"The Other 300" Topic

"The Gododdin is a fascinating, but frustratingly elusive, piece of literature. Contained in an incomplete late 13th-century Welsh manuscript, yet attributed to the sixth-century north-British poet Aneirin, it is a collection of verses written in medieval Welsh concerning otherwise unrecorded people and events. It belongs, broadly speaking, to a genre of heroic elegy. The verses mourn named warriors who fell in battle and many of those warriors belonged to a people called the Gododdin. They were killed at a place named Catraeth. Unlike, say, the Iliad or Beowulf, the poetry does not tell a story and the style is dense. The meaning of much of the vocabulary must be inferred from etymology or context. Nonetheless, the poem has an undeniable power and its unflinching depiction of young men killing and dying on the battlefield has resonated through the centuries, not least with the Anglo-Welsh author David Jones, who drew on it to frame his experiences in the trenches during the First World War…"

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Armand

An interesting, concise introduction to the subject and the difficulty of looking to literature as a historical source.

A translation can be read here, indicating the fragmentary nature of the material.
BOOK OF ANEURIN I.
"This the Gododdin Aneurin composed it"
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Here's some of the 'Old Brittonic'

Trichan eurdorc o grwsiasant
In amwyn breithel by edriant
cad ry laddad wy o laddasant
Ar hyd orffen byd edmwg fyddant
Ac or sol o eithom o gadgarant
Tri nemwyn en gwr nid enghasant

Thanks.

Armand