Читать книгу The Element Encyclopedia of the Celts - Rodney Castleden - Страница 159

A series of elegies in 103 stanzas about a disastrous expedition of the bodyguard of Mynydd Mwynfawr, King of Din Eidyn (Edinburgh). The expedition was ranged against the Anglians at Catraeth (probably Catterick).

The Gododdin has survived in a single manuscript called The Book of Aneirin. We are told simply, “This is The Gododdin. Aneirin composed it.” The subject matter and the detail tell us that this is a genuine sixth-century Celtic poem. The bard Aneirin lived in the second half of the sixth century. The Gododdin of the title are the men of the Votadini tribe, but the warriors on this expedition include handpicked men from kingdoms all over Britain—Elmet, Clyde, Gwynedd, and Dumnonia—which tells us that communications among the British kingdoms must have been effective and that the Britons were ready to help one another against the Anglo-Saxons (See Alduith).

The Gododdin chief feasted the men for a year at Din Eidyn before sending them to fight the Lloegrwys (the men of England) or the Dewr a Brynaich (the men of Deira and Byrnaich). Aneirin comments grimly, “They paid for that feast of mead with their lives.” The British attack on Catraeth was probably pre-emptive, an attempt to annihilate the embryonic Anglian community while it was still relatively small and powerless; the crushing defeat would have been all the more traumatic because it was unexpected.

One line in The Gododdin jumps off the page. A warrior is praised for his fighting prowess, “though he was no Arthur.”