author
Aneirin
A shadowy voice from the early medieval world, this Brythonic poet is remembered almost entirely for Y Gododdin, a fierce and mournful poem about warriors and loss. Though little can be known for certain, the work linked to him became one of the great survivals of early Welsh literature.
1 Audiobook
Y Gododin: A Poem of the Battle of Cattraeth
by Aneirin
About the author
Aneirin is generally placed in the 6th century and is remembered as an early Brythonic war poet. Sources commonly connect him with the Old North and with the kingdom of Gododdin, whose center is often associated with the area of present-day Edinburgh.
His reputation rests above all on Y Gododdin, a sequence of elegiac verses mourning warriors who fell at Catraeth. The poem survives in the later manuscript known as the Book of Aneirin, so many details about his life remain uncertain, but the poetry has long been valued as one of the oldest major works linked to the Welsh literary tradition.
Because the historical record is so thin, Aneirin stands half in history and half in legend. That uncertainty is part of what makes him so compelling: even with only fragments of a life preserved, the voice attributed to him still carries grief, praise, and the memory of a lost heroic age.