Certain it is, that, at the period of our Poem, the people of the three provinces in question were open enemies of the Cymry, as appears from stanzas iii, v, and ix. When we see there how the Bard commends one hero for not yielding to the army of Gododin, and celebrates the praise of another who committed an immense slaughter amongst the men of Deivyr and Bryneich, and threatens, in the case of a third party, that if they were suspected of leaning to the Bernician interest, he would himself raise his hand against them, we can come to no other conclusion than that those countries were arrayed against the Cymry when the battle of Cattraeth took place.
Ida had to encounter a powerful opponent in the person of Urien, king of Rheged, a district in or near which Cattraeth lay, as we infer from two poems of Taliesin. Thus, one entitled “Gwaith Gwenystrad,” commences with the words,
“Extol the men of Cattraeth, who, with the dawn,
Went with their victorious leader
Urien, a renowned elder.” [3c]
In the other, called “Yspail Taliesin,” Urien is styled “Glyw Cattraeth,” the ruler of Cattraeth. [4a] At the same time he is generally spoken of under the title of Rheged’s chief.
The leader of the hostile forces in the battle of Gwenystrad is not named, but in the battle of Argoed Llwyvein we find him to be Flamddwyn or the Torch bearer, a name by which the Britons delighted to designate the formidable Ida. Flamddwyn’s army on this occasion consisted of four legions, which reached from Argoed to Arvynydd, and against them were arrayed the men of Goddeu and Rheged, under the command of Ceneu ab Coel, and Owain, and “Urien the prince.”
Argoed, bordering on Deivyr and Bryneich, was ruled by Llywarch Hen, who after his abdication and flight into Powys, pathetically records the loyal attachment of his former subjects,—
“The men of Argoed have ever supported me.” [4b]
The Historia Britonum enumerates three other kings, who with Urien fought against the Saxons in the North, viz., Rhydderch, Gwallawg, and Morgant, though the latter, under the impulse of envy, procured the assassination of Urien, in the Isle of Lindisfarne.
After the Saxons had finally established themselves on the eastern coast, in the forementioned countries, an immense rampart, extending nearly from the Solway to the Frith of Forth, was erected, either with the view of checking their further progress westward, or else by mutual consent of the two nations, as a mere line of demarcation between their respective dominions. This wall cannot have an earlier date, for it runs through the middle of the country originally occupied by the Gadeni, and could not of course have been constructed as a boundary by them; nor can it be referred to a more recent period, as there could be no reason for forming such a fence after the Saxons had intruded upon the whole country which it divides. This was the famous Catrail, which we presume to be identical with Cattraeth, where the disastrous battle of that name, as sung by Aneurin, was fought.
Catrail means literally “the war fence” (cad-rhail), but on the supposition that it is synonymous with Cattraeth, the rhyme in the Gododin would determine the latter to be the correct term, or that by which Aneurin distinguished the line. The meaning of Cattraeth would be either “the war tract” (cad-traeth), or “the legal war fence” (cad-rhaith); the latter of which would give some countenance to the idea that it was formed by mutual agreement.