The traditional understanding of the history of the British Venniconian Kingdoms of Donegal maintained that at some time in the late fifth century the sons of Niall of the Nine hostages, Caipre, Conaill, Enda and Eogan had launched an invasion into that territory from Tara, having defeated and conquered the indigenous people, or at least the rulers of those people. The four brothers were said to have divided out the territory of Donegal between them and each then established a kingdom which subsequently bore his name.  In one form or another these kingdoms were believed to have lasted for all of the early mediæval period.

Collectively these kingdoms were never linked but are known to us now as the “Northern Ui Neill”, who went on to conquer the rest of western and central Ulster. Two of the kingdoms, Cenel Conaill and Cenel nEogan, were said to be the most dominant and for about three centuries after their establishment, the kingship of the whole territory was shared between them.  In addition, when each of their kings was ascendant, they respectively claimed provenance of the prestigious kingship of Tara, which seems to have had some sort of overriding national influence. The ancient principality of Tír Eogain’s inheritance included the whole of the present counties of Tyrone and Londonderry, and the four baronies  West Inishowen, East Inishowen, Raphoe North and Raphoe South in County Donegal.

As we now know, however, that story is a later propagandistic fiction, rather than a summary of what actually happened.  Almost certainly it was given its classical form by and on behalf of the Cenel nEogan, almost certainly during the reign in the mid eighth century of their powerful and ambitious king, Aed Allan, who died in the year 743. Whatever his actual victories and political successes, they were underlined by a set of deliberately created fictional historical texts which reported to give him and his ancestors a more glorious past than they had actually enjoyed.  The same texts projected his dynasty back to the dawn of history and created a new political relationship with the neighbouring kingdoms.  Whatever the initial reaction to them, these political fictions were plausible enough to endure and have been ultimately accepted as history by most commentators over the past thirteen hundred years. Aed’s pseudo-historians were probably led by the Armagh Bishop Congus, who exploited the opportunity provided by the alliance with the King to advance the case for the supremacy of his own church.  Congus died in 750.

There appears to be no evidence that any of the rulers of the Venniconian Kingdoms of Donegal were related by blood to Niall of the Nine Hostages or to the Ui Neill.  On the other hand it seems that there is evidence that Cenél Conaill were a Cruthin people associated in some way with the Ui Echach Coba and other east Ulster peoples.  The Cenel nEogain, on the other hand, may well have had connections with the Dal Fiatach of maritime Down.  The remarkable fact in all this is that of the groups said to have belonged to the Northern Ui Neill, Cenel Cairpre may have been the only genuine decendants of Niall of the Nine Hostages to have invaded South Donegal in the sixth century.  And whatever evidence we have for the mid sixth century seems to show that it was the Cenel Conaill, rather than the Cenel nEogain, who were dominant among the Donegal Kingdoms at that time.

Conall Gulban , perhaps as Conall  Cernach of the Ulster Cycle, is the figure most closely related to the ancestry of the Cenél Conaill. Whether he existed or not as an actual person, his name demonstrates a powerful political reality of some sort, in that he was definitely  the ancestor of the fully historically attested Cruthin people of Ui Echach Coba of County Down, the Conaille Muirthemne of north Louth, the Sil nAedo of County Meath, and the Clann Cholmain of County Westmeath. The rise to power of what was said to have been Conall Gulban’s immediate descendants is equally something of a mystery. And among those descendants was our Colum Cille (Columba), the founder of the Monastery in Iona, where ironically in an Irish context the practice of keeping Annals and therefore  the study of history seems to have been promoted.

We know almost nothing genuinely historical about Colum Cille’s early clerical life prior to his departure for Iona.  On one occasion Adomnán writes that “this blessed boy’s foster-father a man of admirable life, the priest Cruithnechan” was apparently responsible for the child Colum Cille  In view of the identification above that the saint’s people, the Cenél Conaill, actually belonged  to the Cruthin, the priest’s  name, which is diminuative of that, may be very significant indeed.

                              Linguistic Connections between Ireland and Scotland

  Helen, Ruth and myself at Farset International Hostel

The purpose of this Ullans Project is to publish a selection of Old Testament translations, initially in two volumes, the Pentateuch and Books of Wisdom (Psalms, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs), the first time that such a large selection from the OT will have been made available in a consistent and authentic form determined by (i.e., not merely drawing on) an objective, academically rigorous study of traditional phonology and literary practice.

