Y Gododdin
Encyclopedia
Y Gododdin is a medieval Welsh
poem consisting of a series of elegies
to the men of the Britonnic
kingdom of Gododdin
and its allies who, according to the conventional interpretation, died fighting the Angles
of Deira and Bernicia
at a place named Catraeth. It is traditionally ascribed to the bard Aneirin
, and survives only in one manuscript, known as the Book of Aneirin
.
There is general agreement among scholars that the battle commemorated would have happened around the year 600, but there is debate about the date of the poetry. Some scholars consider that the original, oral version was composed in the Hen Ogledd
– the Brythonic
-speaking parts of northern Britain – soon after the battle. In this case the original language of the poem would have been that spoken in the region at the time, known as Cumbric
; this would make it the oldest surviving poem from what is now Scotland. Others, however, believe that it originated in Wales
in the 9th or the 10th century. If it is 9th-century, it would be one of the earliest poems written in a form of Welsh.
The Gododdin, known in Roman
times as the Votadini
, held territories in what is now southeast Scotland and Northumberland
, part of the Hen Ogledd
(Old North). The poem tells how a force of 300 (or 363) picked warriors were assembled, some from as far afield as Pictland
and Gwynedd
. After a year of feasting at Din Eidyn, now Edinburgh
, they attacked Catraeth, which is usually identified with Catterick
, North Yorkshire
. After several days of fighting against overwhelming odds, nearly all the warriors are killed. The poem is similar in ethos to heroic poetry
, with the emphasis on the heroes fighting primarily for glory, but is not a narrative.
The surviving manuscript of the poem, which dates from the second half of the 13th century, is partly written in Middle Welsh orthography and partly in Old Welsh. The manuscript contains several stanzas which have no connection with the Gododdin and are considered to be interpolations. One stanza mentions Arthur
, which would be of great importance as the earliest known reference if the stanza could be shown to date from the late 6th or early 7th centuries.
, thought to date from the second half of the 13th century. The currently accepted view is that this manuscript contains the work of two scribes, usually known as A and B. Scribe A wrote down 88 stanzas of the poem, then left a blank page before writing down four related poems known as Gorchanau. This scribe wrote the material down in Middle Welsh orthography. Scribe B added material later, and apparently had access to an earlier manuscript since the material added by this scribe is in Old Welsh orthography. Scribe B wrote 35 stanzas, some of which are variants of stanzas also given by Scribe A while others are not given by A. The last stanza is incomplete and three folios are missing from the end of the manuscript, so some material may have been lost.
There are differences within the material added by Scribe B. The first 23 stanzas of the B material shows signs of partial modernisation of the orthography, while the remainder show much more retention of Old Welsh features. Jarman explains this by suggesting that Scribe B started by partially modernising the orthography as he copied the stanzas, but after a while tired of this and copied the remaining stanzas as they were in the older manuscript. Isaac suggested that Scribe B was using two sources, called B1 and B2. If this is correct, the material in the Books of Aneirin is from three sources.
The stanzas that make up the poem are a series of elegies for warriors who fell in battle against vastly superior numbers. Some of the verses refer to the entire host, others eulogize individual heroes. They tell how the ruler of the Gododdin, Mynyddog Mwynfawr
, gathered warriors from several Brythonic kingdoms and provided them with a year's feasting and drinking mead
in his halls at Din Eidyn, before launching a campaign in which almost all of them were killed fighting against overwhelming odds. The poetry is based on a fixed number of syllables, though there is some irregularity which may be due to modernisation of the language during oral transmission. It uses rhyme
, both end-rhyme and internal, and some parts use alliteration
. A number of stanzas may open with the same words, for example "Gwyr a aeth gatraeth gan wawr" ("Men went to Catraeth at dawn").
The collection appears to have been compiled from two different versions: according to some verses there were 300 men of the Gododdin, and only one, Cynon fab Clytno, survived; in others there were 363 warriors and three survivors, in addition to the poet, who as a bard
would have almost certainly not have been counted as one of the warriors. The names of about eighty warriors are given in the poem.
The Book of Aneirin begins with the introduction Hwn yw e gododin. aneirin ae cant ("This is the Gododdin; Aneirin sang it"). The first stanza appears to be a reciter's prologue, composed after the death of Aneirin:
The second stanza praises an individual hero:
Other stanzas praise the entire host, for example number 13:
Mead
is mentioned in many stanzas, sometimes with the suggestion that it is linked to their deaths. This led some 19th-century editors to assume that the warriors went into battle drunk, however Williams explained that "mead" here stood for everything the warriors received from their lord. In return, they were expected to "pay their mead" by being loyal to their lord unto death. A similar concept is found in Anglo-Saxon poetry. The heroes commemorated in the poem are mounted warriors; there are many references to horses in the poem. There are references to spears, swords and shields, and to the use of armour (llurug, from the Latin
lorica). There are several references which indicate that they were Christians, for example "penance" and "altar", while the enemy are described as "heathens". Several of these features can be seen in stanza 33:
D. Simon Evans has suggested that most, if not all, of the references which point to Christianity may be later additions. Short comments:
Many personal names are given, but only two are recorded in other sources. One of the warriors was Cynon fab Clytno, whom Williams identifies with the Cynon fab Clydno Eiddin
who is mentioned in old pedigrees. The other personal name recorded in other sources is Arthur. If the mention of Arthur formed part of the original poem this could be the earliest reference to Arthur
, as a paragon of bravery. In stanza 99, the poet praises one of the warriors, Gwawrddur:
Many of the warriors were not from the lands of the Gododdin. Among the places mentioned are Aeron
, thought to be the area around the River Ayr
and Elfed, the area around Leeds
still called Elmet
. Others came from further afield, for example one came from "beyond Bannog", a reference to the mountains between Stirling
(thought to have been Manaw Gododdin
territory) and Dumbarton (chief fort of the Brythonic Kingdom of Strathclyde
) – this warrior must have come from Pictland. Others came from Gwynedd
in north Wales.
under Eugein I
, here described as "the grandson of Neithon", over Domnall Brecc
("Dyfnwal Frych" in Welsh), king of Dál Riata
, at the Battle of Strathcarron in 642:
Another stanza appears to be part of the separate cycle of poems associated with Llywarch Hen
. The third interpolation is a poem entitled "Dinogad's Smock", a cradle-song addressed to a baby named Dinogad, describing how his father goes hunting and fishing. The interpolations are thought to have been added to the poem after it had been written down, these stanzas first being written down where there was a space in the manuscript, then being incorporated in the poem by a later copier who failed to realise that they did not belong. The Strathcarron stanza, for example, is the first stanza in the B text of the Book of Aneirin, and Jackson
suggested that it had probably been inserted on a blank space at the top of the first page of the original manuscript. According to Koch's reconstruction, this stanza was deliberately added to the text in Strathclyde.
Most of the debate about the date of the poem has employed linguistic arguments. It is believed that around the time of the battle, the British language was transitioning into its daughter languages: the primitive form of Welsh
in Wales
, of Cornish
and Breton
in southwestern Britain and Brittany
, and Cumbric
in northern Britain. Kenneth Jackson
concludes that the majority of the changes that transformed British into Primitive Welsh belong to the period from the middle of the 5th to the end of the 6th century. This involved syncope and the loss of final syllables. If the poem dates to this time, it would have been written in an early form of Cumbric, the usual name for the Brythonic speech of the Hen Ogledd. Jackson suggested the name "Primitive Cumbric" for the dialect spoken at the time.
