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Hwch Ddu Gwta 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🏳️‍🌈 @mochyn.bsky.social · 6h

If I didn't know I'd hate him, I'd love to have met Borrow just to hear his Welsh haha

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Hwch Ddu Gwta 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🏳️‍🌈 @mochyn.bsky.social · 6h

All good here mush! Thanks for checking in!! Hope all's good with you!

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Hwch Ddu Gwta 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🏳️‍🌈 @mochyn.bsky.social · 6h

True, he does repeat that he reads it better than he speaks it. Love the idea of him wandering round Wales harping on in a style of Welsh centuries out of date though lol

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Hwch Ddu Gwta 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🏳️‍🌈 @mochyn.bsky.social · 8h

Hahaha Wild Wales, p.444 of this edition (not sure which it is because the front pages have fallen out lol). Borrows meets a guy on his way to Tregaron and asks him what Tregaron is like and the man replies with that line

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Hwch Ddu Gwta 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🏳️‍🌈 @mochyn.bsky.social · 8h

And like, Welsh people are no more mysterious than any other country with a language you aren't familiar with. We're not inscrutable, we just speak a different language and so many people from both sides of the border hate this.

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Hwch Ddu Gwta 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🏳️‍🌈 @mochyn.bsky.social · 8h

Like, the extent to which these views persist to this day is insane. You'll frequently see the Welsh patronisingly described as friendly but inscrutable, kind but strange. There's this "Celtic romanticism" that affects how people talk about us, positively as well as negatively

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Hwch Ddu Gwta 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🏳️‍🌈 @mochyn.bsky.social · 9h

Even the edition I'm currently reading, dating from the 70s, buys into this myopic, "noble savage", parochial view of the Welsh people. Describing them in the blurb as "kindly, hospitable, but mysterious" and like are they really mysterious? Or are they just speaking a different language?

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Hwch Ddu Gwta 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🏳️‍🌈 @mochyn.bsky.social · 9h

Borrows remains a true englishman from the age of rampant imperialism. Lamenting his peoples immorality, their greed, their fall from grace, comparing them to the noble yet provincial Welsh, supporting slavery and treating an Irish man he meets on the road as little more than a performing monkey

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Hwch Ddu Gwta 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🏳️‍🌈 @mochyn.bsky.social · 9h

It feels so "noble savage" of him. He lauds the average Welsh persons skill and familiarity with ancient literature in comparison with the average english person, while at the same time seemingly truly shocked that a Welsh person is able to string two words together

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Hwch Ddu Gwta 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🏳️‍🌈 @mochyn.bsky.social · 9h

It seems that every other Welsh person he meets he treats with the patronising awe of someone who has just met a toddler who can recite Shakespeare from memory

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Hwch Ddu Gwta 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🏳️‍🌈 @mochyn.bsky.social · 9h

George Borrows is so fascinating a character. He's absolutely detestable but weirdly charming in the ways he treats the Welsh people he encounters on his travels with fawning respect and admiration as well as absolute condescension.

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Hwch Ddu Gwta 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🏳️‍🌈 @mochyn.bsky.social · 9h

"I am not a Breton. I wish I was, or anything but what I am, one of a nation amongst whom any knowledge save what relates to money-making and over-reaching is looked upon as a disgrace. I am ashamed to say that I am an englishman" lol

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Hwch Ddu Gwta 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🏳️‍🌈 @mochyn.bsky.social · 9h

After being met with scorn and derision from several english people atop the mountain for delivering two tongue-twisting stanzas in Welsh he's asked by a Welshman if he's a Breton, I presume by the accent with which the englishman spoke Welsh, to which he replies...

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Hwch Ddu Gwta 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🏳️‍🌈 @mochyn.bsky.social · 9h

Apparently the cabin atop 18th century Yr Wyddfa sold truly excellent coffee and bottles of quite passable ale

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Hwch Ddu Gwta 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🏳️‍🌈 @mochyn.bsky.social · 9h

Imposing an Yr Wyddfa tax would totally fund an independent Wales according to recent data

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Hwch Ddu Gwta 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🏳️‍🌈 @mochyn.bsky.social · 9h

Reminds me of the time I climbed Vesuvius and found to my absolute delight that there was a tiny cabin on the top selling bottles of wine for like three euros. Drinking wine atop a volcano, gazing down at the sulferous caldera is one of my favourite memories of the entire trip

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Hwch Ddu Gwta 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🏳️‍🌈 @mochyn.bsky.social · 9h

We're all used to seeing (and mocking) the endless queues waiting to summit Yr Wyddfa but reading George Borrows' Wild Wales and he records that the mountain's tourism was well enough established in the mid-18thC that there was a permanently inhabited cabin dispensing refreshments located at the top

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Hwch Ddu Gwta 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🏳️‍🌈 @mochyn.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Yeah! It's a two minute walk outside the town centre. It's called Rowtons!

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Hwch Ddu Gwta 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🏳️‍🌈 @mochyn.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

There's plenty to see there! Highly recommend it. Weird and creepy and wholesome all at once

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Hwch Ddu Gwta 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🏳️‍🌈 @mochyn.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

That's the one! It's full of cool stuff and they hold seances and things. Well worth a visit if you're in the area

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Hwch Ddu Gwta 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🏳️‍🌈 @mochyn.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Haha a sack of spuds with a sword though which is cooler than an unarmed sack of spuds

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Hwch Ddu Gwta 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🏳️‍🌈 @mochyn.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

It's honestly pretty cool. Lots of weird stuff to gawp at, haunted dolls, evil arsonist paintings, recordings of possession victims. Definitely recommend

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Hwch Ddu Gwta 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🏳️‍🌈 @mochyn.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Alt text: it's an ornate box bound in twine within a glass case with a decorative peacock feather and a crucifix (wrong religion surely) placed on top presumably to offer further protection from the spirit contained within the box

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Hwch Ddu Gwta 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🏳️‍🌈 @mochyn.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Went to the paranormal museum in Camarthen and my favourite thing they had was this dybbuk box bound in twine to ensure the evil spirit contained within does not escape.

