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1. The numbers of people I've seen retweeting this saying they'd never been aware of any of it before now is staggering. I've always believed that teaching Welsh history from a Welsh perspective is VITAL to securing independence. https://twitter.com/YesCymru/status/1336762329103556608
2. We've seen in Scotland how Braveheart helped galvanise the country, granting it new vigour and confidence in its history and itself.
An awareness of our history is the easiest way to refute those who would claim that Wales was "only ever a principality"
An awareness of our history is the easiest way to refute those who would claim that Wales was "only ever a principality"
3. We escape the trap but telling people that we can be independent because we were. This sets a precedent. It shows people that Wales wasn't always part of this "Union" and that its continued participation in the UK is not necessary or set in stone.
4. Granted we must always be wary of fetishing our history and conscious that we don't allow the movement to become bogged down in mythologising some golden, independent past, and in ways I hope YesCymru doesn't approach these kinds of topics again...
5. That said as someone who studies this topic i am painfully aware of how few people know the slightest bit of Welsh history and I cannot ever argue against education, against informing people about their national history.
6. Speaking for myself I went through school studying absolutely no Welsh history and so when I picked up my first Welsh history book it was a genuinely profound shock that we even had any. I was shocked to find out that things had actually happened in Wales.
7. It's hard to put into words the surprise and anger I felt. I felt much the same as I sometimes do now when I'm struggling along learning Cymraeg. I felt I had been denied something. Worse, I felt that I had been robbed of something.
8. My connection to where I lived, a facet of who I was, the joy of learning about my culture and my history as opposed to history from over the border. It was also the first time I felt Welsh. And that eye-opener led me to history in general, to the Welsh language, to politics
9. It opened up a genuine love and appreciation for where I lived, for the people and the landscape and the culture and customs, while before I had either been unaware or disparaging of this small wet place where nothing had ever happened.
10. I learned to love where I'm from, to revel in the cold, rainy little peninsula in a way I never could have done without having first learned of reasons to do so. The effects of history and of education in that history are so profound and valuable
11. And while I remember...Read the Elegy to Llywelyn ap Gruffudd. Written by the court poet Gruffudd ab Yr Ynad Coch it is incredible. A masterpiece of medieval poetry. Read it. Read it. Read it read it read it read it read it read it