Sweetser gives the example of the name Cynfelyn found in the Gododdin; in British this would have been Cunobelinos. The middle unstressed o and the final unstressed os have been lost. Ifor Williams
, whose 1938 text laid the foundations for modern scholarly study of the poetry, considered that part of it could be regarded as being of likely late 6th century origin. This would have been orally transmitted for a period before being written down. Dillon cast doubt on the date of composition, arguing that it is unlikely that by the end of the 6th century Primitive Welsh would have developed into a language "not notably earlier than that of the ninth century". He suggests that the poetry may have been composed in the 9th century on traditional themes and attributed to Aneirin. Jackson however considers that there is "no real substance" in these arguments, and points out that the poetry would have been transmitted orally for a long period before being written down, and would have been modernised by reciters, and that there is in any case nothing in the language used which would rule out a date around 600. Koch suggests a rather earlier date, about 570, and also suggests that the poem may have existed in written form by the 7th century, much earlier than usually thought. Koch, reviewing the arguments about the date of the poetry in 1997, states:
Koch himself believes that a considerable part of the poem can be dated to the 6th century. Greene in 1971 considered that the language of the poem was 9th century rather than 6th century, and Isaac, writing in 1999, stated that the linguistic evidence did not necessitate dating the poem as a whole before the 9th or 10th century.
The other approach to dating the poetry has been to look at it from a historical point of view. Charles-Edwards writing in 1978 concluded that:
Dumville, commenting on these attempts to establish the historicity of the poem in 1988, said, "The case for authenticity, whatever exactly we mean by that, is not proven; but that does not mean that it cannot be." The fact that the great majority of the warriors mentioned in the poem are not known from other sources has been put forward by several authors as an argument against the idea that the poem could be a later composition. The poems which are known to be later "forgeries" have clearly been written for a purpose, for example to strengthen the claims of a particular dynasty. The men commemorated in Y Gododdin do not appear in the pedigrees of any Welsh dynasty. Breeze comments, "it is difficult to see why a later poet should take the trouble to commemorate men who, but for the poem, would be forgotten".
The poem is set in the area which is now southern Scotland and north-east England. Around the year 600 this area included a number of Brythonic kingdoms. Apart from the Gododdin, the kingdom of Alt Clut
occupied the Strathclyde
area and Rheged
covered parts of Galloway
, Lancashire
and Cumbria
. Further south lay the kingdom of Elmet
in the Leeds
area. These areas made up what was later known in Welsh as Yr Hen Ogledd
(The Old North). The Gododdin, known as the Votadini
in the Romano-British period, occupied a territory from the area around the head of the Firth of Forth
as far south as the River Wear
. In modern terms their lands included much of Clackmannanshire
and the Lothian
and Borders
regions. Their capital at this period may have been called Din Eidyn, now known as Edinburgh
. By this time the area that later became Northumbria
had been invaded and increasingly occupied by the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of Deira and Bernicia
.
In the Historia Brittonum, attributed to Nennius
, there is a reference to several poets in this area during the 6th century. Having mentioned Ida of Bernicia
, the founder of the Northumbrian royal line who ruled between 547 and 559, the Historia goes on to say:
Nothing has been preserved of the work of Talhaearn, Blwchfardd and Cian, but poems attributed to Taliesin
were published by Ifor Williams in Canu Taliesin and were considered by him to be comparable in antiquity to the Gododdin. This poetry praises Urien of Rheged and his son Owain, and refers to Urien as lord of Catraeth.
in North Yorkshire. He linked the poem to the Battle of Degsastan
in c.603 between king Æthelfrith of Bernicia
and the Gaels
under Áedán mac Gabráin
, king of Dál Riada. Gwenogvryn Evans in his 1922 edition and translation of the Book of Aneirin claimed that the poem referred to a battle around the Menai Strait
in 1098, emending the text to fit the theory. The generally accepted interpretation for the Battle of Catraeth is that put forward by Ifor Williams in his Canu Aneirin first published in 1938. Williams interpreted mynydawc mwynvawr in the text to refer to a person, Mynyddog Mwynfawr
in modern Welsh. Mynyddog, in his version, was the king of the Gododdin, with his chief seat at Din Eidyn (modern Edinburgh
). Around the year 600 Mynyddog gathered about 300 selected warriors, some from as far afield as Gwynedd
. He feasted them at Din Eidyn for a year, then launched an attack on Catraeth, which Williams agrees with Stephens in identifying as Catterick, which was in Anglo-Saxon
hands. They were opposed by a larger army from the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of Deira and Bernicia
.
The battle at Catraeth has been seen as an attempt to resist the advance of the Angles, who had probably by then occupied the former Votadini lands of Bryneich in modern north-eastern England and made it their kingdom of Bernicia. At some time after the battle, the Angles absorbed the Gododdin kingdom, possibly after the fall of their capital Din Eidyn in 638, and incorporated it into the kingdom of Northumbria
.
This interpretation has been accepted by most modern scholars. Jackson accepts the interpretation but suggests that a force of 300 men would be much too small to undertake the task demanded of them. He considers that the 300 mounted warriors would have been accompanied by a larger number of foot soldiers, not considered worthy of mention in the poem. Jarman also follows Williams' interpretation. Jackson suggested that after the fall of the kingdom of Gododdin, in or about 638, the poem was preserved in Strathclyde, which maintained its independence for several centuries. He considers that it was first written down in Strathclyde after a period of oral transmission, and may have reached Wales in manuscript form between the end of the 8th and the end of the 9th century. There would be particular interest in matters relating to the Gododdin in Gwynedd
, since the founding myth
of the kingdom involved the coming of Cunedda Wledig from Manaw Gododdin.
". This work also included a new and very different interpretation of the background of the poetry. He draws attention to a poem in Canu Taliesin entitled Gweith Gwen Ystrat
(The Battle of Gwen Ystrat):
There is also a reference to Catraeth in the slightly later poem Moliant Cadwallon, a panegyric addressed to Cadwallon ap Cadfan
of Gwynedd, thought to have been composed in about 633. Two lines in this poem are translated by Koch as "fierce Gwallawc wrought the great and renowned mortality at Catraeth". He identifies Gwallawc as the "Guallauc" who was one of the kings who fought against Bernicia in alliance with Urien. Koch draws attention to the mention of meibion Godebawc (the sons of Godebog) as an enemy in stanza 15 of the Gododdin and points out that according to old Welsh genealogies Urien and other Brittonic kings were descendants of "Coïl Hen Guotepauc". He considers that, in view of the references in the three poems, there is a case for identifying the attack on Catraeth recorded in Y Gododdin with the Battle of Gwen Ystrat. This would date the poem to about 570 rather than the c. 600 favoured by Williams and others. He interprets the Gododdin as having fought the Brythons of Rheged
and Alt Clut
over a power struggle in Elmet
, with Anglian allies on both sides, Rheged being in an alliance with Deira. He points out that according to the Historia Britonnum it was Rhun, son of Urien Rheged
who baptized the princess Aenfled of Deira, her father Edwin and 12,000 of his subjects in 626/7. Urien Rheged was thus the real victor of the battle. Mynyddog Mwynfawr was not a person's name but a personal description meaning 'mountain feast' or 'mountain chief'. Some aspects of Koch's view of the historical context have been criticised by both Oliver Padel
and Tim Clarkson. Clarkson, for example, makes the point that the reference in Gweith Gwen Ystrat is to "the men of Catraeth"; it does not state that the battle was fought at Catraeth, and also that according to Bede it was Paulinus, not Rhun, who baptized the Deirans.
in the Myvyrian Archaiology in 1801. English translations of the poem were published by William Probert in 1820 and by John Williams (Ab Ithel)
in 1852, followed by translations by William Forbes Skene
in his Four Ancient Books of Wales (1866) and by Thomas Stephens for the Cymmrodorion Society in 1888. Gwenogvryn Evans produced a facsimile copy of the Book of Aneirin in 1908 and an edition with a translation in 1922.
