Y Gododdin facts for kids
Quick facts for kids Y Gododdin |
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Page from the Book of Aneirin, showing the first part of the text added by Scribe B
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| Author(s) | anonymous |
| Ascribed to | Aneirin |
| Language | Old Welsh and Middle Welsh |
| Date | disputed (7th–11th century) |
| Manuscript(s) | Book of Aneirin (second half of the 13th century) |
| Genre | heroic and elegiac poetry |
| Setting | especially Mynyddog's feasts at Din Eidyn and the disastrous battle at Catraeth |
| Period covered | Hen Ogledd |
| Personages | include Mynyddog Mwynfawr |
Y Gododdin (Welsh: [əː ɡɔˈdɔðɪn]) 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. 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 King Arthur in passing, which, if not an interpolation, would be the earliest known reference to that character.
Contents
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.
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. 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 "Hwn yw e Gododin. Aneirin ae cant" ("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:
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Gododin, gomynnaf oth blegyt |
Gododdin, I make claim on thy behalf |
Mead is mentioned in many stanzas, sometimes with the suggestion that it is linked to their deaths. ..... 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".
However, D. Simon Evans has suggested that most, if not all, of the references which point to Christianity may be later additions.
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. 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.
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.
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.
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 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. According to John T. Koch's reconstruction, this stanza was deliberately added to the text in Strathclyde.
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 in 1764. The full text was printed for the first time by Owen Jones 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 T. 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 Cyfeiliog, 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 Y 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 theme and rhythm of Y Gododdin are also the undercurrent for Owen Sheers's Pink Mist (2012), an epic elegy to dead and wounded soldiers who served in Afghanistan; the poem, which drew on 30 interviews with returned servicemen, was originally commissioned for radio and then produced by the Old Vic theatre company as a stage play.
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 music band Test Dept. brought out an album titled 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.
