Y Gododdin is a 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 in about 600 fighting the Angles of Deira and Bernicia at a place named Catraeth.
It is traditionally ascribed to the bard Aneirin and survives only in one manuscript, the Book of Aneirin.
The Book of Aneirin manuscript is from the later thirteenth century, but Y Gododdin has been dated to anywhere between the seventh and the early eleventh 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 ninth, tenth or eleventh century.
Even a ninth-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 three hundred (or three hundred and sixty-three) 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 King 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 develop only from about the early twelfth century.