The first reliable edition was Canu Aneirin by Ifor Williams with notes in Welsh, published in 1938. New translations based on this work were published by Kenneth H. Jackson in 1969 and, with modernized Welsh text and glossary, by A.O.H. Jarman in 1988. A colour facsimile edition of the manuscript with an introduction by Daniel Huws was published by South Glamorgan County Council and the National Library of Wales
in 1989. John Koch's new edition, which aimed to recreate the original text, appeared in 1997.
There have also been a number of translations which aim to present the Gododdin as literature rather than as a subject of scholarly study. Examples are the translation by Joseph P. Clancy in The earliest Welsh poetry (1970) and Steve Short's 1994 translation.
, in which Owain praises his own war-band, likens them to the heroes of the Gododdin and uses Y Gododdin as a model. A slightly later poet, Dafydd Benfras
, in a eulogy addressed to Llywelyn the Great
, wishes to be inspired "to sing as Aneirin sang / The day he sang the Gododdin". After this period this poetry seems to have been forgotten in Wales for centuries until Evan Evans (Ieuan Fardd) discovered the manuscript in the late 18th century. From the early 19th century onwards there are many allusions in Welsh poetry.
In English, Y Gododdin was a major influence on the long poem
In Parenthesis
(1937) by David Jones
, in which he reflects on the carnage he witnessed in the First World War. Jones put a quotation from the Gododdin at the beginning of each of the seven sections of In Parenthesis. Another poet writing in English, Richard Caddel
, used 'Y Gododdin' as the basis of his difficult but much-admired poem For the Fallen (1997), written in memory of his son Tom. Tony Conran's Poem 'Elegy for the Welsh Dead, in the Falklands Islands, 1982' opens with the line 'Men went to Catraeth', using the original poem to comment on a contemporary conflict.
The poem has also inspired a number of historical novels, including Men Went to Cattraeth (1969) by John James
, The Shining Company (1990) by Rosemary Sutcliff
and The Amber Treasure (2009) by Richard J Denning
.
In 1989 the British industrial band Test Dept
brought out an album entitled Gododdin, in which the words of the poem were set to music, part in the original and part in English translation. This was a collaboration with the Welsh avant-garde theatre company Brith Gof and was performed in Wales, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Scotland.
Welsh language
Welsh is a member of the Brythonic branch of the Celtic languages spoken natively in Wales, by some along the Welsh border in England, and in Y Wladfa...
poem consisting of a series of elegies
Elegy
In literature, an elegy is a mournful, melancholic or plaintive poem, especially a funeral song or a lament for the dead.-History:The Greek term elegeia originally referred to any verse written in elegiac couplets and covering a wide range of subject matter, including epitaphs for tombs...
to the men of the Britonnic
Britons (historical)
The Britons were the Celtic people culturally dominating Great Britain from the Iron Age through the Early Middle Ages. They spoke the Insular Celtic language known as British or Brythonic...
kingdom of Gododdin
Gododdin
The Gododdin were a Brittonic people of north-eastern Britain in the sub-Roman period, the area known as the Hen Ogledd or Old North...
and its allies who, according to the conventional interpretation, died fighting the Angles
Angles
The Angles is a modern English term for a Germanic people who took their name from the ancestral cultural region of Angeln, a district located in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany...
of Deira and Bernicia
Bernicia
Bernicia was an Anglo-Saxon kingdom established by Anglian settlers of the 6th century in what is now southeastern Scotland and North East England....
at a place named Catraeth. It is traditionally ascribed to the bard Aneirin
Aneirin
Aneirin or Neirin was a Dark Age Brythonic poet. He is believed to have been a bard or 'court poet' in one of the Cumbric kingdoms of the Old North or Hen Ogledd, probably that of Gododdin at Edinburgh, in modern Scotland...
, and survives only in one manuscript, known as the Book of Aneirin
Book of Aneirin
The Book of Aneirin is a late 13th century Welsh manuscript containing Old and Middle Welsh poetry attributed to the late 6th century Northern Brythonic poet, Aneirin....
.
There is general agreement among scholars that the battle commemorated would have happened around the year 600, but there is debate about the date of the poetry. Some scholars consider that the original, oral version was composed in the Hen Ogledd
Hen Ogledd
Yr Hen Ogledd is a Welsh term used by scholars to refer to those parts of what is now northern England and southern Scotland in the years between 500 and the Viking invasions of c. 800, with particular interest in the Brythonic-speaking peoples who lived there.The term is derived from heroic...
– the Brythonic
Brythonic languages
The Brythonic or Brittonic languages form one of the two branches of the Insular Celtic language family, the other being Goidelic. The name Brythonic was derived by Welsh Celticist John Rhys from the Welsh word Brython, meaning an indigenous Briton as opposed to an Anglo-Saxon or Gael...
-speaking parts of northern Britain – soon after the battle. In this case the original language of the poem would have been that spoken in the region at the time, known as Cumbric
Cumbric language
Cumbric was a variety of the Celtic British language spoken during the Early Middle Ages in the Hen Ogledd or "Old North", or what is now northern England and southern Lowland Scotland, the area anciently known as Cumbria. It was closely related to Old Welsh and the other Brythonic languages...
; this would make it the oldest surviving poem from what is now Scotland. Others, however, believe that it originated in Wales
Wales
Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...
in the 9th or the 10th century. If it is 9th-century, it would be one of the earliest poems written in a form of Welsh.
The Gododdin, known in Roman
Roman Britain
Roman Britain was the part of the island of Great Britain controlled by the Roman Empire from AD 43 until ca. AD 410.The Romans referred to the imperial province as Britannia, which eventually comprised all of the island of Great Britain south of the fluid frontier with Caledonia...
times as the Votadini
Votadini
The Votadini were a people of the Iron Age in Great Britain, and their territory was briefly part of the Roman province Britannia...
, held territories in what is now southeast Scotland and Northumberland
Northumberland
Northumberland is the northernmost ceremonial county and a unitary district in North East England. For Eurostat purposes Northumberland is a NUTS 3 region and is one of three boroughs or unitary districts that comprise the "Northumberland and Tyne and Wear" NUTS 2 region...
, part of the Hen Ogledd
Hen Ogledd
Yr Hen Ogledd is a Welsh term used by scholars to refer to those parts of what is now northern England and southern Scotland in the years between 500 and the Viking invasions of c. 800, with particular interest in the Brythonic-speaking peoples who lived there.The term is derived from heroic...
(Old North). The poem tells how a force of 300 (or 363) picked warriors were assembled, some from as far afield as Pictland
Picts
The Picts were a group of Late Iron Age and Early Mediaeval people living in what is now eastern and northern Scotland. There is an association with the distribution of brochs, place names beginning 'Pit-', for instance Pitlochry, and Pictish stones. They are recorded from before the Roman conquest...
and Gwynedd
Kingdom of Gwynedd
Gwynedd was one petty kingdom of several Welsh successor states which emerged in 5th-century post-Roman Britain in the Early Middle Ages, and later evolved into a principality during the High Middle Ages. It was based on the former Brythonic tribal lands of the Ordovices, Gangani, and the...
. After a year of feasting at Din Eidyn, now Edinburgh
Edinburgh
Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland, the second largest city in Scotland, and the eighth most populous in the United Kingdom. The City of Edinburgh Council governs one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas. The council area includes urban Edinburgh and a rural area...
, they attacked Catraeth, which is usually identified with Catterick
Catterick, North Yorkshire
Catterick , sometimes Catterick Village, to distinguish it from the nearby Catterick Garrison, is a village and civil parish in the Richmondshire district of North Yorkshire, England...
, North Yorkshire
North Yorkshire
North Yorkshire is a non-metropolitan or shire county located in the Yorkshire and the Humber region of England, and a ceremonial county primarily in that region but partly in North East England. Created in 1974 by the Local Government Act 1972 it covers an area of , making it the largest...
