990 --> 00:10:20,260 a maser bowl, a broken me ysabel was found and brought back to the house. 91 00:10:20,260 --> 00:10:26,110 And is this May a bowl which has become known as the coupon run to us from which people would drink, 92 00:10:26,110 --> 00:10:32,740 particularly favoured by women who had had children and were suffering some kind of postpartum fever? 93 00:10:32,740 --> 00:10:37,360 People would drink from this and it was a curative cup and it stayed there. 94 00:10:37,360 --> 00:10:42,430 There are records of it, of coming of things coming back and marking cured. 95 00:10:42,430 --> 00:10:47,710 And it's it's there at the beginning of the 20th century. 96 00:10:47,710 --> 00:10:52,360 Mrs. Margaret Powell linked it to the Holy Grail. 97 00:10:52,360 --> 00:10:55,660 She was very interested in this kind of of spirituality. 98 00:10:55,660 --> 00:11:04,480 There are lots of Holy Grail candidates at the beginning of the 19th century, and this was her particular one for the first part of the 20th century. 99 00:11:04,480 --> 00:11:12,700 It remained very local. You would have stories in newspapers, mostly by people who visited during the summer and were not Welsh. 100 00:11:12,700 --> 00:11:20,650 They were visitors to Aberystwyth. The people I've spoken to, many of them, are very affectionate towards this subject. 101 00:11:20,650 --> 00:11:28,120 Very, very few of the locals think it's the grail. They all know perfectly well that it is associated with this house. 102 00:11:28,120 --> 00:11:39,400 But there is a sense that there is a kind of unity here which encompass the the old estates of Truscott go get and out pretty well. 103 00:11:39,400 --> 00:11:44,470 Cover Cardigan. Sure. And modern and some come on that show as well. 104 00:11:44,470 --> 00:11:50,560 And it's a very affectionately nostalgic view, but it's also a very ironic view. 105 00:11:50,560 --> 00:11:59,870 Very aware that these Gendry folk were very improvident with money, didn't necessarily run the estates particularly well. 106 00:11:59,870 --> 00:12:08,320 And from the point of view of the kind of Yeoman Greven and city dwellers, nice to think about, but also nice to have passed. 107 00:12:08,320 --> 00:12:15,610 Now, the reason I stress this is because in the second half of the 20th century or the later 20th century, 108 00:12:15,610 --> 00:12:22,090 the Holy Grail aspect of this object becomes very, very popular and it's largely due to the Internet. 109 00:12:22,090 --> 00:12:30,940 And there is when you get people sort of linking it to the Templars and various various things and in the 21st century now. 110 00:12:30,940 --> 00:12:37,890 Let me move on slightly. There is a reinterpretation of the whole of the strata Florida area. 111 00:12:37,890 --> 00:12:43,310 You see, if I have a picture which which helps. I will come back to that. 112 00:12:43,310 --> 00:12:49,760 That's the strata of strata Florida runes interpreting it as a sec grid landscape. 113 00:12:49,760 --> 00:12:59,330 Now, this, too, has gone into a because of Kofod. But there's a sense that somehow strata Florida can be linked to all of the monuments in the area. 114 00:12:59,330 --> 00:13:04,340 All of the monuments that profess to. Hutton was talking about all of the early monuments. 115 00:13:04,340 --> 00:13:14,240 And in many ways it kind of pivots not so much here on the Grail as on this structure, which is a stone line structure in the middle of the room. 116 00:13:14,240 --> 00:13:18,920 And the question really is here, is this an ancient druid? 117 00:13:18,920 --> 00:13:25,760 Well, or is it part of a drainage system brought in by the Cistercians to make this area more 118 00:13:25,760 --> 00:13:30,320 suitable for farming and sheep farming and the things that the state Cistercians did well. 119 00:13:30,320 --> 00:13:37,850 And, of course, depending on which side of this this question is not really an argument you fall depends really on whether 120 00:13:37,850 --> 00:13:48,200 you see strata Florida as a more sacred area or simply as part of a very layered historical area in Wales. 121 00:13:48,200 --> 00:13:52,400 Let me go back for a minute. It's floating strata. 122 00:13:52,400 --> 00:14:01,430 Florida as a tourist site is nothing new. Stephen Williams, who is rightly called the father of Cistercian archaeology in Wales, 123 00:14:01,430 --> 00:14:09,530 also owned shares in the Manchester and Millford Railway Company, and he organised tours of the area. 124 00:14:09,530 --> 00:14:15,050 CSU station, which is now obsolete, was re named of Florida. 125 00:14:15,050 --> 00:14:20,180 People came and this is one of the advertising things and it's absolutely wonderful. 126 00:14:20,180 --> 00:14:25,520 It comes from the collection of the special collections in Cardiff and it starts off. 127 00:14:25,520 --> 00:14:31,340 And how can one resist something that begins? Much trem and stuff. 128 00:14:31,340 --> 00:14:35,570 And talks about a journey to Straten, Florida. 129 00:14:35,570 --> 00:14:41,300 Although the cup was not called the Grail at the time, it was seen as a relic. 130 00:14:41,300 --> 00:14:48,650 And there are all these wonderful sort of rather wild and sort of speculative stories about why the monks 131 00:14:48,650 --> 00:14:55,280 bought this cup and how they encouraged people and how the surrounding roads led to strata flourish. 132 00:14:55,280 --> 00:15:00,250 I mean, it really, really is a very exciting story. It's highly speculative one. 133 00:15:00,250 --> 00:15:09,140 And a speculation has continued, I think, very much into this notion of turning in an Antaeus cup into the Grail. 