Keeping a record of your travels can be fun. This place, and that place...what I liked, and what I didn't like. The food, the people, and the scenery are often included. My impressions written down are a must. A travel-diary through Wales written in 1188 AD by a priest [usually the only ones who could write at this time], is one of a kind. Such are the accounts titled "The Journey through Wales" and "The Description of Wales". Written by Giraldus Cambrensis [Gerald of Wales] during a preaching-tour of Archbishop Baldwin trying to gain support in Wales for the Third Crusade. It provides a first hand account of the country called Wales during this historic period. Lewis Thorpe translates [it was first written in Latin] and Penguin Books publishes the texts. The front of the book is shown.
In "The Description of Wales", chapter 17 [p. 251 in the book above] is written the following impression. As a genealogist, this has given me a deeper understanding of Welsh genealogy and my family tree.
Titled: "Their respect for noble birth and ancient genealogy."
"The Welsh value distinguished birth and noble descent more than anything else in the world. They would rather marry into a noble family than into a rich one. Even the common people know their family-tree by heart and can readily recite from memory the list of their grandfather, great-grandfathers, great-great-grandfathers, back to the sixth or seventh generation, as I did earlier on for the Welsh princes: Rhys son of Gruffydd, Gruffydd son of Rhys, Rhys son of Tewdwr, and so on."
What a story, and what an account of Wales it is for the genealogist who needs to time travel to 1188 AD.
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