. After several days of fighting against overwhelming odds, nearly all the warriors are killed. The poem is similar in ethos to heroic poetry
Epic poetry
An epic is a lengthy narrative poem, ordinarily concerning a serious subject containing details of heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation. Oral poetry may qualify as an epic, and Albert Lord and Milman Parry have argued that classical epics were fundamentally an oral poetic form...
, with the emphasis on the heroes fighting primarily for glory, but is not a narrative.
The surviving manuscript of the poem, which dates from the second half of the 13th century, is partly written in Middle Welsh orthography and partly in Old Welsh. The manuscript contains several stanzas which have no connection with the Gododdin and are considered to be interpolations. One stanza mentions Arthur
King Arthur
King Arthur is a legendary British leader of the late 5th and early 6th centuries, who, according to Medieval histories and romances, led the defence of Britain against Saxon invaders in the early 6th century. The details of Arthur's story are mainly composed of folklore and literary invention, and...
, which would be of great importance as the earliest known reference if the stanza could be shown to date from the late 6th or early 7th centuries.
Manuscript
There is only one early manuscript of Y Gododdin, the Book of AneirinBook of Aneirin
The Book of Aneirin is a late 13th century Welsh manuscript containing Old and Middle Welsh poetry attributed to the late 6th century Northern Brythonic poet, Aneirin....
, thought to date from the second half of the 13th century. The currently accepted view is that this manuscript contains the work of two scribes, usually known as A and B. Scribe A wrote down 88 stanzas of the poem, then left a blank page before writing down four related poems known as Gorchanau. This scribe wrote the material down in Middle Welsh orthography. Scribe B added material later, and apparently had access to an earlier manuscript since the material added by this scribe is in Old Welsh orthography. Scribe B wrote 35 stanzas, some of which are variants of stanzas also given by Scribe A while others are not given by A. The last stanza is incomplete and three folios are missing from the end of the manuscript, so some material may have been lost.
There are differences within the material added by Scribe B. The first 23 stanzas of the B material shows signs of partial modernisation of the orthography, while the remainder show much more retention of Old Welsh features. Jarman explains this by suggesting that Scribe B started by partially modernising the orthography as he copied the stanzas, but after a while tired of this and copied the remaining stanzas as they were in the older manuscript. Isaac suggested that Scribe B was using two sources, called B1 and B2. If this is correct, the material in the Books of Aneirin is from three sources.
Poem
Mynyddog Mwynfawr
Mynyddog Mwynfawr was, according to Welsh tradition founded on the early Welsh language poem Y Gododdin a Brythonic ruler of the kingdom of Gododdin in the Hen Ogledd .The traditional reading of Y Gododdin, accepted by most scholars, is...
, gathered warriors from several Brythonic kingdoms and provided them with a year's feasting and drinking mead
Mead
Mead , also called honey wine, is an alcoholic beverage that is produced by fermenting a solution of honey and water. It may also be produced by fermenting a solution of water and honey with grain mash, which is strained immediately after fermentation...
in his halls at Din Eidyn, before launching a campaign in which almost all of them were killed fighting against overwhelming odds. The poetry is based on a fixed number of syllables, though there is some irregularity which may be due to modernisation of the language during oral transmission. It uses rhyme
Rhyme
A rhyme is a repetition of similar sounds in two or more words and is most often used in poetry and songs. The word "rhyme" may also refer to a short poem, such as a rhyming couplet or other brief rhyming poem such as nursery rhymes.-Etymology:...
, both end-rhyme and internal, and some parts use alliteration
Alliteration
In language, alliteration refers to the repetition of a particular sound in the first syllables of Three or more words or phrases. Alliteration has historically developed largely through poetry, in which it more narrowly refers to the repetition of a consonant in any syllables that, according to...
. A number of stanzas may open with the same words, for example "Gwyr a aeth gatraeth gan wawr" ("Men went to Catraeth at dawn").
The collection appears to have been compiled from two different versions: according to some verses there were 300 men of the Gododdin, and only one, Cynon fab Clytno, survived; in others there were 363 warriors and three survivors, in addition to the poet, who as a bard
Bard
In medieval Gaelic and British culture a bard was a professional poet, employed by a patron, such as a monarch or nobleman, to commemorate the patron's ancestors and to praise the patron's own activities.Originally a specific class of poet, contrasting with another class known as fili in Ireland...
would have almost certainly not have been counted as one of the warriors. The names of about eighty warriors are given in the poem.
The Book of Aneirin begins with the introduction Hwn yw e gododin. aneirin ae cant ("This is the Gododdin; Aneirin sang it"). The first stanza appears to be a reciter's prologue, composed after the death of Aneirin:
The second stanza praises an individual hero:
Other stanzas praise the entire host, for example number 13:
Mead
Mead
Mead , also called honey wine, is an alcoholic beverage that is produced by fermenting a solution of honey and water. It may also be produced by fermenting a solution of water and honey with grain mash, which is strained immediately after fermentation...
is mentioned in many stanzas, sometimes with the suggestion that it is linked to their deaths. This led some 19th-century editors to assume that the warriors went into battle drunk, however Williams explained that "mead" here stood for everything the warriors received from their lord. In return, they were expected to "pay their mead" by being loyal to their lord unto death. A similar concept is found in Anglo-Saxon poetry. The heroes commemorated in the poem are mounted warriors; there are many references to horses in the poem. There are references to spears, swords and shields, and to the use of armour (llurug, from the Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
lorica). There are several references which indicate that they were Christians, for example "penance" and "altar", while the enemy are described as "heathens". Several of these features can be seen in stanza 33:
D. Simon Evans has suggested that most, if not all, of the references which point to Christianity may be later additions. Short comments:
Many personal names are given, but only two are recorded in other sources. One of the warriors was Cynon fab Clytno, whom Williams identifies with the Cynon fab Clydno Eiddin
Clydno Eiddin
Clydno Eiddin was a ruler in the Hen Ogledd, the Brythonic-speaking area in what is now Northern England and southern Scotland during the Early Middle Ages. "Eiddyn" is the Brythonic name for Edinburgh, implying a connection to that territory....
who is mentioned in old pedigrees. The other personal name recorded in other sources is Arthur. If the mention of Arthur formed part of the original poem this could be the earliest reference to Arthur
King Arthur
King Arthur is a legendary British leader of the late 5th and early 6th centuries, who, according to Medieval histories and romances, led the defence of Britain against Saxon invaders in the early 6th century. The details of Arthur's story are mainly composed of folklore and literary invention, and...
, as a paragon of bravery. In stanza 99, the poet praises one of the warriors, Gwawrddur:
Many of the warriors were not from the lands of the Gododdin. Among the places mentioned are Aeron
Aeron
Aeron is used in several ways including:*Aeron , a masculine god of battle or slaughter*Aeron chair, a product of Herman Miller designed in 1994*Aeron Clement , an American science fiction author...
, thought to be the area around the River Ayr
River Ayr
The River Ayr , longest river in what was the old county of Ayrshire of Scotland, is approximately 65 kilometres in length. It originates at Glenbuck Loch in East Ayrshire on the border of Lanarkshire and winds its way through East and South Ayrshire to the town of Ayr, where it empties into the...
and Elfed, the area around Leeds
Leeds
Leeds is a city and metropolitan borough in West Yorkshire, England. In 2001 Leeds' main urban subdivision had a population of 443,247, while the entire city has a population of 798,800 , making it the 30th-most populous city in the European Union.Leeds is the cultural, financial and commercial...
still called Elmet
Elmet
Elmet was an independent Brythonic kingdom covering a broad area of what later became the West Riding of Yorkshire during the Early Middle Ages, between approximately the 5th century and early 7th century. Although its precise boundaries are unclear, it appears to have been bordered by the River...
