Gododdin
The Gododdin (ɡoˈdoðin) were a British people of north-eastern Britain, primarily associated with the Lothians. The Gododdin were one of the tribes of Yr Hen Ogledd or the Old North; the Welsh poetic name for the Welsh-speaking kingdoms of northern Britain in the sub-Roman period.
The Gododdin were known to the Romans as the Votadini, and noted as living along the coast of the Firth of Forth. In the age of the Old North, these people are best known as the subject of the 6th-century Welsh poem Y Gododdin, which memorializes the Battle of Catraeth. The poem is attributed to Aneirin.
The name Gododdin is the Modern Welsh form, but the name appeared in Old Welsh as Guotodin and is reflected in the Latin name for the tribe, the Votadini recorded in Classical sources, such as in Greek texts from the Roman period.[1]
Kingdom
It is not known exactly how far the kingdom of the Gododdin extended, possibly from the Stirling area to the conjectural kingdom of Bryneich (Bernicia), and including what are now the Lothians and the Middle Shires. The Gododdin kingdom was bounded on the west by the British Kingdom of Strathclyde, and to the north by the Picts. It appears that those living around Clackmannanshire were known as the Manaw Gododdin.[2][3]
According to tradition, local kings of this period lived at both Traprain Law and Din Eidyn (probably Edinburgh's Castle Hill, and probably also at Din Baer (Dunbar).
Cunedda, the legendary founder of the Kingdom of Gwynedd in north Wales, is supposed to have been a Manaw Gododdin warlord who migrated southwest during the 5th century.[4] Some traditions say he was invited by the Romans to take charge of a lawless and vulnerable area.
Later history
In the 6th century, the Norht Sea coast of Britain was invaded by the Angles, who created a 'Kingdom of the Bernicians' (Beornice rice): the new English kingdom was known to the Welsh as Bryneich and may have taken that name from a predecessor British kingdom. The Angles continued to press north against the Gododdin and around 600 the Gododdin raised a force of about 300 men to assault the stronghold of Catraeth, perhaps Catterick in Yorkshire. It is this battle, and the disastrous destruction it wrought upon the Britons, which is memorialized in the poem Y Gododdin. It may be at this point in history that the English absorbed the lands up to the Firth of Forth.
In 638 the monks of Iona record the siege of Din Eidyn, but say no more than the two words obsessio eitin, without saying who besieged whom nor whether it was successful, though many a modern commentary has built long, detailed and entirely speculative histories based on these two enigmatic words.
Outside links
- William Forbes Skene (1869), The Gododdin Poems, Forgotten Books (published 2007), pp. 108, ISBN 1-60506-167-0, http://books.google.com/?id=bZ6ytxW0EwwC, retrieved 2008-08-09
References
- ↑ Claudius Ptolemaeus, "Geographia" (ca. 2nd century)
- ↑ Watson, 1926
- ↑ Jackson, 1969
- ↑ Fordun's Historia Britonum
- Ian Armit (1998). Scotland's Hidden History (Tempus [in association with Historic Scotland]) ISBN 0-7486-6067-4
- Kenneth H. Jackson (1969). The Gododdin: The Oldest Scottish poem (Edinburgh: University Press)
- Stuart Piggott (1982). Scotland Before History (Edinburgh: University Press) ISBN 0-85224-348-0
- W.J. Watson (1926, 1986). The History of the Celtic Place-Names of Scotland: being the Rhind lectures on archaeology (expanded) delivered in 1916. (Edinburgh, London: W. Blackwood & Sons, 1926; Edinburgh: Birlinn, 1986, reprint edition). ISBN 1-874744-06-8