I, Aneurin, will do
What is known to Taliesin,
A man of kindred disposition.
Will I not sing of what befell
Gododin, before the break of day?"
From frequent notices in other parts of the poem, we find that the subject is the defeat of (the Ottadini) the men of Gododin, in a battle which took place in the year 603, near Cattraeth, which may be identified with the Cataracton of Ptolemy, the Cataract of Bede, and the present Catterick in Yorkshire. The men of Gododin in this campaign were in league with the Novantæ of Wigtonshire, the Britons of Strathclyde, the Scots of Argyle, and the Picts of Fife and Perth. Of this army the chiefs alone amounted to three hundred and sixty; but, to use the words of the bard, "Mead brought shame on the best of armies;" and the chiefs, on account of temporary success over a part of Ethelfrith's Northumbrian army, spent the night in wild carousal. Overtures of peace were made to them by Ethelfrith, and contemptuously rejected; they rushed pell-mell to battle before the break of day; and the bard, seeing them falling helplessly drunk from their horses, "drew a veil over his face and fled, weeping on his way." I here assume that Cattraeth and Cataract are the same place; and to cite only one of many evidences, the position of the Ottadini in the immediate neighbourhood of Catterick, lends this view strong confirmation. But there is here another assumption, to which I invite the attention of English antiquaries. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle relates the occurrence of a great battle between Ethelfrith of Northumbria and the northern Britons in the year 603: of that battle the site is variously named Degstan, Dægsanstane, and Egesanstane; but antiquarian researches have not determined where Egesanstane was. Some place it at Dawston, near Jedburg, in Scotland, and others at Dalston in Cumberland; but all confess uncertainty. Now I assume that the place called Egesanstane is more likely to be Siggeston, in the North Riding of Yorkshire, which is about five or six miles east of Catterick; and this conjecture is strongly supported by the fact that Ethelfrith in this case was not the invader but the invaded, as it is said, "Hering, the son of Hussa, led the enemy thither," to the dominions of Ethelfrith, which were then but little else than the eastern coast of Northumberland and Yorkshire. If this view be correct, our antiquaries have hitherto been in error on this point; the site of the great battle of 603 is no longer unknown; and Egesanstane and Cattraeth are only two names for the same battle, just as another battle-field is variously named the battle of Waterloo by us, and that of Mont St. Jean by the French.
Probert places the death of Aneurin in 570: the Gododin shows him to have been an eyewitness of an event which took place in 642. Davies, whose works are striking evidences of a powerful intellect completely led astray, makes the subject to have been the reported massacre at Stonehenge, which possibly never took place, but which he fixes in 472. Now I have cited a passage which, referring to Taliesin as an authority, implies that Aneurin was his junior; and Taliesin was living in 610. Again, Davies makes an abortive attempt to get rid of the last poem of Llywarch Hen, which shows him to have been living as late as the year 640, when most of his sons had fallen in battle. Llywarch himself was either at the battle of Cattraeth, or assisted in organising the campaign; for though not mentioned by Aneurin, he himself alludes to the time "when we attacked the great-smoker-of-towns (Ethelfrith)."
At this battle Aneurin was taken prisoner, and confined in "an earthen house," from which he was released "by the bright sword of Cenau, the son of Llywarch." The son of Llywarch could scarcely have been living in 472; and Davies in vain essays to get rid of this obdurate fact. This passage in Aneurin—
"Under foot was gravel,
Stretched out was my leg