. Others came from further afield, for example one came from "beyond Bannog", a reference to the mountains between Stirling
Stirling
Stirling is a city and former ancient burgh in Scotland, and is at the heart of the wider Stirling council area. The city is clustered around a large fortress and medieval old-town beside the River Forth...
(thought to have been Manaw Gododdin
Manaw Gododdin
Manaw Gododdin was the narrow coastal region on the south side of the Firth of Forth, part of the Brythonic-speaking Kingdom of Gododdin in the post-Roman Era. Its notability is as the homeland of Cunedda prior to his conquest of North Wales, and as the homeland of the heroic warriors in the...
territory) and Dumbarton (chief fort of the Brythonic Kingdom of Strathclyde
Kingdom of Strathclyde
Strathclyde , originally Brythonic Ystrad Clud, was one of the early medieval kingdoms of the celtic people called the Britons in the Hen Ogledd, the Brythonic-speaking parts of what is now southern Scotland and northern England. The kingdom developed during the post-Roman period...
) – this warrior must have come from Pictland. Others came from Gwynedd
Kingdom of Gwynedd
Gwynedd was one petty kingdom of several Welsh successor states which emerged in 5th-century post-Roman Britain in the Early Middle Ages, and later evolved into a principality during the High Middle Ages. It was based on the former Brythonic tribal lands of the Ordovices, Gangani, and the...
in north Wales.
Interpolations
Three of the stanzas included in the manuscript have no connection with the subject matter of the remainder except that they are also associated with southern Scotland or northern England rather than Wales. One of these is a stanza which celebrates the victory of the Britons of the Kingdom of StrathclydeKingdom of Strathclyde
Strathclyde , originally Brythonic Ystrad Clud, was one of the early medieval kingdoms of the celtic people called the Britons in the Hen Ogledd, the Brythonic-speaking parts of what is now southern Scotland and northern England. The kingdom developed during the post-Roman period...
under Eugein I
Eugein I of Alt Clut
Eugein I was a ruler of Alt Clut , the kingdom later known as Strathclyde, sometime in the mid-7th century. According to the Harleian genealogies, he was the son of Beli I, presumably his predecessor as king, and the father of Elfin, who ruled sometime later...
, here described as "the grandson of Neithon", over Domnall Brecc
Domnall Brecc
Domnall Brecc was king of Dál Riata, in modern Scotland, from about 629 until 642...
("Dyfnwal Frych" in Welsh), king of Dál Riata
Dál Riata
Dál Riata was a Gaelic overkingdom on the western coast of Scotland with some territory on the northeast coast of Ireland...
, at the Battle of Strathcarron in 642:
Another stanza appears to be part of the separate cycle of poems associated with Llywarch Hen
Llywarch Hen
Llywarch Hen was a 6th-century prince of the Brythonic kingdom of Rheged, a ruling family in the Hen Ogledd or 'Old North' of Britain...
. The third interpolation is a poem entitled "Dinogad's Smock", a cradle-song addressed to a baby named Dinogad, describing how his father goes hunting and fishing. The interpolations are thought to have been added to the poem after it had been written down, these stanzas first being written down where there was a space in the manuscript, then being incorporated in the poem by a later copier who failed to realise that they did not belong. The Strathcarron stanza, for example, is the first stanza in the B text of the Book of Aneirin, and Jackson
Kenneth H. Jackson
Kenneth Hurlstone Jackson was an English linguist and a translator who specialised in the Celtic languages. He demonstrated how the text of the Ulster Cycle of tales, written circa AD 1100, preserves an oral tradition originating some six centuries earlier and reflects Celtic Irish society of the...
suggested that it had probably been inserted on a blank space at the top of the first page of the original manuscript. According to Koch's reconstruction, this stanza was deliberately added to the text in Strathclyde.
Date
The date of Y Gododdin has been the subject of debate among scholars since the early 19th century. If the poem was composed soon after the battle, it must predate 638, when the fall of Din Eidyn was recorded in the reign of Oswy king of Bernicia, an event which is thought to have meant the collapse of the kingdom of the Gododdin. If it is a later composition, the latest date which could be ascribed to it is determined by the orthography of the second part of Scribe B's text. This is usually considered to be that of the ninth or tenth centuries, although some scholars consider that it could be from the 11th century.Most of the debate about the date of the poem has employed linguistic arguments. It is believed that around the time of the battle, the British language was transitioning into its daughter languages: the primitive form of Welsh
Welsh language
Welsh is a member of the Brythonic branch of the Celtic languages spoken natively in Wales, by some along the Welsh border in England, and in Y Wladfa...
in Wales
Wales
Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...
, of Cornish
Cornish language
Cornish is a Brythonic Celtic language and a recognised minority language of the United Kingdom. Along with Welsh and Breton, it is directly descended from the ancient British language spoken throughout much of Britain before the English language came to dominate...
and Breton
Breton language
Breton is a Celtic language spoken in Brittany , France. Breton is a Brythonic language, descended from the Celtic British language brought from Great Britain to Armorica by migrating Britons during the Early Middle Ages. Like the other Brythonic languages, Welsh and Cornish, it is classified as...
in southwestern Britain and Brittany
Brittany
Brittany is a cultural and administrative region in the north-west of France. Previously a kingdom and then a duchy, Brittany was united to the Kingdom of France in 1532 as a province. Brittany has also been referred to as Less, Lesser or Little Britain...
, and Cumbric
Cumbric language
Cumbric was a variety of the Celtic British language spoken during the Early Middle Ages in the Hen Ogledd or "Old North", or what is now northern England and southern Lowland Scotland, the area anciently known as Cumbria. It was closely related to Old Welsh and the other Brythonic languages...
in northern Britain. Kenneth Jackson
Kenneth H. Jackson
Kenneth Hurlstone Jackson was an English linguist and a translator who specialised in the Celtic languages. He demonstrated how the text of the Ulster Cycle of tales, written circa AD 1100, preserves an oral tradition originating some six centuries earlier and reflects Celtic Irish society of the...
concludes that the majority of the changes that transformed British into Primitive Welsh belong to the period from the middle of the 5th to the end of the 6th century. This involved syncope and the loss of final syllables. If the poem dates to this time, it would have been written in an early form of Cumbric, the usual name for the Brythonic speech of the Hen Ogledd. Jackson suggested the name "Primitive Cumbric" for the dialect spoken at the time.
Sweetser gives the example of the name Cynfelyn found in the Gododdin; in British this would have been Cunobelinos. The middle unstressed o and the final unstressed os have been lost. Ifor Williams
Ifor Williams
Sir Ifor Williams was a Welsh scholar who laid the foundations for the academic study of Old Welsh, particularly early Welsh poetry....
, whose 1938 text laid the foundations for modern scholarly study of the poetry, considered that part of it could be regarded as being of likely late 6th century origin. This would have been orally transmitted for a period before being written down. Dillon cast doubt on the date of composition, arguing that it is unlikely that by the end of the 6th century Primitive Welsh would have developed into a language "not notably earlier than that of the ninth century". He suggests that the poetry may have been composed in the 9th century on traditional themes and attributed to Aneirin. Jackson however considers that there is "no real substance" in these arguments, and points out that the poetry would have been transmitted orally for a long period before being written down, and would have been modernised by reciters, and that there is in any case nothing in the language used which would rule out a date around 600. Koch suggests a rather earlier date, about 570, and also suggests that the poem may have existed in written form by the 7th century, much earlier than usually thought. Koch, reviewing the arguments about the date of the poetry in 1997, states:
Koch himself believes that a considerable part of the poem can be dated to the 6th century. Greene in 1971 considered that the language of the poem was 9th century rather than 6th century, and Isaac, writing in 1999, stated that the linguistic evidence did not necessitate dating the poem as a whole before the 9th or 10th century.
