Welsh

The Welsh, who call themselves Cymry, are the Brittonic people of mountainous western Britain, heirs of Iron Age tribes whose Common Brittonic speech became Old Welsh. After the Roman withdrawal they formed competing kingdoms, including Gwynedd, bound by the law codified under Hywel Dda and a bardic tradition.

Gruffudd ap Llywelyn briefly united the country before his death in 1063. Edward I destroyed Gwynedd in 1282, killing Llywelyn ap Gruffudd and building castles; Owain Glyndŵr's rising from 1400 briefly won a Welsh parliament and church but collapsed within a decade.

The Tudors' Laws in Wales Acts of 1535 and 1542 ended the legal distinction between Wales and England, yet William Morgan's Welsh Bible of 1588 preserved Cymraeg as a literary and congregational language. The eighteenth-century Methodist revival and eisteddfod shaped Welsh life, while coal and iron drew people into the southern industrial valleys.