Aneirin

ANEIRIN (fl. AD 600)

The Book of Aneirin is the name given to a 13th century Welsh manuscript which contains Y Gododdin, attributed to the bard Aneirin. The poem commemorates a British defeat by the Saxons at Catraeth (apparently Catterick) in AD 603, where Aneirin is said to have been taken prisoner. The Gododdin, or Votadini, as the Romans called them, inhabited an area around the River Tweed, and the work is read by some as the earliest 'North East' poem.

The epic consists of elegies to the three hundred lords (each with two shield-bearers) who march south from Edinburgh to fall in battle, only three surviving to tell the tale. Even with its undoubted additions and modifications, it is a paradigm of the brave and hopeless struggle. Basil Bunting (q.v.), intensely aware of Northumbrian history, alludes to Aneirin in his own masterpiece Briggflatts.

The four major poets represented in the oldest documents in Welsh literature, Aneirin, Taliessin (fl. 550 AD, the semi-mythical chief of all the Welsh bards), Myrddin (Merlin) and Llywarch Hen are said to have lived and written in the Cumbria region or Y Gogledd, where the characters in the events described also lived. This region enjoyed substantial independence down to the end of the 9th century, with the exception of an interval from AD 655-686, when it was subject to Oswy of Northumbria after the defeat of Cadwallon and Penda. From the 7th-9th century Cumbria, which included all the British territory from the Ribble to the Clyde, was the principal theatre of British-Saxon conflict.

The rise of the dynasty of Maelgwn Gwynedd who, according to Welsh tradition, was a descendant of Cunedda Wledig, one of the Picts of the North, brought Wales into close contact with the Cumbrian kingdom, and the lays and traditions ascribed to the northern poets were brought into Wales by the nobility and bards fleeing before the Saxon kings of the North.

Myers Literary Guide:	The North-East
ANEIRIN (fl. AD 600) The Book of Aneirin is the name given to a 13th century Welsh manuscript which contains Y Gododdin, attributed to the bard Aneirin. The poem commemorates a British defeat by the Saxons at Catraeth (apparently Catterick) in AD 603, where Aneirin is said to have been taken prisoner. The Gododdin, or Votadini, as the Romans called them, inhabited an area around the River Tweed, and the work is read by some as the earliest 'North East' poem. The epic consists of elegies to the three hundred lords (each with two shield-bearers) who march south from Edinburgh to fall in battle, only three surviving to tell the tale. Even with its undoubted additions and modifications, it is a paradigm of the brave and hopeless struggle. Basil Bunting (q.v.), intensely aware of Northumbrian history, alludes to Aneirin in his own masterpiece Briggflatts. The four major poets represented in the oldest documents in Welsh literature, Aneirin, Taliessin (fl. 550 AD, the semi-mythical chief of all the Welsh bards), Myrddin (Merlin) and Llywarch Hen are said to have lived and written in the Cumbria region or Y Gogledd, where the characters in the events described also lived. This region enjoyed substantial independence down to the end of the 9th century, with the exception of an interval from AD 655-686, when it was subject to Oswy of Northumbria after the defeat of Cadwallon and Penda. From the 7th-9th century Cumbria, which included all the British territory from the Ribble to the Clyde, was the principal theatre of British-Saxon conflict. The rise of the dynasty of Maelgwn Gwynedd who, according to Welsh tradition, was a descendant of Cunedda Wledig, one of the Picts of the North, brought Wales into close contact with the Cumbrian kingdom, and the lays and traditions ascribed to the northern poets were brought into Wales by the nobility and bards fleeing before the Saxon kings of the North.
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