The other approach to dating the poetry has been to look at it from a historical point of view. Charles-Edwards writing in 1978 concluded that:
Dumville, commenting on these attempts to establish the historicity of the poem in 1988, said, "The case for authenticity, whatever exactly we mean by that, is not proven; but that does not mean that it cannot be." The fact that the great majority of the warriors mentioned in the poem are not known from other sources has been put forward by several authors as an argument against the idea that the poem could be a later composition. The poems which are known to be later "forgeries" have clearly been written for a purpose, for example to strengthen the claims of a particular dynasty. The men commemorated in Y Gododdin do not appear in the pedigrees of any Welsh dynasty. Breeze comments, "it is difficult to see why a later poet should take the trouble to commemorate men who, but for the poem, would be forgotten".
Background
Kingdom of Strathclyde
Strathclyde , originally Brythonic Ystrad Clud, was one of the early medieval kingdoms of the celtic people called the Britons in the Hen Ogledd, the Brythonic-speaking parts of what is now southern Scotland and northern England. The kingdom developed during the post-Roman period...
occupied the Strathclyde
Strathclyde
right|thumb|the former Strathclyde regionStrathclyde was one of nine former local government regions of Scotland created by the Local Government Act 1973 and abolished in 1996 by the Local Government etc Act 1994...
area and Rheged
Rheged
Rheged is described in poetic sources as one of the kingdoms of the Hen Ogledd , the Brythonic-speaking region of what is now northern England and southern Scotland, during the Early Middle Ages...
covered parts of Galloway
Galloway
Galloway is an area in southwestern Scotland. It usually refers to the former counties of Wigtownshire and Kirkcudbrightshire...
, Lancashire
Lancashire
Lancashire is a non-metropolitan county of historic origin in the North West of England. It takes its name from the city of Lancaster, and is sometimes known as the County of Lancaster. Although Lancaster is still considered to be the county town, Lancashire County Council is based in Preston...
and Cumbria
Cumbria
Cumbria , is a non-metropolitan county in North West England. The county and Cumbria County Council, its local authority, came into existence in 1974 after the passage of the Local Government Act 1972. Cumbria's largest settlement and county town is Carlisle. It consists of six districts, and in...
. Further south lay the kingdom of Elmet
Elmet
Elmet was an independent Brythonic kingdom covering a broad area of what later became the West Riding of Yorkshire during the Early Middle Ages, between approximately the 5th century and early 7th century. Although its precise boundaries are unclear, it appears to have been bordered by the River...
in the Leeds
Leeds
Leeds is a city and metropolitan borough in West Yorkshire, England. In 2001 Leeds' main urban subdivision had a population of 443,247, while the entire city has a population of 798,800 , making it the 30th-most populous city in the European Union.Leeds is the cultural, financial and commercial...
area. These areas made up what was later known in Welsh as Yr Hen Ogledd
Hen Ogledd
Yr Hen Ogledd is a Welsh term used by scholars to refer to those parts of what is now northern England and southern Scotland in the years between 500 and the Viking invasions of c. 800, with particular interest in the Brythonic-speaking peoples who lived there.The term is derived from heroic...
(The Old North). The Gododdin, known as the Votadini
Votadini
The Votadini were a people of the Iron Age in Great Britain, and their territory was briefly part of the Roman province Britannia...
in the Romano-British period, occupied a territory from the area around the head of the Firth of Forth
Firth of Forth
The Firth of Forth is the estuary or firth of Scotland's River Forth, where it flows into the North Sea, between Fife to the north, and West Lothian, the City of Edinburgh and East Lothian to the south...
as far south as the River Wear
River Wear
The River Wear is located in North East England, rising in the Pennines and flowing eastwards, mostly through County Durham, to the North Sea at Sunderland.-Geology and history:...
. In modern terms their lands included much of Clackmannanshire
Clackmannanshire
Clackmannanshire, often abbreviated to Clacks is a local government council area in Scotland, and a lieutenancy area, bordering Perth and Kinross, Stirling and Fife.As Scotland's smallest historic county, it is often nicknamed 'The Wee County'....
and the Lothian
Lothian
Lothian forms a traditional region of Scotland, lying between the southern shore of the Firth of Forth and the Lammermuir Hills....
and Borders
Scottish Borders
The Scottish Borders is one of 32 local government council areas of Scotland. It is bordered by Dumfries and Galloway in the west, South Lanarkshire and West Lothian in the north west, City of Edinburgh, East Lothian, Midlothian to the north; and the non-metropolitan counties of Northumberland...
regions. Their capital at this period may have been called Din Eidyn, now known as Edinburgh
Edinburgh
Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland, the second largest city in Scotland, and the eighth most populous in the United Kingdom. The City of Edinburgh Council governs one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas. The council area includes urban Edinburgh and a rural area...
. By this time the area that later became Northumbria
Northumbria
Northumbria was a medieval kingdom of the Angles, in what is now Northern England and South-East Scotland, becoming subsequently an earldom in a united Anglo-Saxon kingdom of England. The name reflects the approximate southern limit to the kingdom's territory, the Humber Estuary.Northumbria was...
had been invaded and increasingly occupied by the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of Deira and Bernicia
Bernicia
Bernicia was an Anglo-Saxon kingdom established by Anglian settlers of the 6th century in what is now southeastern Scotland and North East England....
.
In the Historia Brittonum, attributed to Nennius
Nennius
Nennius was a Welsh monk of the 9th century.He has traditionally been attributed with the authorship of the Historia Brittonum, based on the prologue affixed to that work, This attribution is widely considered a secondary tradition....
, there is a reference to several poets in this area during the 6th century. Having mentioned Ida of Bernicia
Ida of Bernicia
Ida is the first known king of the Anglian kingdom of Bernicia, which he ruled from around 547 until his death in 559. Little is known of his life or reign, but he was regarded as the founder of a line from which later Anglo-Saxon kings in this part of northern England and southern Scotland...
, the founder of the Northumbrian royal line who ruled between 547 and 559, the Historia goes on to say:
Nothing has been preserved of the work of Talhaearn, Blwchfardd and Cian, but poems attributed to Taliesin
Taliesin
Taliesin was an early British poet of the post-Roman period whose work has possibly survived in a Middle Welsh manuscript, the Book of Taliesin...
were published by Ifor Williams in Canu Taliesin and were considered by him to be comparable in antiquity to the Gododdin. This poetry praises Urien of Rheged and his son Owain, and refers to Urien as lord of Catraeth.
Interpretation
Y Gododdin is not a narrative poem but a series of elegies for heroes who died in a battle whose history would have been familiar to the original listeners. The context of the poem has to be worked out from the text itself. There have been various interpretations of the events recorded in the poem. The 19th-century Welsh scholar Thomas Stephens identified the Gododdin with the Votadini and Catraeth as CatterickCatterick, North Yorkshire
Catterick , sometimes Catterick Village, to distinguish it from the nearby Catterick Garrison, is a village and civil parish in the Richmondshire district of North Yorkshire, England...
in North Yorkshire. He linked the poem to the Battle of Degsastan
Battle of Degsastan
The Battle of Degsastan was fought c. 603 between king Æthelfrith of Bernicia and the Gaels under Áedán mac Gabráin, king of Dál Riada. Æthelfrith carried the day, winning a decisive victory, although his brother Theodbald was killed. We know almost nothing else about the battle, not even where...
in c.603 between king Æthelfrith of Bernicia
Æthelfrith of Northumbria
Æthelfrith was King of Bernicia from c. 593 until c. 616; he was also, beginning c. 604, the first Bernician king to also rule Deira, to the south of Bernicia. Since Deira and Bernicia were the two basic components of what would later be defined as Northumbria, Æthelfrith can be considered, in...
and the Gaels
Gaels
The Gaels or Goidels are speakers of one of the Goidelic Celtic languages: Irish, Scottish Gaelic, and Manx. Goidelic speech originated in Ireland and subsequently spread to western and northern Scotland and the Isle of Man....
under Áedán mac Gabráin
Áedán mac Gabráin
Áedán mac Gabráin was a king of Dál Riata from circa 574 until his death, perhaps on 17 April 609. The kingdom of Dál Riata was situated in modern Argyll and Bute, Scotland, and parts of County Antrim, Ireland...
