ABSTRACT
The early medieval literature of Wales is preserved in manuscripts of the later Middle Ages. This state of survival mirrors that of the bulk of Old Icelandic literature. Both traditions differ from Old English poetry and prose, nearly all of which pre-dates the Norman Conquest and survives in manuscripts of the tenth and eleventh centuries. Yet some Welsh poetry, as with the Icelandic which is more plentifully represented in this book, has roots that extend to much earlier times. The Welsh poem excerpted below, Y Gododdin, is a poem of this kind. Although the text survives in two incomplete versions in a manuscript of the thirteenth century (Cardiff MS 2.81), it celebrates a battle in Catraeth, or Catterick in Yorkshire, which must have taken place very roughly in c. 600 (though a different and earlier battle has been suggested, in c. 570; Koch 1997). The earliest linguistic forms of the poem take some parts of the text back to the tenth, or even the ninth century, with the remainder composed in later times, but the theme is as old as the battle itself. Although it is a poem which originates from a northern Welsh dialect, it may also be regarded as the oldest extant poem from Scotland.