While there may be other Bible translation projects, this one can deliver most now and has the greatest potential to provide MAGUS with achievements within the lifetime of the current funding round. Limited-edition print runs of Genesis, Exodus and Song of Songs were well received in Ulster. The project is likely to have a longer-term impact in encouraging a literary renaissance and by permanently extending the linguistic domains in which Ulster Scots is used.

If the text of the remainder of the Old Testament can be edited to the same standard by the time of any further funding call, those books too will form the subject of an application.

Tonight , as President of the Ullans Academy, I had great pleasure in introducing the Gaelic Psalm Singers from the Lewes (Island of Lewis) to a programme at the Skainos Centre in East Belfast organised by the 4 Corners Festival. I had been invited by Linda Irvine of Turas and the event was also attended by our chairman Brian Ervine and members Helen Brooker, Ruairi O Bleine (Co chairman of the ULTACH Trust) and Sammy Douglas MLA, the latter two of whom also took part. I presented my copy of The Book of Common Order, commonly called John Knox’s Liturgy, translated into Gaelic Anno Domini 1567 by Mr John Carswell, Bishop of the Isles, edited by Thomas Mc Laughlin, LL.D., translator of the Book of the Dean of Lismore. This Book of Common Order was dedicated by John Carswell to every Christian throughout the whole earth and specially to the men of Alban (Scotland) and Eireand (Ireland). I explained its significance as being just as much part of the Common Identity of our Islands as the popular tales of the West Highlands, containing as they do more legendary material of Ulster than in Northern Ireland and indeed Ireland as a whole.

Gaelic Psalm Singers from the Hebrides

This is a form of singing now largely restricted to the Western Isles of Scotland. The precentor (literally ‘one who sings beforehand’) sings the line of a psalm, and the congregation sings the line back in a cappella style (without musical accompaniment). The precentor’s duty is to pronounce the words clearly and precisely, but also to give a hint of the melody line. The role of the precentor is very important, as traditionally he or she arrived at church not knowing which psalms were to be sung, and had to think of a melody ‘on the spot’ when the minister announced the psalms. The congregation’s singing is much more ornamental, with many passing and grace notes. The result is a distinctive and emotive swell of sound. This style of singing is also learned from an early age in the home, where it is an integral part of family worship.

This form of singing developed in Britain after the Reformation to help illiterate congregations to sing psalms without needing to read them. The practice died out in most of mainland Britain due to church reform, but survived in the Hebrides as many were unable to read their native Gaelic owing to the hostility of the educational authorities. Today, many Gaelic speakers can read the Bible in their own language and maintain psalm singing in the traditional style. However, there is concern that the tradition is in danger and psalmody classes have been arranged in Gaelic-medium schools.

The Reverend Dr. I. D. Campbell minister of the Free Church in Back, Isle of Lewis, explained the endurance of the Gaelic psalm singing tradition, ‘A lot of the new songs and hymns that are being used elsewhere just don’t have the depth of feeling and the ability to marry theology and personal experience together in the way the psalms do.’

Few who listen to Gaelic psalm singing can fail to be moved. Lesley Riddoch, who is originally from Belfast and is now Radio Scotland’s best-known presenter, declared that listening to the psalms made hairs stand up on the back of her neck and she found the music very moving. When she played a track from this choir’s CD on her show many listeners were amazed – one caller said ‘I did not know that Scottish men could sing with such emotion.’

Professor Willie Ruff, of the University of Yale believes the Hebridean style heavily influenced the black gospel tradition of ‘lining out’ psalms, as Scottish Gaelic speakers and black slaves shared the same churches for many years in the southern United States. Willie played a CD track to an old Black precentor who burst into tears, recognising the similarities immediately. There are also striking similarities to be found in the singing styles of the Coptic Church of Ethiopia , with its association with Bangor in North Down. I spoke of Columba of Iona, of Comgall and Molua of Bangor, and their churches throughout  the Highlands and Islands. Rev Brian Gilmore  of the East Belfast Mission gave the initial Welcome and Alasdair Morrison Director of CeangalG also spoke. They are both actually of the same family as is our own Van Morrison who grew up a few streets away from Skainos and whose own music resonates with the Gaelic Psalm singing itself.

The Free Church of Scotland

Psalm singing is popular with many Presbyterian churches, and in Northern Ireland today, the Reformed Presbyterian Church maintains the tradition of unaccompanied psalm singing. Gaelic psalm singing is a distinctive feature of the Free Church of Scotland, the strongest Presbyterian Church in the Highlands. This Church was borne out of religious controversies during the mid-1800s when Highland lairds were clearing the lands of their crofters (tenant farmers) to make room for sheep runs and hunting grounds. The ministers of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland were often chosen by the landlords and were obedient to them, telling their congregations it was God’s will they were to leave their traditional homes and travel as far as Canada and Australia.