134 00:15:09,140 --> 00:15:17,670 It's an interesting belief structure, but one has to sort of say that it is made of which our own it is the shape of the Mesa Bowl. 135 00:15:17,670 --> 00:15:21,440 And no matter how coy one can be about not wanting to test it, 136 00:15:21,440 --> 00:15:28,880 because pilgrims have eaten it and all sorts of things, it really, really does not qualify well as a possible grail. 137 00:15:28,880 --> 00:15:36,350 But, of course, that doesn't stop the stories. This is the bowl in which it was capped by the last of the Powells. 138 00:15:36,350 --> 00:15:41,150 They were actually Powells, but they inherited nontax and left it. 139 00:15:41,150 --> 00:15:46,040 And it was this family of the last of this family who gave it to the National Library. 140 00:15:46,040 --> 00:15:49,430 Nontax is now a posh country hotel. 141 00:15:49,430 --> 00:15:56,840 And this is the memorial in the garden, which, as you can see, references Glastonbury, that St. Michael's at Glastonbury. 142 00:15:56,840 --> 00:16:04,220 So one has this wonderful story, a tourist exploitation of which goes back to the 19th century beliefs, 143 00:16:04,220 --> 00:16:09,590 various beliefs of which also go back to the 19th century. And it provides two things. 144 00:16:09,590 --> 00:16:16,070 One, a network for the people who live in and around Cardigan Sheremet at the Aberystwyth area. 145 00:16:16,070 --> 00:16:19,770 And as I say, I've had no problem with getting people to talk to me. 146 00:16:19,770 --> 00:16:26,600 In fact, I can remember walking up to the librarian sort of people sort of stopping me and say, I understand you're talking about the 90s cup. 147 00:16:26,600 --> 00:16:35,390 My grandmother went to visit it. I saw it as a school job. It's a very popular local object, but as a heritage object, 148 00:16:35,390 --> 00:16:46,040 it's being put on a much broader international plane and a much broader universal plane, the notion of somehow more sacred rather than the local. 149 00:16:46,040 --> 00:16:49,960 The last one I would like to look at is Frangos Lake. 150 00:16:49,960 --> 00:16:54,470 Also a associated with a lake legend with a fairy legend. 151 00:16:54,470 --> 00:17:02,300 This one going back to the 12th century. This one appears in Walter Map and it talks about a girl coming out of the lake. 152 00:17:02,300 --> 00:17:08,990 She marries a mortal's. He goes back into the lake, takes everyone with her except one of her children. 153 00:17:08,990 --> 00:17:13,490 Now, the interesting thing here is in the middle of languorous lake is a prenup, 154 00:17:13,490 --> 00:17:19,040 an artificial island, which we know were still in operation until the 10th century. 155 00:17:19,040 --> 00:17:26,180 So not only do we have folk narratives about this and in Waltin that we have not only the Lake Legends story, 156 00:17:26,180 --> 00:17:33,620 we have a notion of other folklore associated with and from other sources like the Welsh genealogy. 157 00:17:33,620 --> 00:17:40,280 We can get even more information. The site is also associated with the thank you, the monster, the lake monster, 158 00:17:40,280 --> 00:17:46,790 the Welsh Lake Monster associated with another local area in another lake in which there's 159 00:17:46,790 --> 00:17:52,100 a sort of underwater channel map tells us there's there's a beautiful land underneath. 160 00:17:52,100 --> 00:18:02,390 So we have an awful lot of folklore, very little of which is actually referenced at the language site as it is now. 161 00:18:02,390 --> 00:18:10,340 There are excavations, recent excavations, which produced a great deal of information about the Kanuk. 162 00:18:10,340 --> 00:18:13,820 That's what it might have looked like, the material that was found. 163 00:18:13,820 --> 00:18:19,790 And it's quite fabulous material about fabrics, all sorts of things that you don't normally found. 164 00:18:19,790 --> 00:18:30,680 Find is housed in the Brecon Museum. But there's no real attempt to link the narrative with what is there. 165 00:18:30,680 --> 00:18:42,590 There is a small heritage centre. Now, I'm hoping this is going to be a watch this space, basically, because there's such potential here. 166 00:18:42,590 --> 00:18:45,560 The folklore is so much more grounded. 167 00:18:45,560 --> 00:18:53,240 So Morritz authentically grounded than the folklore of an on tales and Mervi, which is essentially 19th and 20th century folklore. 168 00:18:53,240 --> 00:19:00,080 The material here is much more extensive and much older and equally exciting. 169 00:19:00,080 --> 00:19:08,420 So looking at these three heritage sites, the way they use the narratives, the way they construct and reconstruct the narratives, 170 00:19:08,420 --> 00:19:14,900 I think I oughta mention at this point that I'm not suggesting that any of these narrative strains are right or wrong. 171 00:19:14,900 --> 00:19:16,910 Folklore is very dynamic. 172 00:19:16,910 --> 00:19:28,790 And while it is quite useful to be able to recognise the history and the archaeology separate from the narratives that are being told. 173 00:19:28,790 --> 00:19:35,210 It's equally important, and I would like to end on this note to remember that the narratives are powerful. 174 00:19:35,210 --> 00:19:39,590 They draw people in. They give them a better sense of the site. 175 00:19:39,590 --> 00:19:47,510 They provide the local community with a network to relate to, continue to relate to one another, to its past and to its future. 176 00:19:47,510 --> 00:19:57,590 And they provide visitors with a window, sometimes a romantic window, but certainly a very interesting window into into Welsh culture. 177 00:19:57,590 --> 00:20:04,558 So that concludes my survey into mysterious Wales.