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Y Gododdin (pronounced ə ɡɔˈdɔðɪn) is a medieval Welsh poem consisting of a series of elegies to the men of the Britonnic 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. There is general agreement among scholars that the battle commemorated would have happened around the year 600, but there is debate about the date of the poetry. Some scholars consider that it was composed in what is now southern Scotland soon after the battle, while others believe that it originated in Wales in the 9th or the 10th century. If it is 9th-century, it is one of the earliest poems written in a form of Welsh, and the oldest surviving poem from what is now Scotland. It is traditionally ascribed to the bard Aneirin.
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 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 considered to be Catterick, North Yorkshire. After several days of fighting against overwhelming odds, only one of the warriors returned alive. In another version 363 warriors went to Catraeth and three returned. 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 poem is known from one manuscript dating from the second half of the 13th century, partly written in Middle Welsh orthography and partly in Old Welsh. If it dates from the late 6th century it would originally have been composed in the Cumbric language, related to the Old Welsh language, also called "Archaic Neo-Brittonic". The manuscript contains several stanzas which have no connection with the Gododdin and are considered to be interpolations. One stanza of Y Gododdin mentions Arthur, which would be of great importance as the earliest known reference if the stanza could be shown to date from the late 6th or early 7th centuries.