Walloon

Walloon is the langue d'oïl of the southern Low Countries, spoken along the Meuse and Sambre around Liège and Namur. Its speakers descend from the Gallo-Romans of Gallia Belgica, whom Germanic neighbours called the Walha. The Sequence of Saint Eulalia of around 880 shows features of this region.

Walloon's growth was shaped by the Principality of Liège, whose bishop Notker received the county of Huy in 980 and founded an ecclesiastical state that lasted eight hundred years. Namur, Limbourg and Hainaut passed to the Burgundian dukes and then to the Spanish and Austrian Habsburgs.

Walloon written literature appeared in the sixteenth century, but after French annexation in 1795 the language retreated to home and workshop. After 1815 the land belonged to the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, breaking away in the Belgian Revolution of 1830.