[2] It is a mixture of longing, yearning, nostalgia, wistfulness or an earnest desire for the Wales of the past.
[5] A similar Scottish Gaelic term, cianalas, also refers to a type of longing or homesickness, often used in relation to the Outer Hebrides.
Derived from hir 'long' and -aeth (a nominal suffix creating an abstract noun from an adjective), the word is literally equivalent to English 'longing'.
[6] Nineteenth-century attempts to spread the English language through its exclusive use in schools at the expense of the Welsh language, following the 1847 Reports of the Commissioners of Inquiry into the State of Education in Wales (commonly known as the "Treachery of the Blue Books" in Wales), led to an increase in hiraeth.
[5] Between 1870 and 1914, approximately 40% of Welsh emigrants returned to Wales, a much higher percentage than the rest of Britain, and it has been claimed that this was due to hiraeth.