As poor tenant farmers turned to their religion for comfort, evangelists who disagreed with the Church of Scotland’s doctrine were outraged by the landlords’ influence over ministers. One third of the Church of Scotland’s ministers and 60 per cent of the laity seceded to form the Free Church. They endured many years of hardship, having to meet in barns and boats, for example, but eventually they triumphed over the established Presbyterian church in the Highlands. In the Lowlands many Free Churches returned to the Church of Scotland after it was released from Government control in 1874, but many Highland Churches remain ‘Free’. Many Highland Presbyterians came to believe that the distinctive Gaelic church was a bulwark against the irreligious licentiousness of the Lowlands, and the Free Church Presbytery of Lewis can insist on a commitment to learn Gaelic on the part of ministers who do not know the language. Many posts for ministers on Lewis are advertised as ‘Gaelic essential’.

This group of psalm singers have released three CDs, the profits of which go to the Bethesda Care Home and Hospice in Stornoway, Isle of Lewis. You can read more about the group’s work at www.gaelicpsalmsinging.com

Tonight I attended a Burns Night Supper with my friends Kathleen and Edmund Irvine at their home on the occasion of Maria moving to England. It was attended by the wider family circle and friends. I presented a copy of the Bible in Plain Scots to Herbie Irvine from Toronto to bring back to Canada, which has received so many emigrants from Ulster over the years. Scots was the vernacular of our native village of Conlig and the surrounding area of North Down and Ards (Ancient Dal Fiatach) when we were young. Herbie looked after me when I brought “The Cruthin” to Canada in 1974 and gained publicity in the media for me there. He and his late wife Joyce were among my oldest friends.

During that time I thought of the British Empire Loyalists when I stood at the memorial in Philadelphia to the unknown British Soldier of the Revolutionary War, which I was shown by my friend Paul Loane. For as many as one in three Americans had remained Loyal to George III. But in 1783 Britain finally signed a treaty with its rebellious American colonists, abandoning tens of thousands of people who were still deeply attached to the British crown. To the 12,000 refugees who had fled from the Rebels to make a new home in the swamps of Florida it was a disaster. As it was, too, for the 20,000 Black slaves who had rebelled against their masters to fight for the King.

From the Southern ports of Charleston and Savannah alone, fearing dreadful reprisals, more than 20,000 loyalists, slaves and soldiers were evacuated by the Royal Navy. In New York City, originally Iroquois Mohawk territory and the heartland of Loyalism, 30,000 people left for new lives in the Maritimes and Nova Scotia, while 2,500 travelled to Quebec and the Bahamas. This was the largest civilian evacuation in American history. There they created their “own imperial answer to the United States” and a “Loyal America in contrast to the republican America they had fled”. It became known as Canada, Kannata in Iroquois  meaning Village or Settlement.

In 1872 Lord Dufferin of Clandeboye became the third Governor General of Canada, bolstering imperial ties in the early years of the Dominion, and in 1884 he reached the pinnacle of his diplomatic career as eighth Viceroy of India. His statue, with a Canadian Trapper on one side and an Indian Sepoy on the other, sits in the grounds of the City Hall Belfast. I used to look out at it from my office as Lord Mayor of Belfast and latterly from the High Sheriff’s office. My friend, Lady Lindy Guinness, the last Marchioness of Dufferin and Ava, is very proud of her ancestry from him. I have visited her often to speak of matters historical, and it was at her home many years ago I first met Van Morrison, Robert Kee and her then Chef Stephen Jeffers… She is descended, of course, from the ancient Cruthin kings and queens of Iveagh and the ancient British kings and queens of Albion, that country of perfidious renown.

In Africa, Loyalist exiles also established what was meant to be a utopian settlement, built by 1,000 Black slaves who had escaped to Canada, but who wished to built a new life in the land of their ancestors. Partly organised and funded by Abolitionists, the new settlement of Freetown, however, eventually became yet another British Colony, Sierra Leone, run by white men for their own benefit, its history stained by endless riots and rebellions. Yet Freetown’s story was more than a chronicle of broken promises and false hopes. For the people who settled there achieved a greater degree of freedom than they could have had or probably still have in the United States of America. In a sense the American Loyalists were victors after all.

