Ebook: Wales in the Early Middle Ages

It is not possible to write a history of early medieval Wales that will stand up to the requirements of modern scholarship. Interesting though the subject matter is, the available source material is quite inadequate to resolve the simplest problems, and it is no longer acceptable to take material written at a late date and project its implications backwards over several centuries. There is very, very little written material that survives from the pre-Conquest period, and that which does survive is often corrupt and fragmentary; there may well be more physical evidence that is relevant, to be recovered by excavation and by analysis of the landscape, but work on these areas is still in its early stages. Any history, therefore, becomes more of an exercise in speculative imagination than a sober, well-documented analysis, however rigorous the writer might attempt to be. The exercise is, nevertheless, worth undertaking: some questions have to be asked, and even if no-one can be sure of the answers the act of asking them is not without its value. There is, moreover, a point in writing a history that indicates, and even emphasizes, the uncertainties and the lacunae: it is useful to be aware of what we do not know, to pare away accumulated traditions and unquestioned assumptions and to isolate that which may be said with some certainty amidst the mass of suppositions. In writing this book, however, I have also tried to note the content of the later law tracts where thematically relevant. This is not because I consider them acceptable as pre-Conquest evidence but because I think it is valuable to weigh their import against the unelaborated earlier fragments. They are noted, therefore, for essentially comparative reasons: the comparison is often instructive. It is necessary, then, to be vigilant about the source material available, and the use made of it, and in all cases I would ask the reader — by reference to the Appendix — to balance the interpretation I have put upon the surviving fragments against a sober assessment of their nature and limitations. I have for this reason given references to English translations where they are available.