These media/production companies all have researchers employed within or ship in specialist contractors for complex subject areas. Given what you have presented onto this site over recent years you could be an asset at least directing these people to source materials and providing a Q.A /Q.C inspection service reviewing their outputs ( just in case some little cnut tried to dilute or corrupt the info generated ). Just following that link earlier onto youtube led to a number of other similar sources. A cursory googling of “hidden history of wales/britain” rolls out another ton of stuff that would take me the rest of my life just to scan !
Now I know that a lot of this material is hypothesis, synthesis, “what if” stuff but it’s more than legit than a lot of the downright lies and misinterpretation that litters our official historical records. So let the folks out there see it, hear it and if it stimulates their curiosity you have got to first base of “learning by discovery”, the best way.

I’m not joking about this. If we could find a company with the ability to finance, or raise the finance, it would be worth a punt to present you as the guy to provide the kind of overview service I describe above. Given their arrogance I suspect BBC would give the idea of involving a non -luvvie a wide berth, but who knows how other prospective producers/intermediaries might be stimulated. Successful offshore Welsh like Ioan Gruffydd, Matthew Rhys, or our eccentric Rhys Ifans might have the interest and the channels to develop the idea without corrupting it.

Is there a reader or more out there who might be able to help open up some connections on this matter ? Does Mel Gibson by any chance have an interest in Wales ? Can’t say I’d want him as Y Lliw Olaf but if it helps get a message over I guess I’d just shut up and listen !

Exactly dafis – EXACTLY. Where are all the ones who could kick all of that into action? My guess is the knowledge is by now so diluted and hazy that very few people in the right places actually know about it. Thanks again to the corrosive and erosive effect of having our children taught through the education system of those who colonised our country, all of which started with the Elementary Education Act of 1870 and subsequent education acts up to our day.

Gee I get exactly the point you are making and how it would enhance our identity. Teach these matters as “Hanes a Treftadaeth” and maybe you can give the pupils that understanding of the nation’s roots that is totally missing now.

To get the ball rolling the media should exploit these areas to a far greater extent, entering new territory for them. Sure we’ve seen sanitized versions of Arthur, Merlin &Co, but where are the fantasy films that use the wealth of the Mabinogion as source material ?. That isn’t history but it would give audiences today a taste of what enthralled and entertained children and adults for centuries. Some of it is quite scary but that’s part of its value. Prof Brian Morgan who has long experience as a business academic and participated in some start-ups made very valid points on that video you linked that there was stacks of raw material in Arthur alone. Well take all the other myths and legends, add a further dash of Cunedda, numerous pre-Norman princes and chieftains, then Llywelyn Fawr, Y Lliw Olaf, Owain Glyndwr, Owain Lawgoch the exiled soldier of fortune, even the true Henry Tudor, and you have enough to keep BBC Wales, ITV, Pinewood Wentloog Studios, Llanilid Pits, Tinopolis, Boom and a host of smaller producer units running at full capacity for years. Although Mel Gibson’s version of William Wallace was a bit heavy on the fiction it gave a huge push to the numbers wanting to read up and find out more about the real Wallace and the gritty politics of the Scottish independence movement of that time.

And a thoroughly enjoyable rant it was too dafis – I for one, thoroughly enjoyed it!

HOWEVER I fear the main thrust of my reason for posting it was somewhat missed. I have no intention of diverting too much energy to our dim & distant past.

The purpose for drawing attention to that video was to highlight the wealth of hidden history that we have, which has been ridiculed, mocked, corrupted, hidden and stolen. Any nation on earth is lost without knowledge of it’s history, legends & heroes. Unless you’re aware of your past, you are unaware of how you arrived here, or where you intend to go. That’s the position we find ourselves in as a nation in 2017 – LOST!

This is the reason why I incessantly bang on about how vital it is for our survival as a nation for our young ones to be taught their true history. All I intended to do with that video was highlight the absolute enormous reservoir of history that we have. Lose that knowledge and you lose your identity.

I am 100% convinced that the key to our survival is the overhaul of our education system. We need to break the shackles of colonialism which is strangling us through the Anglo Saxon curriculum that’s taught to our children through the medium of both Cymraeg & English in our schools.

It’s pointless discussing plans for the shape and colour of the roof of our house if it has no foundation to stand on.

I’m fairly sure I submitted a comment.

But … but …but … you have your Assembly now, and if you really get behind them they might just manage to bargain successfully for say 45 beads, and hey! you might even get to choose some of the colours 🙂

As for the sons and daughters of the manse, some words from the Good Book might have more appeal, like say “Ffrwythwch ac amlhewch!” (the things you can find online!)

