Y Gododdin () is a medieval Welsh poem consisting of a series of elegies to the men of the Brittonic 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 in about AD 600. It is traditionally ascribed to the bard Aneirin and survives only in one manuscript, the "Book of Aneirin".
The Book of Aneirin manuscript is from the later 13th century, but Y Gododdin has been dated to between the 7th and the early 11th centuries. The text is partly written in Middle Welsh orthography and partly in Old Welsh. The early date would place its oral composition soon after the battle, presumably in the Hen Ogledd ("Old North"); as such it would have originated in the Cumbric dialect of Common Brittonic.Elliott (2005), p. 583.Jackson (1969). Others consider it the work of a poet from Wales in the 9th, 10th, or 11th century. Even a 9th-century date would make it one of the oldest surviving Welsh works of poetry.
The Gododdin, known in Roman times as the Votadini, held territories in what is now southeast Scotland and Northumberland, part of the Hen Ogledd. 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 manuscript contains several stanzas which have no connection with the Gododdin and are considered to be interpolations. One stanza in particular has received attention because it mentions a hero called Arthur in passing, which, if not an interpolation, might be the earliest known reference to King Arthur.
Book of Aneirin
Manuscript Only one early manuscript of Y Gododdin is known, the Book of 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.Jarman (1998), p.xiv.
Differences exist within the material added by Scribe B. The first 23 stanzas of the B material show signs of partial modernisation of the orthography, while the remainder shows 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.Koch (1997), p. lxvi. If this is correct, the material in the Book of Aneirin is from three sources.
Poem
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, and others eulogize individual heroes. They tell how the ruler of the Gododdin, Mynyddog Mwynfawr, gathered warriors from several Brittonic 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 some irregularity occurs, 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 ap Clydno, survived; others have 363 warriors and three survivors, in addition to the poet, who as a bard, almost certainly would not have been counted as one of the warriors. The names of about 80 warriors are given in the poem.
The Book of Aneirin begins with the introduction "" ("This is the Gododdin; Aneirin sang it"). A stanza, a version of which is found in both texts, but which forms the beginning of the B text, appears to be a reciter's prologue:Jarman (1998), p. 2.
Text A begins with an awdl in praise of an individual hero:
Other stanzas praise the entire host, for example number 13:Clancy (1970), p. 36.
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.Williams (1938), pp. xlviii-xlvix. 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).Williams (1938), pp. lxii–lxiii. 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:Clancy (1970), p. 44.
However, D. Simon Evans has suggested that most, if not all, of the references which point to Christianity may be later additions.Evans (1977), p. 44.
Many personal names are given, but only two are recorded in other sources. One of the warriors was Cynon ap Clydno, whom Williams identifies with the Cynon ap Clydno Eiddin who is mentioned in old pedigrees.Williams, p. 175. 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 King Arthur, as a paragon of bravery. In stanza 99, the poet praises one of the warriors, Gwawrddur:Jarman (1998), p. 64.
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 Brittonic Kingdom of Strathclyde) – this warrior must have come from Pictland. Others came from Gwynedd in north Wales.Jackson (1969), pp. 5–7.
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 Strathclyde 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:Koch (1997), p. 27.
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.Jarman (1998), pp. lxi–lxiii. 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 Kenneth H. Jackson has suggested that it had probably been inserted on a blank space at the top of the first page of the original manuscript.Jackson (1969), p. 48. According to John T. Koch's reconstruction, this stanza was deliberately added to the text in Strathclyde.
Analysis and interpretation
Date The date of Y Gododdin has been the subject of debate among scholars since the early 19th century.Turner (1803), pp. iii–iv. 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.Jackson (1969), p. 10. 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 9th or 10th centuries, although some scholars consider that it could be from the 11th century.Evans (1982), p. 17.
Most of the debate about the date of the poem has employed linguistic arguments, mostly concerning rhyme (since more is known about early Welsh phonology than other aspects of the language, like syntax). 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.Davies (2005), p. 232. Kenneth H. Jackson concluded 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.Jackson (1953), pp 3–11; 690. This involved syncope and the loss of final syllables. If the poem dates to this time, it would have originated in an early form of Cumbric, the usual name for the Brittonic speech of the Hen Ogledd. Jackson suggested the name "Primitive Cumbric" for the dialect spoken at the time.Jackson (1969), pp. 86, 90.
Sweetser gives the example of the name Cynfelyn found in Y Gododdin; in British this would have been Cunobelinos. The middle unstressed o and the final unstressed os have been lost.Sweetser (1988), p. 140. 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.Williams (1938), pp. xc–xciii. 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.Dillon (1973), pp. 267–8. 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.Jackson (1969), pp. 88–91. 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 (1997), pp. l–li.