Understanding the Cantrefi and Cymydau
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You may have noticed that some of the names of our walking tours have unusual names for the areas they cover - Menai, Dindaethwy e.t.c. Where do these come from? What do they mean?
In order to understand Wales, especially pre-conquest, we have to understand how people saw, named and divided the land. Luckily for us, it's quite well recorded in the system of 'Cymydau' (kuh-mud-eye English - Commotes) and 'Cantrefi' (kan-trev-i).
These units can be thought of in a similar way to English counties and parishes. The core difference arises because of the size difference - Applying English counties to a country the size of Wales can be a bit unwieldy, so it makes sense that Wales has it's own, smaller land divisions.
Even though modern land divisions have superseded these traditional land divisions, they often heavily influence modern Wales, especially in terms of Wards, Parishes and even dialect differences.
The system was based around dividing Wales firstly into Cantrefi (singular - cantref - kan-trev). These top level divisions often followed the lines of different kingdoms or even pre-Roman tribal borders. The word comes from cant (hundred) and Tref (Town), the idea that each one contained roughly 100 settlements.
Original from Comisiwn Brenhinol Henebion Cymru
These could be further broken down into two, three or sometimes more subunits called Cymydau (singular - cwmwd - koom-ood). Each one was based around a market town or government town, and tended to be walkable within one day. It's after these divisions that we named our walks, as often, they are contained to one of these cymydau.
Original from Comisiwn Brenhinol Henebion Cymru
In a later article, we can explore the names of all of these units of land.
What Cwmwd are you from? What Cantref? Which ones do you plan to visit? Let us know in the comments!
If you want to visit the cymydau of Menai or Dindaethwy in the Cantref Rhosyr, why not book a tour below?