Tonight, as Patron of the Dalaradia Historical group , I attended, with my colleague in Pretani Associates, Helen Brooker, the Second Annual Dalaradia Burns Supper at Whiteabbey Masonic Centre, Newtownabbey..The Dalaradia Burns Supper is unique in that it focuses on the local Dalaradian poet James Orr of Ballycarry and his work.

James Orr (1770 – 24 April 1816) was a poet or rhyming weaver from Ulster also known as the Bard of Ballycarry, who wrote in English and Ullans or Ulster Scots. He was the foremost of the Ulster Weaver Poets, and was writing contemporaneously with Robert Burns. According to that other great Ulster poet, John Hewitt, he produced some material that was better than Burns, including his masterpiece ” The Irish Cottier’s Death and Burial“.

Orr joined the patriotic Society of United Irishmen, or Libertymen as they knew themselves, in 1791 and took part in the Presbyterian Irish Rebellion of 1798. The United Army of Ulster, of which he was a part, was defeated at the Battle of Antrim and after a time hiding from the authorities, he fled to America. He remained there for a short time, earning a living by working for a newspaper, but returned to Ballycarry in 1802 under an amnesty. He died in Ballycarry in 1816 at the age of 46.

An imposing monument to Orr, erected by local Freemasons in 1831, is sited in the Templecorran cemetery near Ballycarry, in memory of the great Mason and Ulster Weaver Poet. Orr had been a charter member of the Lodge, so that it was appropriate that the Dalaradia Burns Supper is held in Whiteabbey Masonic Centre.

In 1992, I published, under my imprint, Pretani Press, the three-volume Folk Poets of Ulster series , thus initiating the modern Ulster-Scots revival in Northern Ireland. The three titles in the series were: The Country Rhymes of James Orr, the Bard of Ballycarry 1770-1816; The Country Rhymes of Hugh Porter, the Bard of Moneyslane c. 1780; and, The Country Rhymes of Samuel Thomson, the Bard of Carncranny 1766-1816, all published by Pretani Press, Bangor, 1992. Series editors: J.R.R. Adams and P.S. Robinson.

I had also suggested the new name “Ullans” for an Ulster-Scots Academy which I proposed in June 1992, and formally established in Northern Ireland following a meeting in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, between Professor Robert Gregg and myself on Thursday, 23^rd July that year. The Ullans Academy was to be based on the Frisian Academy of Sciences in the Netherlands, which I had visited in 1978, and again in 1980, with a group of community activists from Northern Ireland, including Andy Tyrie, then Chairman of the Ulster Defence Association, and now Patron of the Ulster-Scots (Ullans) Academy. The essential characteristic of the Frisian Academy was its division into three departments: Linguistics and Literature, History and Culture, and Social Sciences. This tripartite division was to become our model.

The new Ullans Academy was intended to fulfil a need for the regulation and standardisation of the language for modern usage. These standards were to have been initiated on behalf of the Ulster-Scots community, Protestant and Roman Catholic, nationalist and unionist, and would be academically sound. What we didn’t need was the development of an artificial dialect which excluded and alienated traditional speakers . It seemed clear to me that it was fundamentally important to establish a standard version of the language, with agreed spelling, while at the same time maintaining the rich culture of local variants.

Therefore in 1995, I published for the Ulster-Scots Language Society, of which I was founding chairman,  a regional dictionary by James Fenton, The Hamely Tongue: A Personal Record of Ulster-Scots in County Antrim , under the imprint of the Ulster-Scots Academic Press, from my premises in 17 Main Street, Conlig, County Down. This was the most important record yet produced of current Ulster-Scots speech and is now, under the imprint of the Ullans Press, in its third edition. It was distributed by my friend David Adamson, who did so without remuneration.

Like the Frisian Academy on which it was based, the Ulster-Scots or Ullans Academy’s research was intended to extend beyond language and literature to historical, cultural and philosophical themes such as the life and works of Frances Hutcheson and C.S. Lewis, and to studies of the history of Ulidia in general, especially Dalriada, Dalaradia, Dal Fiatach, Manapia, Iveagh, Oriel, Venniconia, Galloway and Carrick, not forgetting Ellan Vannin, the Isle of Man.

