Voices
I've come across an interesting page on the BBC site called Voices which describes the various langauges (indeginous and non indeginous) spoken in the UK.
The Voices in your area section for Cumbria has a section about counting sheep, which reminded me of an interesting site I found a while ago about how some farmers in north England still use a method of counting which is very similar to modern day Welsh, even though Welsh (or Brythonic at the time) ceased to be spoken in this part of Britain over a thousand years ago. There's a tourist atraction called Rheged (name of old Celtic kingdom) in Cumbria which mentions the area's Celtic history.
Edit: I have been informed via comments (by Nick) that Cumbric may well have still been spoken in the Eden Valley as late as the 1300's.
The Voices in your area section for Cumbria has a section about counting sheep, which reminded me of an interesting site I found a while ago about how some farmers in north England still use a method of counting which is very similar to modern day Welsh, even though Welsh (or Brythonic at the time) ceased to be spoken in this part of Britain over a thousand years ago. There's a tourist atraction called Rheged (name of old Celtic kingdom) in Cumbria which mentions the area's Celtic history.
Edit: I have been informed via comments (by Nick) that Cumbric may well have still been spoken in the Eden Valley as late as the 1300's.
posted by Rhys Wynne at 2:58 pm
3 Comments:
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A Pedant Writes: Rhys, there's a tradition that Cumbric (local P-Celtic Brythonic language which had a common ancestor with medieval Welsh) was still being spoken in the Eden Valley into the 13th century, so rather more recently than 'a thousand years ago'. Of course none of it was ever written down.
See http://nfbtnw.blogspot.com/2005/06/yan-tyan-tethera.html
Sorry, I'm no historian. I remember seeing a programme a few years back about traditionol music from the Northumbeland area being played by rural/agricultural communities. it had a distinctly Celtic sound and it wasnt any of this new age wanna-be celtic nonsense either.
Maybe this Voices project will uncover some linguistic links.
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