, king of Dál Riada. Gwenogvryn Evans in his 1922 edition and translation of the Book of Aneirin claimed that the poem referred to a battle around the Menai Strait
Menai Strait
The Menai Strait is a narrow stretch of shallow tidal water about long, which separates the island of Anglesey from the mainland of Wales.The strait is bridged in two places - the main A5 road is carried over the strait by Thomas Telford's elegant iron suspension bridge, the first of its kind,...
in 1098, emending the text to fit the theory. The generally accepted interpretation for the Battle of Catraeth is that put forward by Ifor Williams in his Canu Aneirin first published in 1938. Williams interpreted mynydawc mwynvawr in the text to refer to a person, Mynyddog Mwynfawr
Mynyddog Mwynfawr
Mynyddog Mwynfawr was, according to Welsh tradition founded on the early Welsh language poem Y Gododdin a Brythonic ruler of the kingdom of Gododdin in the Hen Ogledd .The traditional reading of Y Gododdin, accepted by most scholars, is...
in modern Welsh. Mynyddog, in his version, was the king of the Gododdin, with his chief seat at Din Eidyn (modern Edinburgh
Edinburgh
Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland, the second largest city in Scotland, and the eighth most populous in the United Kingdom. The City of Edinburgh Council governs one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas. The council area includes urban Edinburgh and a rural area...
). Around the year 600 Mynyddog gathered about 300 selected warriors, some from as far afield as Gwynedd
Kingdom of Gwynedd
Gwynedd was one petty kingdom of several Welsh successor states which emerged in 5th-century post-Roman Britain in the Early Middle Ages, and later evolved into a principality during the High Middle Ages. It was based on the former Brythonic tribal lands of the Ordovices, Gangani, and the...
. He feasted them at Din Eidyn for a year, then launched an attack on Catraeth, which Williams agrees with Stephens in identifying as Catterick, which was in Anglo-Saxon
Anglo-Saxons
Anglo-Saxon is a term used by historians to designate the Germanic tribes who invaded and settled the south and east of Great Britain beginning in the early 5th century AD, and the period from their creation of the English nation to the Norman conquest. The Anglo-Saxon Era denotes the period of...
hands. They were opposed by a larger army from the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of Deira and Bernicia
Bernicia
Bernicia was an Anglo-Saxon kingdom established by Anglian settlers of the 6th century in what is now southeastern Scotland and North East England....
.
The battle at Catraeth has been seen as an attempt to resist the advance of the Angles, who had probably by then occupied the former Votadini lands of Bryneich in modern north-eastern England and made it their kingdom of Bernicia. At some time after the battle, the Angles absorbed the Gododdin kingdom, possibly after the fall of their capital Din Eidyn in 638, and incorporated it into the kingdom of Northumbria
Northumbria
Northumbria was a medieval kingdom of the Angles, in what is now Northern England and South-East Scotland, becoming subsequently an earldom in a united Anglo-Saxon kingdom of England. The name reflects the approximate southern limit to the kingdom's territory, the Humber Estuary.Northumbria was...
.
This interpretation has been accepted by most modern scholars. Jackson accepts the interpretation but suggests that a force of 300 men would be much too small to undertake the task demanded of them. He considers that the 300 mounted warriors would have been accompanied by a larger number of foot soldiers, not considered worthy of mention in the poem. Jarman also follows Williams' interpretation. Jackson suggested that after the fall of the kingdom of Gododdin, in or about 638, the poem was preserved in Strathclyde, which maintained its independence for several centuries. He considers that it was first written down in Strathclyde after a period of oral transmission, and may have reached Wales in manuscript form between the end of the 8th and the end of the 9th century. There would be particular interest in matters relating to the Gododdin in Gwynedd
Kingdom of Gwynedd
Gwynedd was one petty kingdom of several Welsh successor states which emerged in 5th-century post-Roman Britain in the Early Middle Ages, and later evolved into a principality during the High Middle Ages. It was based on the former Brythonic tribal lands of the Ordovices, Gangani, and the...
, since the founding myth
Founding myth
A national myth is an inspiring narrative or anecdote about a nation's past. Such myths often serve as an important national symbol and affirm a set of national values. A national myth may sometimes take the form of a national epic...
of the kingdom involved the coming of Cunedda Wledig from Manaw Gododdin.
Alternative interpretation
In 1997, John Koch published a new study of Y Gododdin which involved an attempt to reconstruct the original poetry written in what Koch terms "Archaic Neo-BrittonicBritish language
The British language was an ancient Celtic language spoken in Britain.British language may also refer to:* Any of the Languages of the United Kingdom.*The Welsh language or the Brythonic languages more generally* British English...
". This work also included a new and very different interpretation of the background of the poetry. He draws attention to a poem in Canu Taliesin entitled Gweith Gwen Ystrat
Gweith Gwen Ystrat
Gweith Gwen Ystrat Gweith Gwen Ystrat Gweith Gwen Ystrat (in English: The Battle of Gwen Ystrad, is a late Old Welsh or Middle Welsh heroic poem found uniquely in the Book of Taliesin, where it forms part of the Canu Taliesin, a series of poems attributed to the 6th-century court poet of Rheged,...
(The Battle of Gwen Ystrat):
There is also a reference to Catraeth in the slightly later poem Moliant Cadwallon, a panegyric addressed to Cadwallon ap Cadfan
Cadwallon ap Cadfan
Cadwallon ap Cadfan was the King of Gwynedd from around 625 until his death in battle. The son and successor of Cadfan ap Iago, he is best remembered as the King of the Britons who invaded and conquered Northumbria, defeating and killing its king, Edwin, prior to his own death in battle against...
of Gwynedd, thought to have been composed in about 633. Two lines in this poem are translated by Koch as "fierce Gwallawc wrought the great and renowned mortality at Catraeth". He identifies Gwallawc as the "Guallauc" who was one of the kings who fought against Bernicia in alliance with Urien. Koch draws attention to the mention of meibion Godebawc (the sons of Godebog) as an enemy in stanza 15 of the Gododdin and points out that according to old Welsh genealogies Urien and other Brittonic kings were descendants of "Coïl Hen Guotepauc". He considers that, in view of the references in the three poems, there is a case for identifying the attack on Catraeth recorded in Y Gododdin with the Battle of Gwen Ystrat. This would date the poem to about 570 rather than the c. 600 favoured by Williams and others. He interprets the Gododdin as having fought the Brythons of Rheged
Rheged
Rheged is described in poetic sources as one of the kingdoms of the Hen Ogledd , the Brythonic-speaking region of what is now northern England and southern Scotland, during the Early Middle Ages...
and Alt Clut
Kingdom of Strathclyde
Strathclyde , originally Brythonic Ystrad Clud, was one of the early medieval kingdoms of the celtic people called the Britons in the Hen Ogledd, the Brythonic-speaking parts of what is now southern Scotland and northern England. The kingdom developed during the post-Roman period...
over a power struggle in Elmet
Elmet
Elmet was an independent Brythonic kingdom covering a broad area of what later became the West Riding of Yorkshire during the Early Middle Ages, between approximately the 5th century and early 7th century. Although its precise boundaries are unclear, it appears to have been bordered by the River...
