Encyclopaedia

GODODDIN, The Tribe

A British tribe known to the Romans as the Votadini, whose kingdom may have extended from the Firth of Forth to the Tyne. It was centred on Din Eidyn, a fortification which probably stood on the Rock of Edinburgh. It was captured by the Angles in AD 638 and as a result the kingdom came to an end. A battle fought by the Gododdin against the Angles at Catterick (AD c. 600), and disastrously lost, is commemorated in the long poem ‘Y Gododdin’, attributed to Aneirin. Cunedda is reputed to have migrated to north-west Wales from Manaw Gododdin.