Yr Hen Ogledd , in English the Old North, is the region of Northern England and the southern Scottish Lowlands inhabited by Celtic Britons during the post-Roman period and the Early Middle Ages. Its denizens spoke a variety of the Brittonic language known as Cumbric. The Hen Ogledd was distinct from the parts of northern Britain inhabited by the Picts, Anglo-Saxons, and Scots as well as from Wales, although the region loomed large in Welsh literature and tradition for centuries after its kingdoms had disappeared.