Everyone is taught that Christopher Columbus discovered America in 1492.
Not so.
As Oscar Wilde once observed, “America had been discovered before, but it has always been hushed up.”
The Norse established a temporary settlement in what is now Newfoundland, Canada, in the 900s: 500 years before Columbus happened upon the West Indies.
What Columbus is credited with is initiating widespread contact between Europeans and the indigenous Americans.
Those are facts; but there is a legend that a Welsh prince discovered and settled in what is now Florida/Alabama, in 1170, 300 years before Columbus.
Madoc ap Owain Gwynedd [Madoc son of Owen Gwyneth] was an illegitimate son of Owain, Prince of the province of Gwynedd in north Wales. Owain was essentially king of Wales, but King Henry II of England didn't allow him to have the title of king.
After Owain's death in 1170, a dispute broke out between three of his heirs: Dafydd, Maelgwn and Rhodri. Disheartened by the fighting - and possibly in danger, as Welsh tradition acknowledged even illegitimate sons as heirs - Madoc and another brother Rhirid fled Wales to explore the western ocean with a small fleet of boats. They discovered a distant land where one hundred men formed a colony, apparently in what is now the Florida/Alabama area of the United States. Madoc and some others returned to Wales to recruit more settlers and after gathering ten ships of men and women, sailed west a second time, never to return.
It is thought that the colonists travelled up the vast river systems of North America, encountering friendly and unfriendly tribes of natives before finally settling down somewhere in the Midwest or the Great Plains. No witness ever returned from the second expedition to report this, but post-Columbian explorers talked about "Welsh Indians": fair-haired, blue-eyes, Welsh-speaking tribes among the Dakota people.
The Madoc legend reached it's height in the Elizabethan era, when Welsh and English writers used it to boost Britain's claim to the New World, versus those of Spain. Nobody actually knows if Madoc even exsited, though.
I first learnt of the Madoc legend a few months ago, reading a book called “Circle of Stones”, which tells the story of Madoc’s mother Brenda, a favourite mistress of Owain.
When Owain falls prey to a superstitious prophecy and demands that her newborn son be put to death, Brenda flees with baby Madoc to a druid camp in Ireland, where she is told that her son is destined to become the saviour of the druids and will lead them to an unknown land where they can live peacefully. When Owain’s men recapture her, she claims her son has died and reluctantly returns to Wales, leaving Madoc to be raised by the druids. Mother and son meet for the first time when Madoc is fostered in his teens to the local Welsh druids. Some years later, Owain is poisoned by Dafydd, who seizes power and begins a campaign against Old Religionists in Gwynedd. Brenda and Madoc once again escape to the Irish druid camp where she is reunited with Sein, the druid she fell in love with twenty years before, and Madoc prepares to fulfil his destiny.
The sequel, “Circle of Stars”, is from Madoc’s point of view, telling of his youth in Ireland, his later role as Owain’s emissary/trader, and then sailing to the unknown land to escape Dafydd’s massacre of Old Religionists. Madoc’s story is intertwined with that of Cougar, a girl of the Calusa tribe in what is now Florida, who since childhood has had dreams of a man with ghostly pale hair. The two eventually meet when Madoc's ten ships of druids make landfall near her village. Cougar goes with the druids to escape the chief, who wants to kill her, and they create a settlement away from the Calusa. After a year settling the druids in the new land, Madoc prepares to return to Ireland to collect Brenda, Sein, his daughter and the women.
I love the books, the stories are great even if not historically accurate. The druids and the idea that it was his destiny to sail there and meet Cougar makes it all the more interesting
I like the way the druids are portrayed, the things they do, the way they live etc.Just thought I'd share this with y'all =]
Sorry for the amount of writing, I'm rubbish at summarising