The Chairman opened tonight’s event by outlining the important work of the group over the past year. The format of a traditional Burns Supper was then followed including Burns’ “Address to a Haggis“. I myself recited Orr’s brilliant political poem “To The Potatoe“..and later his “Elegy on the Death of Mr Robert Burns, the Ayrshire Poet“, which is unrivalled in its pathos. Helen Brooker, Community Distribution Director for the Ullans Academy then presented copies of The Bible in Plain Scots to the guests of the evening…Altogether another great success for The Dalaradia group.

# C       We continued or trip next day by hiring a minibus and driver who proved to have great local knowledge and was  most helpful , our first stop off was at Dumbarton Castle , centre of the ancient Kingdom of Strathclyde whose history and culture has direct links to Dalaradia and the ancient Ulster Kings , and ties in to the field trips we carried out previously to Fort Dunaad and Crewe Hill . There is also a direct link to St Patrick , who may have originated in this area , Patrick wrote a letter to Coroticus , King of Dumbarton and Strathclyde reprimanding him for trading in slaves whilst proclaiming to be of the Christian Faith . Patricks first convert in Ulster was of course , Bronagh , daughter of the Dalaradian Chieftain , Milchu .

At least as far back as the Iron Age, Dumbarton Rock, which the Dalaradia Historical group are visiting today with Pretani Associates, has been the site of a strategically important settlement. Its early residents were known to have traded with the Romans. The presence of a settlement is first recorded in a letter Saint Patrick wrote to King Ceretic of Alt Clut in the late 5th century. Ford has proposed that Dumbarton was the Cair Brithon (“Fort of the Britons”) listed by Nennius among the 28 cities of Sub-Roman Britain. From the fifth century until the ninth, the castle was the centre of the independent British Kingdom of Strathclyde. Alt Clut or Alcluith (Gaelic: Alt Chluaidh, lit. “Rock of the Clyde”), the Brittonic name for Dumbarton Rock, became a metonym for the kingdom. The king of the Britons of Dumbarton in about AD 570 was Riderch Hael, who features in Welsh and Latin works.

During his reign Merlin was said to have stayed at Alt Clut. The medieval Scalacronica of Sir Thomas Grey records the legend that “Arthur left Hoël of Little Britain his nephew sick at Alcluit in Scotland.”^] Hoël made a full recovery, but was besieged in the castle by the Scots and Picts (Caledonian Pretani). The story first appeared in Geoffrey of Monmouth‘s Historia Regum Britanniae. Amongst lists of three things, in the triads of the Red Book of Hergest, the third “Unrestrained Ravaging” was Aeddan Fradog (the Wily, perhaps Áedán mac Gabráin), coming to the court of Rhydderch the Generous at Alclud, who left neither food nor drink nor beast alive. This battle also appears in stories of Myrddin Wyllt, the Merlin of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Vita Merlini, perhaps conflated with the battle of Arfderydd, located as Arthuret by some authors.

In 756, the first (and second) losses of Dumbarton Rock were recorded. A joint force of Picts and Northumbrians captured Alcluith after a siege, only to lose it again a few days later. By 870, Dumbarton Rock was home to a tightly packed Brittonic settlement, which served as a fortress and as the capital of Alt Clut. The Vikings laid siege to Dumbarton for four months, eventually defeating the inhabitants when they cut off their water supply. The Norse king Olaf returned to the Viking city of Dublin in 871, with two hundred ships full of slaves and looted treasures. Olaf came to an agreement with Constantine I of Scotland, and Artgal of Alt Clut. Strathclyde’s independence may have come to an end with the death of Owen the Bald, when the dynasty of Kenneth mac Alpin began to rule the region.

Y Gododdin  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 c. AD 600. It is traditionally ascribed to the bard Aneirin and survives only in one manuscript, the Book of Aneirin. Yet it can justly be described as the oldest “Scottish” poem, although many of the descendants of its participants now live in Ulster, the inhabitants of the Middle Kingdoms who came to Ulster in the Seventeenth century.

The Book of Aneirin manuscript is from the later 13th century, but Y Gododdin has been dated to anywhere 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 been written 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 (Old North). 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 Arthur, which, if not an interpolation, would be the earliest known reference to that character, as outside this poem, Welsh Arthurian legend is known to develope only from c. the early 12th century.

The verses 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, others eulogize individual heroes. They tell how the ruler of the Gododdin, Mynyddog Mwynfawr, gathered warriors from several Britonnic kingdoms and provided them with a year’s feasting and drinking mead in his halls at Din Eidyn, perhaps on Arthur’s Seat or the Castle Rock, 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 there is some irregularity 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”).

