"Strathclyde Welsh from WF Germanics - Painted" Topic

A while back I did anout of the box review of the Wargames Factory Ancient Germanic Cavalry, that I had bought to build myself a Strathclyde Welsh army for Saga.

Well, I've built and painted the first three, and I'm really happy with the results. I think these will give excellent service for Saga, Dux Brit, Dux Bell and others too.

Here's a quick piccie of the results, so you can judge for yourself:

In order to get these done quickly, I didn't really put a lot of work into the shields, but just used chi-rhos I had on hand from other projects. I'll put some nicer heraldry on the rest!

There are more pictures, and more detail of the build and background on my blog, here:
mitchwargaming.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/yan-tyan-tethera-strathclyde-welsh.html

Those look great! Are the Newline design figures a good match with Wargames Factory? They appear to be….

Morrigan, I'd say so. I'd be happy to mix them.

Have they got bare feet? If so that is really odd and , I think , wrong for Germans or Strathclyde Welsh.

Yep, bare feet. Not that rare in the Dark Ages, I wouldn't have thought, so I don't have a problem. I've struggled to find any specifics about the Strathclyde Welsh all told, never mind their footwear in particular, so I'm all ears. You have a citation about the shoes? Some GS would solve the problem, and would help make them less uniform too.

I don't know about the Strathclyde Britons* either but wearing shoes wasn't that common in Scotland in general until fairly recent times.

link

* BTW why "Welsh"? I know they spoke the Brytonnic dialect but did they have any other connection with Wales?

I think its Welsh because of the variety of Celtic language that they spoke. Theirs was like that of the Welsh of Wales. Cornwall and Brittany as opposed to the Celtic language of the Scots and Irish which is older..
Welsh only connects to Wales because they are the last ones left with that particular language and culture originally the same culture probably held all across what was to become England and up to Edinburgh. The coming of the Anglo Saxons split created a new cultural/ linguistic entity leaving areas of Celtic culture isolated from one another.

As. to shoes Zi agree with you about going barefoot being something highlanders and the Irish do.I was going from Pictish carved Stones where we do see mounted figures that appear (to me at least) to be wearing shoes, Try a search on Aberlemno Stone.

The neighboring Picts may have spoken a Brythonic language too but they're not labelled "Welsh".
Goidelic of course was restricted to Del Riada in Scotland during this period.

Its a maybe with the Picts and maybe not all the Picts spoke the same variant of the language. We are a bit short on sources for them.

@ LG.
True enough. A strange & mysterious people….as are their descendants the Fifers (my dad was one of those).

I still prefer to call the Strathclyde lot "Britons" though.
Of course we could discuss their neighbours the Goddodin: who sort of became Welsh if the tale is true.

@ochoin, Britons is fair enough, though aren't the Picts and Scots also Britons? Welsh does have the unfortunate connotation that there is a modern country called Wales, but then Wales is only the same as Gaul, the initial G being transformed into a W much the same way as Guillaume and Wilhelm are related.
The picts, iIRC called themselves Cruithne which is the same word as Pritani but with the initial P becoming a hard C . supposedly Pritani is the same as Brittani.
But that's only memory and I would cede to anyone who has looked at the subject in depth.

@LG
I thought "Welsh" was the Saxon word for "foreigner"?

The Scots were from Ireland so maybe not "Britons".
It's very likely the Dal Riata lot were simply a ruling elite with a non-Scots (Pictish?) underclass.

There's a certain amount of speculation as to whether "Pictii" might be something like what they called themselves (instead of/as well as Cruithne; and this may simply be a term that refers to all Britons not conquered by the Romans? At any rate, I thought 'cruithne' was an Irish term for them).

BTW although we're probably boring everyone else to death, I'm very much enjoying the conversation.

@ochoin
The Saxons call the Welsh Wealahs which is just a G-W shift of them trying to say Gauls in German . So Gallia becomes Wallia.

It is apparently now thought that the Scots are not from Ireland, but merely a group that has connections on both sides of the Irish Sea. Apparently there is no archaeological sign of transfer from Ireland to Alba .
You may well be right about ruling houses because it is apparently possible that Kenneth McAlpin who was the first Scottish king of all Alba was actually a scion of a Pictish ruling lineage in exile.
What seems very likely s that there is not a great deal of difference between the tribes that come together to make up Scotland.

