Encyclopaedia

‘GODODDIN, Y’

The name given to a collection of poems or stanzas attributed to the late 6th-century poet Aneirin. Transmitted orally before eventually being written down, ‘Y Gododdin’ is preserved in two versions in the same 13th-century manuscript, The Book of Aneirin. Totalling 1480 lines, it is frequently treated as if it were a single poem dealing with a single event - a 6th-century military expedition by the warriors of the Gododdin (or Votadini) tribe from their lands in Lothian to engage with overwhelmingly superior numbers of Angles (see Anglo-Saxons) at Catraeth (identified with Catterick in Yorkshire). What proportion, if any, of the text was genuinely composed by Aneirin and is contemporary with the events it describes is hotly debated by linguists, students of literature and historians, and no immediate resolution of the problem seems at hand.
Many of the stanzas commemorate the heroic deaths of individual members of the war-band of the Gododdin, in what was a catastrophic defeat. Their generosity and civility at times of peace is praised, as well as their courage and ferocity on the field of battle. Some sections are devoted to lamenting the war-band as a whole, extolling their supreme loyalty to their lord. The language, metrics and literary devices used in ‘Y Gododdin’ suggest that its author was heir to a long tradition of praise poetry in the (earlier) Brythonic language. Its imagery, however, although vivid, is surprisingly limited and might reflect a process of editing as the text was transmitted.