Arthur’s Seat, Edinburgh

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; in others there were 363 warriors and three survivors, in addition to the poet, who as a bard would have almost certainly not have been counted as one of the warriors. The names of about eighty 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”). The first stanza appears to be a reciter’s prologue, composed after the death of Aneirin:

Gododdin, gomynaf oth blegyt
yg gwyd cant en aryal en emwyt: …
Er pan want maws mur trin,
er pan aeth daear ar Aneirin,
nu neut ysgaras nat a Gododin.

Gododdin, I make claim on thy behalf
In the presence of the throng boldly in the court: …
Since the gentle one, the wall of battle, was slain,
Since the earth covered Aneirin,
Poetry is now parted from the Gododdin.

The second stanza praises an individual hero:

In might a man, a youth in years,
Of boisterous valour,
Swift long-maned steeds
Under the thigh of a handsome youth …
Quicker to a field of blood
Than to a wedding
Quicker to the ravens’ feast
Than to a burial,
A beloved friend was Ywain,
It is wrong that he is beneath a cairn.
It is a sad wonder to me in what land
Marro’s only son was slain.

Other stanzas praise the entire host, for example number 13:

Men went to Catraeth at morn
Their high spirits lessened their life-span
They drank mead, gold and sweet, ensnaring;
For a year the minstrels were merry.
Red their swords, let the blades remain
Uncleansed, white shields and four-sided spearheads,
Before Mynyddog Mwynfawr’s men.

Mead is mentioned in many stanzas, sometimes with the suggestion that it is linked to their deaths. This led some 19th-century editors to assume that the warriors went into battle drunk, however Williams explained that “mead” here stood for everything the warriors received from their lord. 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”. Several of these features can be seen in stanza 33:

Men went to Catraeth with a war-cry,
Speedy steeds and dark armour and shields,
Spear-shafts held high and spear-points sharp-edged,
And glittering coats-of-mail and swords,
He led the way, he thrust through armies,
Five companies fell before his blades.
Rhufawn His gave gold to the altar,
And a rich reward to the minstrel.”

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. In stanza 99, the poet praises one of the warriors, Gwawrddur:

He fed black ravens on the rampart of a fortress
Though he was no Arthur
Among the powerful ones in battle
In the front rank, Gwawrddur was a palisade^[

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. Altogether they were the Gwyr y Gogledd, the Men from the North. 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. One of these is a stanza which celebrates the victory of the Britons of the Kingdom of Strathclyde under Eugein I, here described as “the grandson of Neithon”, over Domnall Brecc (“Dyfnwal Frych” in Welsh), king of Dál Riata, at the Battle of Strathcarron in 642. Domnall had fought alongside the Cruthin King Congal Claen at Moira in 637.

I saw an array that came from Kintyre
who brought themselves as a sacrifice to a holocaust.
I saw a second [array] who had come down from their settlement,
who had been roused by the grandson of Neithon.
I saw mighty men who came with dawn.
And it was Domnall Brecc’s head that the ravens gnawed.”

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 Jackson suggested that it had probably been inserted on a blank space at the top of the first page of the original manuscript. According to Koch’s reconstruction, this stanza was deliberately added to the text in Strathclyde.

The date of Y Gododdin has been the subject of debate among scholars since the early 19th century. If the poem was composed soon after the battle, it must predate 638, when the fall of Din Eidyn was recorded in the reign of Oswy king of Bernicia, an event which is thought to have meant the collapse of the kingdom of the Gododdin. If it is a later composition, the latest date which could be ascribed to it is determined by the orthography of the second part of Scribe B’s text. This is usually considered to be that of the 9th or 10th centuries, although some scholars consider that it could be from the 11th century.

Most of the debate about the date of the poem has employed linguistic arguments. It is believed that around the time of the battle, the Brittonic language was transitioning into its daughter languages: the primitive form of Welsh in Wales, of Cornish and Breton in southwestern Britain and Brittany, and Cumbric in northern Britain. Kenneth Jackson concludes that the majority of the changes that transformed British into Primitive Welsh belong to the period from the middle of the 5th to the end of the 6th century.^] This involved syncope and the loss of final syllables. If the poem dates to this time, it would have been written in an early form of Cumbric, the usual name for the Brittonic speech of the Hen Ogledd. Jackson suggested the name “Primitive Cumbric” for the dialect spoken at the time.