The Irish called the Picts Cruithne, I've no idea what the Picts called themselves, but Roy is right p and q Celtic gives us Pritani and Cruithne both meaning British.

The whole shoe thing is about, as far as I can tell, a firm grip on the ground, hence one shoe or no shoes later on. I would think mounted troops wore shoes, better off and they are on a cuddy.

The last time I looked Pictish was thought to be a variant of Gaulish but a different one from the Brythonic spoken further south.

Dumville thought p and q Celtic were mutually inteligible until the early 6th Century AD if recall right. Columba though seems to have required an interpeter when talking to the Picts. That said the words must have been very similar because they still are today an awful lot later.

As has been said the first Scottish kings were Picts albeit with strong Irish connections. So maybe a language shift from p to q rather than a change of language. I think Gaelic prevailed because it was the written language of the court and the law. Pictish was never as far as I know a written language.

We have some p Celtic river names in northern Scotland that supports the idea of Pictish being a Gaulish variant.

I think these are great conversions. As for the shoes why should the ancient Germans be shoe-less?

Ironically both "Strathclyde" and "Welsh" are later terms for these herberts, but for better or worse, "Strathcylde Welsh" is the term used in Saga. One of the areas in question is Cumbria, derived from the same root as the modern Welsh Cymru.

@ LG
"It is apparently now thought that the Scots are not from Ireland, but merely a group that has connections on both sides of the Irish Sea. Apparently there is no archaeological sign of transfer from Ireland to Alba ."

Have you got a source for that? I'd love to read further.
Thanks.

Its a theory but no more than that and the lack of archaeological evidence does not mean much in this context.

That said we have clear literary evidence that the same 'tribal' names appear on both sides of the Irish Sea and of the English Channel. I think the idea of the sea as a highway rather than a barrier comes into play here.

Everything we have from the Celtic world and outside commentators suggests similar social and legal systems operating across all the Celtic speaking peoples. Its possible that q Celtic speakers had been in what is now Scotland for a very long time before the establishment of Dal Riada. But we don't know. Mattingly who is well worth a read deals with the issue in a short paragraph as there is not much more to say yet.

What we can say is that once established Dal Riada continued to look to Ireland culturaly and politicaly. I suppose that supports the case for intrusion from Ireland.

I understand that without much in the way of written records, there's a lot of theory flying around.

The concept that the ruling elite at Dal Riada were from Ireland & had married into the native ruling class & took over, seems reasonable. The fact that both sides of the Irish Sea had Scotti seems also to suggest an Irish origin. However, I'm open to any scholarly contradictions to this. It's all fascinating stuff.

I also appreciate that what makes a 'Celt' is not 'race' (whatever that is) but culture.

Thanks for your post. I'll check out Mattingly (got a title?).

Sure An Imperial Possession – Britain In The Roman Empire.

Its a good read although it trails off a bit with the collapse of the province.

Someone is putting the old Celtic texts on line in translation I'll see if I can find a link for you. The Irish annals have a fair bit of stuff on early Alba and later.

@ochoin
I recall that its from
A New History of the Picts [Paperback]
Stuart McHardy (Author)

I think modern archaeologists are wary of saying that be ause tne Scitti are in lands both sides of the Irish sea that they migrated from Ireland to Scotland. It may well be that the culrure simply develops in an area that is joined together gy the sea. Thus there is no invasion from one to the other, just a common cultural area. As was said earlier there is apparently little differentiation between the suppised cultural areas of Scotland .
I would like to pise another question: Did the Strathclyde Welsh wear trousers? If so, how do we know this?

Thanks. Looks like Amazon will get a sale.

As to the issue of why some of the Ancient German cavalry are shoeless. The sculptor, Tim Barry – an admirable person, but not an expert in this field – received a bunch of illustrations of Teutonic types. Lots of them were poverty-stricken gents without shoes or, indeed, much of anything. So he showed some of the cavalry barefoot.

My own view was that owning a horse suggests wealth enough to buy shoes, but Tim had already made them by then, and it was too late to change them.