History of The Welsh Language - Old Welsh

Old Welsh

The next main period, somewhat better attested, is Old Welsh (Hen Gymraeg, 9th to 11th centuries); poetry from both Wales and Scotland has been preserved in this form of the language. As Germanic and Gaelic colonisation of Great Britain proceeded, the Brythonic speakers in Wales were split off from those in northern England, speaking Cumbric, and those in the south-west, speaking what would become Cornish, and so the languages diverged. Both the Poetry of Aneirin (Canu Aneirin, c. AD 600) and the Poetry, or Book, of Taliesin (Canu Taliesin) were in this era.