Sweetser gives the example of the name Cynfelyn found in the Gododdin; in Brittonic this would have been Cunobelinos. The middle unstressed o and the final unstressed os have been lost. Ifor Williams, whose 1938 text laid the foundations for modern scholarly study of the poetry, considered that part of it could be regarded as being of likely late 6th-century origin. This would have been orally transmitted for a period before being written down. Dillon cast doubt on the date of composition, arguing that it is unlikely that by the end of the 6th century Primitive Welsh would have developed into a language “not notably earlier than that of the ninth century”. He suggests that the poetry may have been composed in the 9th century on traditional themes and attributed to Aneirin. Jackson however considers that there is “no real substance” in these arguments, and points out that the poetry would have been transmitted orally for a long period before being written down, and would have been modernised by reciters, and that there is in any case nothing in the language used which would rule out a date around 600. Koch suggests a rather earlier date, about 570, and also suggests that the poem may have existed in written form by the 7th century, much earlier than usually thought. Koch, reviewing the arguments about the date of the poetry in 1997, states:

Today, the possibility of an outright forgery – which would amount to the anachronistic imposition of a modern literary concept onto early Welsh tradition – is no longer in serious contention. Rather, the narrowing spectrum of alternatives ranges from a Gododdin corpus which is mostly a literary creation of mediaeval Wales based on a fairly slender thread of traditions from the old Brittonic North to a corpus which is in large part recoverable as a text actually composed in that earlier time and place.”

Koch himself believes that a considerable part of the poem can be dated to the 6th century. Greene in 1971 considered that the language of the poem was 9th century rather than 6th century, and Isaac, writing in 1999, stated that the linguistic evidence did not necessitate dating the poem as a whole before the 9th or 10th century.

The other approach to dating the poetry has been to look at it from a historical point of view. Charles-Edwards writing in 1978 concluded that:

The historical arguments, therefore, suggest that the poem is the authentic work of Aneirin; that we can establish the essential nature of the poem from the two surviving versions; but that we cannot, except in favourable circumstances, establish the wording of the original.

Dumville, commenting on these attempts to establish the historicity of the poem in 1988, said, “The case for authenticity, whatever exactly we mean by that, is not proven; but that does not mean that it cannot be.” The fact that the great majority of the warriors mentioned in the poem are not known from other sources has been put forward by several authors as an argument against the idea that the poem could be a later composition. The poems which are known to be later “forgeries” have clearly been written for a purpose, for example to strengthen the claims of a particular dynasty. The men commemorated in Y Gododdin do not appear in the pedigrees of any Welsh dynasty. Breeze comments, “it is difficult to see why a later poet should take the trouble to commemorate men who,but for the poem, would be forgotten”.

The poem is set in the area which is now southern Scotland and north-east England. Around the year 600 this area included a number of Brittonic kingdoms. Apart from the Gododdin, the kingdom of Alt Clut occupied the Strathclyde area and Rheged covered parts of Galloway, Lancashire and Cumbria. Further south lay the kingdom of Elmet in the Leeds area. These areas made up what was later known in Welsh as Yr Hen Ogledd (The Old North). The Gododdin, known as the Votadini in the Romano-British period, occupied a territory from the area around the head of the Firth of Forth as far south as the River Wear. In modern terms their lands included much of Clackmannanshire and the Lothian and Borders regions. Their capital at this period may have been called Din Eidyn, now known as Edinburgh. By this time the area that later became Northumbria had been invaded and increasingly occupied by the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of Deira and Bernicia.

In the Historia Brittonum, attributed to Nennius, there is a reference to several poets in this area during the 6th century. Having mentioned Ida of Bernicia, the founder of the Northumbrian royal line who ruled between 547 and 559, the Historia goes on to say:

At that time Talhaearn the Father of the Muse was famous in poetry, and Neirin, Taliesin, Blwchfardd and Cian who is called Gweinthgwawd, at one and the same time were renowned in British poetry.”

Nothing has been preserved of the work of Talhaearn, Blwchfardd and Cian, but poems attributed to Taliesin were published by Ifor Williams in Canu Taliesin and were considered by him to be comparable in antiquity to the Gododdin. This poetry praises Urien of Rheged and his son Owain, and refers to Urien as lord of Catraeth.

