Wales has more castles than the rest of the world put together, so sayeth a Welsh historian straight out of history and perhaps mythology, who I met when visiting one of the many Welsh castles.
Wales also has Dragons. Here Be Dragons. It says so on the maps, the Englishman Cadwallader literally flagged the place. Dragons are cunning bastards. They disguise themselves as Humans these days, Welsh females in particular. Before they learned how to do that (or perhaps before we invented scale-piercing bullets so they have had to do that more often than before), they would roam freely.
Wales also has migratory Canadian Geese. Canada also has a Native American legend of the Thunderbird. Colonial settlers took photographs which I saw reproduced in books of mysterious stuff the 1980s, so they are not AI generated, they are authentic. The colonists shot down some the thunderbirds and took photographs for newspapers in the 19th century. The Thunderbirds are pterodactyls.
Migratory flying creatures traveling between Canada and Wales on the same longitude line. Local legends in Wales of actual ‘Dragons’ described, quite lucidly as it happens, in the history records as being ‘flying serpents’ and originally, before the Englishman in his castle Cadwallader re-invented it to the familiar Welsh flag of today, the original welsh flags quite clearly depict a creature which has only two legs, two wings, known as a Wyvern. Wy is a Saxon word, I grew up on the river Wy. Its meaning is hidden in the words Witch, and Why. Vern is a Saxon word, it means Dragon. WyVern are a specific type of Dragon, the ones which are too damned intelligent because they actually think about stuff.
People go on about how Crows can recognise people. It’s not far-fetched that Dragons would do the same.
There is also a legend of the Great Welsh Heroes who went up into the mountains, avoided being eaten alive and returned carrying Dragon Eggs with which to feed the village, such eggs providing unusual strength and virility to the tribes. The legend suggests this is why Wales was never fully conquered by the invaders.
I grew up amidst all this, surrounded by Castles and Dragons in the real world and roleplaying games in the collaborative imagination of my peers. Being student of the occult I read the Welsh and the Irish mythologies to find out more about the Celtic Otherworld which overlaps with ours, which my ancestors most certainly dealt with on a regular basis if the family stories and secrets are any guidance, which of course they are.
So what can I add to this from my own expertise?
Wales is also a Saxon word. Originally Wallia. Some people claim it is from where we get the word Wall although I’m not entirely sure how accurate that is. Wallia means slave. The Saxons would grab the Britons and force them into slavery. Modern Welsh have deep epigenetic trauma entrenched into their culture. Not so much from the Dragons, as it happens. Historically the Welsh have been at war against the invaders for thousands of years. The Marches is the reason so many stone castles were built between the Norman Conquest (when stone castle building technology was introduced to Britain) and the invention of gunpowder, cannons and guns. Wales public history consists almost entirely of that repression.
The Welsh Language, a modernised, Anglicised form of it, was re-introduced by the Welsh Assembly Government only twenty years ago, in my own lifetime. Wales private history though… this is something I also grew up with and of respect will never be revealed on the internet. You can imagine how much it consists of generational trauma-abuse and the human drive for any release from those cycles.
But also, the mythology.
Begin with the Mabinogion.
Study the Irish mythology which wonderfully opens with the explanation ‘In most countries they separate mythology from history. In Ireland they are the same thing.’ This is because Ireland is openly magical at that level. Wales, secretly so. The historic records overlap, featuring some of the same stories, characters and places. Because it’s real.
Then study the Brythonic version of Arthur the Cornish King who returned after the Romans fled Britain and will return again. The Romans fled Britain after building a great big wall to keep Northern Britons out of the Roman Empire. The symbol that Rome Ends Here still stands as a statement which sent a shockwave echoing throughout history to the Empiricists.
Those three groups, the now extinct Picts, the modern Welsh and the modern Cornish, are all which remains within Britain of the original Britons. There are said to be more Welsh living in Patagonia than in Wales. There is also Brittany in France, where the Forest of Broceliande hides Le Tomb de Merlin, who was born in Carmarthen, Wales.