Ynys Môn – New Year 2019/2020
This series of images were taken on Ynys Môn (Anglesey) over the 2019/2020 New Year and form part of the Anxious Journeys series influenced by the Metaphysical art of the Italian painter Giorgio de Chirico (1888-1978).
Ynys Môn – October 2022
We also visited Ynys Môn in October 2022 and these images have been added to this series:
History
The history of Anglesey is long and often tempestuous. According to Wikipedia, the numerous megaliths found on the island testify to the presence of humans in prehistory, but it is the time of the Druids that sets the island firmly in the mystical heart of the Celtic world and their ruthless persecution and eventual destruction by the Romans around AD78.
The Druids belonged to an oral culture and few textual records remain – those records that do remain were often written by adversaries like the Romans.
Julius Cesar, in his Gallic Wars commentary (written about 50BC), describes Druids as being in charge of all religious practices and being judges, teachers and scientists who were highly respected and immensely influential in all aspects of the religious and politics culture.
Cesar also describes Druids as:
as wearing white robes and cutting mistletoe with golden sickles
which is very much the image that perpetuates today. They were also suspected of leading resistance to the Romans, a fact which eventually led to their eradication and the destruction of their shrine and the nemeta (sacred groves). Later Roman writers would paint an different picture of the Druids to Cesar – a picture of human sacrifice and barbarism.
What followed the Romans were periods of both Irish and Scottish raiding and invasion, eventually Anglesey became part of the Kingdom of Gwynedd – finally falling to the English in 1283.
During the First World War, German POWs were kept on the island and 1,000 of the island’s men died while on active service.
During the Second World War, Anglesey received Italian POWs and evacuee children from Liverpool and Manchester. Airfields on the island were used to monitor German U-Boats operating in the Irish Sea.
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All images © W N BISHOP