Interpretation

Y Gododdin is not a narrative poem but a series of elegies for heroes who died in a battle whose history would have been familiar to the original listeners. The context of the poem has to be worked out from the text itself. There have been various interpretations of the events recorded in the poem. The 19th-century Welsh scholar Thomas Stephens identified the Gododdin with the Votadini and Catraeth as Catterick in North Yorkshire. He linked the poem to the Battle of Degsastan in c. 603 between King Æthelfrith of Bernicia and the Gaels under Áedán mac Gabráin, king of Dál Riada. Gwenogvryn Evans in his 1922 edition and translation of the Book of Aneirin claimed that the poem referred to a battle around the Menai Strait in 1098, emending the text to fit the theory. The generally accepted interpretation for the Battle of Catraeth is that put forward by Ifor Williams in his Canu Aneirin first published in 1938. Williams interpreted mynydawc mwynvawr in the text to refer to a person, Mynyddog Mwynfawr in modern Welsh. Mynyddog, in his version, was the king of the Gododdin, with his chief seat at Din Eidyn (modern Edinburgh). Around the year 600 Mynyddog gathered about 300 selected warriors, some from as far afield as Gwynedd. He feasted them at Din Eidyn for a year, then launched an attack on Catraeth, which Williams agrees with Stephens in identifying as Catterick, which was in Anglo-Saxon hands. They were opposed by a larger army from the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of Deira and Bernicia.

The battle at Catraeth has been seen as an attempt to resist the advance of the Angles, who had probably by then occupied the former Votadini lands of Bryneich in modern north-eastern England and made it their kingdom of Bernicia. At some time after the battle, the Angles absorbed the Gododdin kingdom, possibly after the fall of their capital Din Eidyn in 638, and incorporated it into the kingdom of Northumbria.

This interpretation has been accepted by most modern scholars. Jackson accepts the interpretation but suggests that a force of 300 men would be much too small to undertake the task demanded of them. He considers that the 300 mounted warriors would have been accompanied by a larger number of foot soldiers, not considered worthy of mention in the poem. Jarman also follows Williams’ interpretation. Jackson suggested that after the fall of the kingdom of Gododdin, in or about 638, the poem was preserved in Strathclyde, which maintained its independence for several centuries. He considers that it was first written down in Strathclyde after a period of oral transmission, and may have reached Wales in manuscript form between the end of the 8th and the end of the 9th century.^[51] There would be particular interest in matters relating to the Gododdin in Gwynedd, since the founding myth of the kingdom involved the coming of Cunedda Wledig from Manaw Gododdin.

Alternative interpretation

In 1997, the Irish-American Celticist John Koch published a new study of Y Gododdin which involved an attempt to reconstruct the original poetry written in what Koch terms “Archaic Neo-Brittonic” and included a new and very different interpretation of the background of the poetry. He draws attention to a poem in Canu Taliesin entitled Gweith Gwen Ystrat (The Battle of Gwen Ystrat):

The men of Catraeth arise with the day
around a battle-victorious, cattle-rich sovereign
this is Uryen by name, the most senior leader.”

There is also a reference to Catraeth in the slightly later poem Moliant Cadwallon, a panegyric addressed to Cadwallon ap Cadfan of Gwynedd, thought to have been composed in about 633.Two lines in this poem are translated by Koch as “fierce Gwallawc wrought the great and renowned mortality at Catraeth”. He identifies Gwallawc as the “Guallauc” who was one of the kings who fought against Bernicia in alliance with Urien. Koch draws attention to the mention of meibion Godebawc (the sons of Godebog) as an enemy in stanza 15 of the Gododdin and points out that according to old Welsh genealogies Urien and other Brittonic kings were descendants of “Coïl Hen Guotepauc”. He considers that, in view of the references in the three poems, there is a case for identifying the attack on Catraeth recorded in Y Gododdin with the Battle of Gwen Ystrat. This would date the poem to about 570 rather than the c. 600 favoured by Williams and others. He interprets the Gododdin as having fought the Britons of Rheged and Alt Clut over a power struggle in Elmet, with Anglian allies on both sides, Rheged being in an alliance with Deira. He points out that according to the Historia Britonnum it was Rhun, son of Urien Rheged who baptized the princess Eanflæd of Deira, her father Edwin and 12,000 of his subjects in 626/7. Urien Rheged was thus the real victor of the battle. Mynyddog Mwynfawr was not a person’s name but a personal description meaning ‘mountain feast’ or ‘mountain chief’. Some aspects of Koch’s view of the historical context have been criticised by both Oliver Padel and Tim Clarkson. Clarkson, for example, makes the point that the reference in Gweith Gwen Ystrat is to “the men of Catraeth”; it does not state that the battle was fought at Catraeth, and also that according to Bede it was Paulinus, not Rhun, who baptized the Deirans.