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Hiraeth, there's no English translation.

TheCatWoman

Hiraeth means a sense of belonging and home comming, a sense of self with the landscape. Obviously most Welsh people feel it towards somewhere in Wales they feel bonded with, but it could be anywhere really and of course it's not just Welsh people that feel it. 

There are a few places that make me feel this, here on Anglesey, obviously, but also south Dorset around Weymouth, it's like I know this land, it makes my soul feel young, I can feel the generations of people who have lived and loved in this landscape. It's more than just liking somewhere or happy holiday memories but something deeper and more ancient.

Anyone else know this feeling?

Parents

  • It sounds like a wonderful feeling but I don't think I have ever had it. Could be that I was born in a pretty ghastly new town and moved when I was 8 to somewhere completely different. I do like where I live now, in the countryside, but I always hanker after somewhere a bit more wild. I guess I do get a sense of homecoming when I return to my current home county of Gloucestershire and the Cotswolds more generally, but I don't know how deep that connection goes. Maybe you have to have the luck of being born and raised in the place that is right for you. A large, noisy concrete town was never going to be that for me!

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  • It sounds like a wonderful feeling but I don't think I have ever had it. Could be that I was born in a pretty ghastly new town and moved when I was 8 to somewhere completely different. I do like where I live now, in the countryside, but I always hanker after somewhere a bit more wild. I guess I do get a sense of homecoming when I return to my current home county of Gloucestershire and the Cotswolds more generally, but I don't know how deep that connection goes. Maybe you have to have the luck of being born and raised in the place that is right for you. A large, noisy concrete town was never going to be that for me!

Children
  • in reply to McFrost

    I was brought up in a town in southern England, I did have a park over the road and I used to watch the trees a lot, I remember being really sad when lots had to be cut down because of Dutch Elm Disease. I never really spent any time in the countryside until I was late teens, early twenties, I've just found places I love to live.