This story of aspiration and defeat seems like an apt symbol for Wales’ wider struggle against England over the past thousand years.

We hope that making this information available on the spot will bring Gerald’s fascinating observations to a new audience.”did not come to meet the archbishop with his people.... Chapter 13: Of the journey by Wenloch, Brumfeld, the castle of Ludlow, and Gerald could not have predicted the later perfection of cynghanedd, the complex system of sound correspondence that has characterised the strict-metre poetry of the Welsh for so many centuries and that is still practised today, especially in competitions for the eisteddfod chair. Cynghanedd did not become a formal system with strict rules until the fourteenth century, but its uniquely Welsh forms had been honed for centuries before that. Nevertheless, in 1199 the chapter elected Gerald bishop on the understanding that he would petition the pope to make St David’s an archbishopric. Giraldus Cambrensis in Latin, Gerallt Cymro in Welsh, Gerald of Wales in English - the man had as many names as he had careers. Gerald was the grandson of Gerald of Windsor and Nest, a princess of Deheubarth, who established Carew Castle after the Norman Conquest of this region of Wales. Thus he was mixed Norman and Welsh descent, and as our daughter writes in her senior thesis, “His Welsh ancestry meant he could act Norman” and side with the Normans but never be accepted as fully Norman. He himself “decried” both Normans and Welsh for despising him, arguing that his uncertain identity left him accepted by neither culture. At the same time, he spoke French primarily, and Latin as a churchman, with only a little Welsh, and overtly participated in Norman efforts to conquer Wales.

As something of a reward for his services, in 1188 Giraldus was nominated to accompany the archbishop of Canterbury, Baldwin of Exeter, as he rode through Wales on a recruiting drive. The purpose of the journey was to enlist men for The Third Crusade but as far as Giraldus was concerned the trip gave him the ideal opportunity to study his fellow countrymen and to develop his literary skills. Edited by A. Joseph McMullen, Assistant Professor in Celtic Studies at Centenary University, and Georgia Henley,a Postdoctoral Fellow in TextTechnologies and Digital Humanities at Stanford University, this volume would be of particular interest to students and scholars of Medieval Latin and British history.

News

and not before known) by the dying confession of each party... Chapter 12: Of the journey by the White Monastery, Oswaldestree, Powys, and