Kingdom of Rheged

Rheged was a Brittonic-speaking kingdom of the Hen Ogledd, the Old North of Britain, during the centuries after Roman rule collapsed. Its heartland lay in what is now Cumbria and Dumfries and Galloway, and place-name evidence suggests that at times it reached into Yorkshire, Lancashire and the Scottish southwest. The kingdom is known mainly from early Welsh poetry and royal genealogies rather than from charters or annals, and its borders cannot be reconstructed with confidence. Its most famous ruler was Urien, who fought the Anglian kings of Bernicia in the late sixth century and was celebrated by the poet Taliesin; his son Owain continued the struggle. Later Welsh tradition links Rheged with Carlisle, and archaeological work at Trusty's Hill in Galloway has been interpreted as evidence of a royal centre there in the early seventh century. After Urien's death the kingdom was weakened by dynastic rivalry, and during the seventh century it was absorbed by the expanding Northumbrian kingdom. Its people spoke Cumbric, a Brittonic dialect related to Old Welsh, and the memory of Rheged survived in Welsh story and genealogy long after the kingdom itself had disappeared.