Excerpt from The Folk-Lore Record, Vol. 5
has been shown by Mr. Skene (F, A. B.i. pp. 201, &c.)to refer not to Wales as the country of the Cymry but to the period when Mona and Arvon were possessed by a Gwyddel population, the legendary kings of which are the main actors in these tales. There is substantial agreement as to the fact that a Gwyddel population did at one time possess the whole of North Wales, whence it was driven in the fourth and fifth centuries by Cunedda and his sons coming from the north. But whether the Cuneddian conquest represents an expulsion of invaders or the seizure by Cymric tribes of land long held previously by the Gael, and whether the traditions of Cunedda were the last echo of actual events, or the form merely in which a long continued war of races is expressed, are still moot points.
The Bishop of St. David"s, in his Vestiges of the Gael in Gwynedd, looks upon the Gwyddel as the first wave of the Celtic invasion of Britain. The succeeding Cymry drove them into the nooks and fastnesses of the island, much as they themselves were driven thereto later on by the Saxons. The Gael, forced to abandon Lloegria, took refuge among the mountain retreats of Gwynedd, and there preserved their independence until the fifth century, when Caswallawn Law Hir, whom the legend terms a grandson of Cunedda, finally established a Cymric rule over the whole of Gwynedd, and ended thereby a struggle that had lasted probably through the entire period of the Roman occupation. Long even after these events the Gwyddel gave trouble to their Cymric rulers, and up to the ninth century there are traces of fresh Cymric immigration from Strathclyde and Cumbria. This conflict of races extending over centuries took the shape in the medi?sval chronicles of the invasion and conquest of Gwynedd by Cunedda and his sons.
This theory is stated by Mr. Skene (i. p. 44) "to run counter to the real probabilities of the case." It is certainly opposed to tradition from the days of Nennius to those of Iolo Morganwg. Mr. Skene"s own views may be summarised somewhat as follows: About the middle of the fourth century the Scots of Ireland began to assail the Roman province, on the coasts of which they made numerous settlements, more especially in Gwynedd and portions of Dyfed. Meanwhile the Picts, swarming down from the highlands of Scotland, broke in upon and ravaged the tracts between the walls.
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