, with Anglian allies on both sides, Rheged being in an alliance with Deira. He points out that according to the Historia Britonnum it was Rhun, son of Urien Rheged
Urien
Urien , often referred to as Urien Rheged, was a late 6th century king of Rheged, an early British kingdom of the Hen Ogledd . His power and his victories, including the battles of Gwen Ystrad and Alt Clut Ford, are celebrated in the praise poems to him by Taliesin, preserved in the Book of Taliesin...
who baptized the princess Aenfled of Deira, her father Edwin and 12,000 of his subjects in 626/7. Urien Rheged was thus the real victor of the battle. Mynyddog Mwynfawr was not a person's name but a personal description meaning 'mountain feast' or 'mountain chief'. Some aspects of Koch's view of the historical context have been criticised by both Oliver Padel
Oliver Padel
Oliver James Padel is an authority on the origin and meaning of place-names, currently Honorary Research Fellow in the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse, and Celtic in the University of Cambridge and Visiting Professor of Celtic at the University of the West of England.He was born in 1948...
and Tim Clarkson. Clarkson, for example, makes the point that the reference in Gweith Gwen Ystrat is to "the men of Catraeth"; it does not state that the battle was fought at Catraeth, and also that according to Bede it was Paulinus, not Rhun, who baptized the Deirans.
Editions and translations
The first known translation of Y Gododdin was by Evan Evans ("Ieuan Fardd") who printed ten stanzas with a Latin translation in his book Some Specimens of the Poetry of the Antient Welsh Bards published in 1764. The full text was printed for the first time by Owen JonesOwen Jones (antiquary)
Owen Jones was a Welsh antiquary.He was born on the Llanfihangel Glyn y Myfyr in Denbighshire. In 1760 he entered the service of a London firm of furriers, to whose business he ultimately succeeded....
in the Myvyrian Archaiology in 1801. English translations of the poem were published by William Probert in 1820 and by John Williams (Ab Ithel)
John Williams (archdeacon)
John Williams , was an antiquary and Anglican priest. Born in Llangynhafal, Denbighshire Wales in 1811, he graduated from Jesus College, Oxford in 1835 to become the Anglican curate of Llanfor, Merionethshire, where he married Elizabeth Lloyd Williams...
in 1852, followed by translations by William Forbes Skene
William Forbes Skene
William Forbes Skene , Scottish historian and antiquary, was the second son of Sir Walter Scott's friend, James Skene , of Rubislaw, near Aberdeen....
in his Four Ancient Books of Wales (1866) and by Thomas Stephens for the Cymmrodorion Society in 1888. Gwenogvryn Evans produced a facsimile copy of the Book of Aneirin in 1908 and an edition with a translation in 1922.
The first reliable edition was Canu Aneirin by Ifor Williams with notes in Welsh, published in 1938. New translations based on this work were published by Kenneth H. Jackson in 1969 and, with modernized Welsh text and glossary, by A.O.H. Jarman in 1988. A colour facsimile edition of the manuscript with an introduction by Daniel Huws was published by South Glamorgan County Council and the National Library of Wales
National Library of Wales
The National Library of Wales , Aberystwyth, is the national legal deposit library of Wales; one of the Welsh Government sponsored bodies.Welsh is its main medium of communication...
in 1989. John Koch's new edition, which aimed to recreate the original text, appeared in 1997.
There have also been a number of translations which aim to present the Gododdin as literature rather than as a subject of scholarly study. Examples are the translation by Joseph P. Clancy in The earliest Welsh poetry (1970) and Steve Short's 1994 translation.
Cultural influence
There are a number of references to Y Gododdin in later Medieval Welsh poetry. The well-known 12th-century poem Hirlas Owain by Owain CyfeiliogOwain Cyfeiliog
Owain ap Gruffydd was a prince of the southern part of Powys and a poet. He is usually known as Owain Cyfeiliog to distinguish him from other rulers named Owain, particularly his contemporary, Owain ap Gruffydd of Gwynedd, who is known as Owain Gwynedd.Owain was the son of Gruffydd ap Maredudd and...
, in which Owain praises his own war-band, likens them to the heroes of the Gododdin and uses Y Gododdin as a model. A slightly later poet, Dafydd Benfras
Dafydd Benfras
Dafydd Benfras was a Welsh language court poet regarded by Saunders Lewis and others as one of the greatest of the 'Poets of the Princes' ....
, in a eulogy addressed to Llywelyn the Great
Llywelyn the Great
Llywelyn the Great , full name Llywelyn ab Iorwerth, was a Prince of Gwynedd in north Wales and eventually de facto ruler over most of Wales...
, wishes to be inspired "to sing as Aneirin sang / The day he sang the Gododdin". After this period this poetry seems to have been forgotten in Wales for centuries until Evan Evans (Ieuan Fardd) discovered the manuscript in the late 18th century. From the early 19th century onwards there are many allusions in Welsh poetry.
In English, Y Gododdin was a major influence on the long poem
In Parenthesis
In Parenthesis
In Parenthesis is an epic poem of World War I by David Jones first published in England in 1937. Although Jones had been known solely as an engraver and painter prior to its publication, the poem won the Hawthornden Prize and the admiration of writers such as W.B. Yeats and T. S. Eliot...
(1937) by David Jones
David Jones (poet)
David Jones CH was both a painter and one of the first generation British modernist poets. As a painter he worked chiefly in watercolor, painting portraits and animal, landscape, legendary and religious subjects. He was also a wood-engraver and designer of inscriptions. As a writer he was...
, in which he reflects on the carnage he witnessed in the First World War. Jones put a quotation from the Gododdin at the beginning of each of the seven sections of In Parenthesis. Another poet writing in English, Richard Caddel
Richard Caddel
Richard Caddel was a poet, publisher and editor who was a key figure in the British Poetry Revival.-Biography:Caddel was born in Bedford and grew up in Gillingham, Kent. He studied music at the University of Newcastle, but changed to English after meeting poets Basil Bunting and Tom Pickard...
, used 'Y Gododdin' as the basis of his difficult but much-admired poem For the Fallen (1997), written in memory of his son Tom. Tony Conran's Poem 'Elegy for the Welsh Dead, in the Falklands Islands, 1982' opens with the line 'Men went to Catraeth', using the original poem to comment on a contemporary conflict.
The poem has also inspired a number of historical novels, including Men Went to Cattraeth (1969) by John James
John James (writer)
David John James, born 1 January 1923 in Aberavon, Wales, died 1 January 1993, was an author of historical novels.He studied philosophy at St David's University College, Lampeter, and also read and completed an MA in psychology at Selwyn College, Cambridge...
, The Shining Company (1990) by Rosemary Sutcliff
Rosemary Sutcliff
Rosemary Sutcliff CBE was a British novelist, and writer for children, best known as a writer of historical fiction and children's literature. Although she was primarily a children's author, the quality and depth of her writing also appeals to adults; Sutcliff herself once commented that she wrote...
and The Amber Treasure (2009) by Richard J Denning
Richard J Denning
Richard John Denning is an English author of historical novels. Currently he has published two novels: The Amber Treasure and Tomorrow's Guardian.-Biography:...
.
In 1989 the British industrial band Test Dept
Test Dept
Test Dept were an industrial music group from London, one of the most important and influential early industrial music acts. Their approach was marked by a strong commitment to radical socialist politics.-History:...
brought out an album entitled Gododdin, in which the words of the poem were set to music, part in the original and part in English translation. This was a collaboration with the Welsh avant-garde theatre company Brith Gof and was performed in Wales, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Scotland.
External links
- Colour facsimile of the Book of Aneirin from "Gathering the Jewels in Welsh and English translation by John Williams
- The Book of Aneurin, original text and English translation by Skene
- Edinburgh Castle, and comment on "Y Gododdin"