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Hwch Ddu Gwta 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🏳️‍🌈 @mochyn.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Hope you're okay Bethan! Spunds like one hell of a disarm!

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Reposted by Hwch Ddu Gwta 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🏳️‍🌈

Errol 🦇🏳️‍🌈 @eerieseymour.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

teens everywhere are calling having a nice bubble bath “going Marat mode”

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Reposted by Hwch Ddu Gwta 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🏳️‍🌈

Hwch Ddu Gwta 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🏳️‍🌈 @mochyn.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Idk there's something very sexy about going "yes my lord", "of course my lord", "they're all against you my lord" and then emptying the poison from the secret compartment in your ring into his goblet of wine

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Hwch Ddu Gwta 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🏳️‍🌈 @mochyn.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Lurking behind a plush curtain, rubbing my hands together and chuckling to myself

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Hwch Ddu Gwta 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🏳️‍🌈 @mochyn.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

It's so sad I'm never going to get to be what I want: a conniving vizier with aspirations for the throne

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Hwch Ddu Gwta 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🏳️‍🌈 @mochyn.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

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Hwch Ddu Gwta 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🏳️‍🌈 @mochyn.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

He's gonna do it!!! (Talk about Llywelyn's letter to Eva de Broase apologising for executing her husband for shagging his [Llywelyn's] wife and asking that the marriage between their children still go ahead)

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Hwch Ddu Gwta 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🏳️‍🌈 @mochyn.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

The greater princes moved within these circles diplomatically and adopted and adapted their written and diplomatic styles in a similar way. With all the flowery prose and language that would have been expected and appropriate for the time.

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Hwch Ddu Gwta 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🏳️‍🌈 @mochyn.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

...everyone else and had secretaries and advisors who could tap into the same diplomatic vein as was being mined by greater powers in western Europe at the time.

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Hwch Ddu Gwta 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🏳️‍🌈 @mochyn.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

That's an awfully long way to say hi, thanks for the your letter, let's fuck up the english. But it goes to show that Wales, peripheral as it might have been, was far from diplomatically dim. There's still this idea of medieval Wales as a cultural backwater but they were playing the same game as...

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Hwch Ddu Gwta 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🏳️‍🌈 @mochyn.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

... that I and my heirs, cleaving inseparably to you and your heirs, shall be to your friends' friends, to your enemies enemies."

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Hwch Ddu Gwta 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🏳️‍🌈 @mochyn.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

...knight, your letters, impressed by your golden seal in witness of the alliance of the kingdom of the French and the principality of north Wales, which I, before an assembly of clergy, even upon the sacrosanct relics seat to observe as they will be a perpetual memorial and inviolable testimony...

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Hwch Ddu Gwta 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🏳️‍🌈 @mochyn.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

...fealty and respectful service, which I will repay the excellency of your nobility, on account of the singular and priceless gifts which you, king of the French, even prince of that country of kings, outstripping me, your friend, not more munificently than magnificently, have sent me by your...

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Hwch Ddu Gwta 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🏳️‍🌈 @mochyn.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

My favourite thing about medieval diplomatic texts is how long and waffling the greetings are. Example A: "To our most excellent lord Phillip, by the grace of God, the illustrious king of the French, Llywelyn, Prince of North Wales, his friend, sends greeting and such devotion as the debt of...

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Hwch Ddu Gwta 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🏳️‍🌈 @mochyn.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

It's none of your business where your great (x50) grandparent came from. If they wanted you to know they would have told you

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Hwch Ddu Gwta 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🏳️‍🌈 @mochyn.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

I must admit however that I am not silverback strong. I am more possum strong. In that I'll bite you then root around in your bins

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Hwch Ddu Gwta 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🏳️‍🌈 @mochyn.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Ultimately I think that's a good thing. The idea of *being* celtic, rather than speaking a celtic language, is too readily usable by people to exclude while a civic or national descriptor is more open to others and less inclined to ideas of ethnonationalism but idk 🤷‍♂️

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Hwch Ddu Gwta 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🏳️‍🌈 @mochyn.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Alt-text: it's a tshirt depicting a gorilla lifting multi coloured weights with the words "silverback strong" beneath

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Hwch Ddu Gwta 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🏳️‍🌈 @mochyn.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Anyway look at this wonderful tshirt I bought from the charity shop

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Hwch Ddu Gwta 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🏳️‍🌈 @mochyn.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

I'm not denouncing the idea of a "celticism". I think it can be useful in that it can foster cross- border support for minoritised languages, looking to others to see the steps they've taken to protect languages that have been historically marginalised, but be careful that utility doesn't go ugly

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Hwch Ddu Gwta 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🏳️‍🌈 @mochyn.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

When you're so celtic you need a scientific test to prove it 🫠

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Hwch Ddu Gwta 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🏳️‍🌈 @mochyn.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

True! I can see the utility of a celtic definition if it helps foster cross-national and cultural support for minoritised languages, just worry that it's been coopted by ugly views based on what some ancestry . com test said, ban them entirely for the public, it's not for us to know lmao

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