The blend of history, myth, and legend to which you have referred gives us historical and cultural validity much in the same way as our beloved neighbours, the English, also draw on a tangled web of history, myth and legend to establish their pedigree. However they have dipped into ours for some tasty bits to add to the quality of their blend. Hijacking history is bad enough, hijacking myth and legend is pretty fuckin’ miserable really – was our myth and legend that much more appealing than theirs ? Don’t answer as I don’t really care. All it tells me is that somewhere beneath that supremacist surface lurks a deeply insecure, inferior identity.

Our concern needs to focus on the future and those things which are deployed to inhibit or frustrate the paths to that future. It is evident that the blockages are here and now, perhaps far more evident than at any time in our history since they gave up hanging, drawing and quartering rebels, traitors and any other person who didn’t toe the line. Now we don’t get that kind of overt oppression anymore ( well not that I know of anyway ) although the odd disappearance or unexplained death does arouse suspicions that the servants of opaque state agencies are at their work again.

Nevertheless the State works to weed out or stifle any radical opposition to its grand plans. Witness the raft of laws and regulations introduced since the terror attack of 2001, aimed to enable the “war on terror”, but with a reach far beyond that, giving powers which can be used against the ordinary public who may have engaged in a measure of dissent beyond that which is tolerable to the Home Secretary. And now we have a P.M who was previously Home Secretary for 6 years and notable for indulging in oppressive regulation and intrusion. So not much hope of light relief from that direction !

Sadly the solution of “chucking things” doesn’t really do it. Those opaque state agencies to which I referred earlier have capacity to penetrate and neutralise even long established “underground” operations. Witness the wasted lives of Northern Ireland where it is now understood that wholesale murders by secterian gangs of all persuasions were allowed to happen with the covert knowledge of the Brits. They aided and abetted UDA/UVF crimes and allowed IRA crimes to protect the identity of informants and agents provocateur. Nearer home it is said that much of the Meibion Glyndwr “campaign” was the work of trainees from Hereford and/or the Security Services/Special Branch. So I won’t be joining any “chucking ” campaigns and not because my throwing arm isn’t up to the mark any longer !.

The hope that our Cynulliad would have served as some sort of foundation for further progress is fading fast. It has served to reinforce the condition of dependency throughout our nation. Sadly we now have a business community that cannot see further than grants, soft loans, subsidies, and other financial instruments, so the genuine entrepreneurial spirit is not present in sufficient quantity. At the other end of the spectrum we have people who have been distanced from the world of work for so long that they can’t think beyond the next allowance, benefit or free issue handout. Not much evidence of a national backbone wherever you look for it.

And of course we have our public sector and its rapidly growing little brother, the 3rd sector, the bastard offspring of well-intentioned ideas that grow sour so fast it’s pretty unbelievable. These are the havens for the educated and crafty wasters who don’t want a proper job but like the idea of “rewards”. For these cnuts “service” is just a word not to be confused with any notion of making a genuine effort to identify needs and deploy resources and energy to meet those needs. Jac’s repeated articles on this increasingly deviant sector are enlightening yet we do not read anywhere else any kind of criticism of these money pits.

Politically we appear to be in a desperate place. Will someone wake up in time for the June election ? I think not. They will all be preoccupied with posturing over Brexit – the one lot wanting to full pelt for it and the other lot hoping to find a new handbrake to bring the process to a juddering halt. Politicans in Wales need to define how the good of Wales can gain from Brexit, mitigate any shocks to our economy such as it is, and start thinking deeply about planning for the future rather than indulging in spin laden policy making which has never earned its corn in the 18 years since Cynulliad was created.

Rant over.

That article about the “Great Western Force” only received 2 comments!
My guess is that yours was not the only unenthusiastic one that they excluded.

But we know that megaliths and stone circles are found all over Europe, more especially perhaps on the ‘Atlantic fringe’.

There is a reluctance to admit that Europe has been culturally unified at two periods in the past in ways that Napoleon or Hitler could only dream of because they both represented, and were defeated by, the concept of nationality.

Those two periods are the thousand years, possibly longer, prior to the emergence of the Mediterranean cultures and the period following the collapse of Rome when Europe (apart from Scandinavian, Baltic and Slavic peripheries) was a wholly Catholic continent run by a Latin-speaking intelligentsia closely associated with the Church of Rome.

I haven’t looked at the video yet, but I don’t believe Arthur had any real connection with a backward area like Wales. After reading about the period and studying the evidence, I believe he would have come from the Welsh between the walls.

These would have had to defend themselves against Pictish and Irish incursions and so would have been the only sizeable Welsh population allowed to maintain their own military units, if only to act a trip-wire defence for the province.

As a successful warlord, Arthur would have attracted the best fighting men (looking for fame and booty), and there you have a credible origin for the geographic spread found in the Knights of the Round Table.