Triads of the Welsh

Before I go into too much detail about the mnemonic "triads" of the ancient Welsh, I want to give a quick background on the people and their origins (which was very confusing and hard to for me to dissect, but this I think this book lays it out fairly clearly). According to A History of Wales from the Earliest Times to the Edwardian Conquest by Sir John Edward Lloyd, there are three peoples that make up the Welsh ethnic group:

• The Neolithic, or basically the original inhabitants of Wales (The Welsh inherited many of their physical attributes from this group)
• The Gaels or Goidelic people, a Celtic group (Greatly influenced the politics and social institutions of the Welsh)
• The Brythons or Britons, also a Celtic group (The Welsh language essentialy comes from this people)

Because they inherited their language from the Brythons, the Welsh are considered to be Brythonic people as opposed to Gaelic people like the Irish.

Modern Day Great Britain

Great Britain about 5th Century AD
Red=Brythonic Areas
Green=Gaelic Areas
Blue=Pictish Areas

Now to the good stuff: the Welsh Triads (or Trioedd Ynys Prydein). After seeing them referenced in the book above, I did a quick Wikipedia search and according to the Wikipedia page, the Triads are sayings that help preserve Welsh folklore or mythology. The Triads are a group of three things all linked by a common characteristic. For example:

Three atrocious axe-strokes of the island of Prydain. The axe-stroke of Eidyn on the Head of Aneiryn; and the axe-stroke on the head of Godlan the bard; and the axe-stroke on the head of Iago son of Beli.

According to http://www.vortigernstudies.org.uk/artsou/triads.htm, the Triads were "designed as mnemonic structures for fast recollection of stories by the bards". So rather than memorizing long lists of events in chronological order, Welsh bards came up with this system to more easily preserve knowledge.





Original manuscript of The Red Book of
Hergest from the Oxford Library. It can be
seen in great detail here:
http://image.ox.ac.uk/show?collection=jesus&manuscript=ms111

One interesting note in A History of Wales from the Earliest Times to the Edwardian Conquest was that the Welsh practiced burning their dead. It says that the ritual "had no doubt a religious significance... In order that the human spirit might range freely in the new sphere of its being it was right that it should be delivered from the incubus of its body." This tradition was passed down and remembered (I'm not sure if it was still practiced or not... I couldn't find any clear sources) until the 14th century when the Triads were compiled and immortalized in print. There are four important books among many others that contain Welsh folklore and Triads, and this particular one is found in The Red Book of Hergest. (This book also contains Arthurian legend and many of the Triads from it can be found here: http://www.ancienttexts.org/library/celtic/ctexts/triads1.html.)

So as is evident from this example, the Welsh were able to preserve their traditions well into the middle ages, despite being conquered by Rome, undergoing a mass conversion to Christianity, and eventually being conquered by Edward shortly before the compilation of the Triads, thanks in large to the oral learnings and spreading of knowledge by the Bards and their Triads. If not for these simple mnemonic devices, who knows if they would have been able to pass on as much of their culture and knowledge through generations, or if it would have the same clarity or accuracy. In a society where we are so used to print and digital media, it is hard to imagine the importance oral knowledge carried in ancient cultures like the Welsh's.