Hireth & Hiraeth

The title of this blog is named for the Cornish (''hireth'') and Welsh (''hiraeth'') words that are hard to explain in English because they describe a physical and emotional feeling; a sense of longing, of nostalgia and homesickness for a place that may or may not have ever existed how you've imagine it to. They are fitting words for this blog, as I am both Cornish and Welsh. I was born and grew up in Cornwall and yet my father and the vast majority of my family are from Wales, including my Nan, who I visit quite regularly and lived with for a short time.

I mention this to explain that I have felt both hireth and hiraeth for Cornwall and Wales. When I live in Cornwall - I miss Wales and when I live in Wales - I miss Cornwall. This strange feeling pulls and pushes me like the great crashing waves of both the Cornish and Welsh coastlines.

I love Cornwall and Wales; I love their landscapes and their respective history, folklore and culture. Although they are two distinct nations with many individual differences I also love to trace the similarities between the two.

Sometimes I get an intangible feeling in my bones and in my body that I must be outside; that I must be in the woods, or on the moors, walking a field or climbing a hill or mountain, standing on a cliff's edge or sitting on a large granite rock. This love of the landscape and the outside world is deeply connected to Wales and Cornwall for me, because I have never known anywhere else so intimately.

I haven't yet learnt to drive and as such I am often unable to indulge this feeling; there are places in walking distance from my house and my Nan's house that hold their own natural and historic beauty but there are also many pockets of these nations that are hidden from the untrained eye. Tiny villages by the side of a river, woodland groves, mountain sides and vast, sprawling moorland are often inaccessible to me and I feel their loss keenly and in a way that I find it hard to always understand.

I have often never visited these places that have been inaccessible to me for so long so how is it that can I miss them so deeply?

Hireth/Hiraeth.