This may go some way in explaining Wales’ high rate of 'back migration': the return of emigrants to their homeland. 'While promoting emigration,' he said, 'some 19th-Century Welsh emigrant guidebooks acknowledged that emigrants would experience hiraeth for Wales, their relatives and friends, and the landscape and ways of life of the localities they had left.” The significance of hiraeth to emigrants and the recognition of the things that might inspire it were recognised at the time, noted Bill Jones, professor of Welsh Modern History and specialist in Welsh emigration during the 19th Century. Hiraeth for all they had lost, in an intensified form, was an inevitable response. Simultaneously dismantling an entire culture while glorifying a romanticised past, the British succeeded in replacing the Welsh identity with that of the melancholic, unprogressive Celt. Overall, she said, the Welsh were considered a civilisation that 'while venerable, had long passed their zenith'.

His characterisation of the 'Celtic genius' was, specifically, 'the British imperial concept of the sentimental, feminine, artistically gifted 'Celt' who is incapable of governing, thinking practically or conquering foreign lands,' explained Dr Marion Loeffler, reader of Welsh history at Cardiff University. Following its publication, the Welsh were given a new, more palatable identity, proffered by the influential English poet, cultural critic and school inspector Matthew Arnold. Denouncing the Welsh as immoral, ignorant and held back by an antiquated language, the report profoundly impacted not only England’s impression of Wales, but that of Wales itself for years to come. Under attack from British rule, the Welsh were stigmatised following the publication of an education report in 1847 that soon came to be known as the Treason of the Blue Books. Imbued with grief, it’s often seen as an ode to the loss of a homeland, a language or traditions – but could also serve as the key to their revival.Ī vital period that cemented these losses was the dismantling of Welsh identity and subsequent revival of a heavily romanticised medieval Welsh culture in the 19th Century. In the early Welsh verses, known as Hen Penillion, an unknown poet pleads for the purpose of this 'cruel hiraeth' that breaks his heart and wakes him in the night. Often connected to a deep pain, the word appears in the earliest of Welsh records and has been a constant weight for poets throughout the ages. 'Hiraeth is one of these terms that’s impossible to translate because it has so many cultural overtones,' said Sioned Davies, professor emeritus and previous chair of the School of Welsh at Cardiff University. 'It’s a kind of longing for a person, a place or a time that you can’t get back to, a kind of unattainable longing,' explained Marian Brosschot, a Welsh language officer currently working in Trelew, Patagonia.įormed from ' hir', meaning long, and ' aeth' meaning sorrow or grief, hiraeth’s literal translation offers some insight but fails to convey the term’s complex nuance. This unreachable nature adds an element of grief, but somehow it is not entirely unwelcome. Interlaced, however, is the subtle acknowledgment of an irretrievable loss – a unique blend of place, time and people that can never be recreated. It combines elements of homesickness, nostalgia and longing.

Hiraeth is often likened to nostalgia in English or saudade in Portuguese, and it shares qualities with the German concept of sehnsucht, but none quite match exactly.

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