Posted on 01/15/2017 1:18:00 PM PST by nickcarraway
According to the ancient tale, King Arthur still sleeps in a cave in the hills across the Shropshire border in Mid Wales.
The legend says he is waiting for the call to rescue the nation when it is in danger.
The King Arthur story resonates with visitors – and now it will be used to attract more tourists.
King Arthur’s legend will be revisited as part of Wales’ 2017 Year of Legends.
It is hoped the tale will benefit the region in the same way it attracts crowds to attractions like Tintagel in Cornwall and Glastonbury in Somerset.
In Mid Wales, King Arthur’s Labyrinth tourist attraction in Corris, is to play a pivotal part in the campaign as many of these ancient Arthurian legends are said to originate from nearby.
Meanwhile, bordering Shropshire is believed to be the birthplace of Queen Ganhumara – Guinevere of Arthurian legend – who was rumoured to have been born at Oswestry’s 3,000-year-old hill fort.
This all links in with the release of a new film about King Arthur as part of the Welsh Government’s Year of Legends marketing campaign that aims to promote Wales’ culture and heritage and follows on from the 2016 Year of Adventure.
A spokesman from the Labyrinth said: “We will reopen on April 1 with some brand new surprises for the Welsh Year of Legends.
“King Arthur’s Labyrinth is an exciting underground adventure which begins as you sail along an underground river, through the great waterfall, deep inside the spectacular and vast caverns of the labyrinth far into the past.
“Found deep beneath the mountains of southern Snowdonia, we think this mysterious attraction is one of the best days out. Best described as an underground storytelling adventure, it’s a cool attraction when hot and a dry attraction when wet and with lots more things to do.”
Stories of King Arthur in Wales are based on traditional legends from original sources including the Mabinogion and the Tales of Taliesin.
They include the adventures of Merlin at Dinas Emrys, the battle between the white and the red dragon and the voyage to Avalon.
There are also references to the lost land of Cantre’r Gwaelod and the legend that Arthur still sleeps in a cave in the Welsh hills waiting for the call.
Welsh economy secretary Ken Skates, who represents Chirk and the Dee Valley, said according to the Welsh Government £150 million is spent on holidays in Wales every year.
Culture and heritage is the main activity, with 61 per cent of overseas visitors citing Wales’ historic sites as a key reason for their visit.
He said the border region is also important in attracting day trippers and holidaymakers from Shropshire and the wider Midlands region and the marketing campaign will aim to increase visits from people from those areas.
He said: “The campaign is about creating and celebrating Welsh legends, modern-day personalities, products and events that are made in Wales, or enriched by coming here. It should resonate and make a difference in 2017.”
Visit Wales has already approved £1.28m for 35 projects as part of the year which includes a Merlin Festival in Carmarthen, Carmarthenshire and a jousting tournament and banquet in Conwy county.
There will also be recognition of global talent inspired by Wales, from Roald Dahl and Dylan Thomas to JRR Tolkien.
There will be tours and trails, plus exhibitions and collections by Amgueddfa Cymru and the National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth.
I’ve been to Wales twice in my life. It’s a wonderful place, with a great history, but I would never go again due to the invasion of Europe by the islamic savages.
Welsh...the only language that is spoken differently than it is spelled
Thank goodness - Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch
“Well, I didn’t vote for you.”
Not only have I been to that place, it’s on Ynys Mon(Isle of Anglesey), but I can also pronounce it.
You probably already know some of the rules, but a single “f” is actually a “v” in english, and a double f “ff” is actually the equivalent of s single “f” in english. Also the double “dd” is as “th” in english. And for some real fun, try pronouncing the Ll, there is no equivalent to it in english.
I think Arthur overslept,the barbarian hoards are already massed and taking over without a fight...
Well, actually, day three of a chest cold. . .
Anal nathrak.
Uthvas bethud.
Do che-ol di-enve.
I really loved Helen Mirren as Morgana in that movie and the Wagner soundtrack was good too.
Actually, Welsh is far more phonetic than English ... it’s just that Welsh letters have a very different sound than letters in English, so it seems weird to us. The C always sounds like an English K (even when followed by E, I or Y), the F sounds like an English V (it is the Welsh FF that sounds like an English F), the Welsh TH (which is considered one letter) always sounds like the TH in “then” or “than” (the initial consonant sound in “the” and “this” and “that” is spelled with a DD (also considered one letter) in Welsh), the Welsh W can be used as a consonant that has two possible sounds, exactly like the English OO (sometimes as in “took” and sometimes as in “tooth”), etc. Fascinating language.
Oops, I see that you already had made many of the same points that I made. Esgusodwch fi. : )
I’ve heard the Welsh LL pronounced with a bit of an HL sound at the end, like a guttural “sh-h-l” sound. I’m trying (although episodically, and not very hard) to learn Welsh, and the LL sound clearly is the hardest to replicate. (The CH actually is pretty easy, like the CH at the end of the Scottish “loch,” or the CH at the beginning of a very Hebrew-accented Yiddish “chutzpah.”)
Sounds kinda Sylvester the cat to me. Ssssssssufferin succotash.
How many languages do you know?
Celtic languages seem daunting for an English or Spanish speaker. I had an “Encyclopedia Britannica” computer program as a kid and they had soundboards for various languages, I loved how the numbers 1-10 sounded in Irish.
Fluently, only English and Spanish. But I have some knowledge of French and German vocabulary and can follow somewhat when reading most Romance (i.e., Latin-based) and Germanic languages (try to read Dutch and sound it out and you’ll be surprised how much you can make out).
Celtic languages, of course, are a whole other ballgame, but I became fascinated with Welsh orthography and pronunciation a couple of years ago and have done a bit of reading and watched videos to try to learn as much as practicable (without devoting too much time to it). I have found it quite rewarding even though I’m not sure that I’ll ever learn enough to carry out a conversation, particularly when I discover words that seem familiar to those in Spanish and turn out to have come from Latin due to centuries-long Roman rule over Wale (e.g., the Welsh word for “church” is “eglwys,” which, like the Spanish “iglesia,” is derived from the Latin “ecclesia”), or words that have been adapted into English (e.g., “tad, sometimes pronounced “dad,” is the Welsh word for “father”), or even words that seem familiar but turn out to be from the same Proto-Indo-European root as words in Spanish or English (for example, the Welsh word for yellow is “melyn,” which comes from “mel,” which means “honey” not only in Welsh but also in Latin (it became “miel” in Spanish) and Greek, all of which are Indo-European languages). Another interesting example: The Welsh word for “goldfish” is “pysgodyn aur,” with a first word that sounded to me like “pescado” (the Spanish word for a fish that has been caught, including those served as food) and a second word being reminiscent of the Latin “aurum” (which is the reason why gold’s chemical symbol is “Au” and the Spanish word for gold is “oro”); it turns out that both of those Welsh words came from Latin, with the first coming from a form of the Latin “pisces” (meaning “fish”; the Latin “pisces” and the German “fisch” both have the same Proto-Indo-European root, with a switch from F to P (or vice versa; I can’t remember which) being something fairly common as languages evolve) and the second word indeed coming from the Latin “aurum.”
OK, that’s enough Welsh etymology for today. : ) Suffice it to say, I indeed am fascinated by Welsh, as well as its fellow Brittonic languages (Breton and the brought-back-from-extinction Cornish), which descended from Brittonic; they are somewhat similar to its fellow insular Celtic languages, the Goidelic languages (Irish, Scottish Gaelic and the brought-back-from-extinction Manx), which descended from Old Irish, but for some reason I like the Brittonic languages better. But, yes, Irish numbers do sound cool.
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