Gododdin Carabosse and the BBC: We continue with our early history of Edinburgh. Using extracts from a BBC radio three program, about a Welsh poem "Y Gododdin", to find out what happened to The Votadini tribe. We filmed this video footage when the street theatre entertainers Carabosse' appeared on the Royal Mile last New Year, as part of our 2010 Hogmanay celebrations.
Read the script -
It's now circa 600AD; The Romans gone, and we find descendants of The Votadini tribe in their stronghold. These northern Celtic Britons are 'The Gododdin', and their story is told, in the poem 'Y Gododdin', written in Brythonic, an early Welsh language.
Mynydogg (the open handed), Chief or King to the Gododdin lavishly entertains his band of warriors, with a year-long wine-feast in Din Eidyn; His generosity is payment, for a battle still to be fought!
Historians regularly identify Din Eidyn with Edinburgh; specifically the crag-bound Castle Rock is seen as Mynydogg citadel.
After the feast his warriors set-out for Yorkshire, to do battle with the Angles of Northumbria'.
'Off, they rode, laughing from Din Eidyn to Catterick, to their doom; thirsty for war.
Men went to Catraeth, swift was their host.
Fresh mead was their feast, their poison too.
Three hundred waging war, under command,
And after joy, there was silence.
Though they went to churches to do penance,
True is the tale, death overtook them.
The Gododdin were massacred; three hundred of them marched on ten thousand Angles, only three survived the bloody pitched battle; Aneirin, the writer of this epic poem being one of them.
Sometime after this defeat, the Iron Age settlement on castle rock became the northern-most outpost, for the Angles.
Din Eidyn means hill fort of Eidyn; maybe even the fort of Odin, a Norse god of war. It is thought that the Angles may have kept Eidyn, adding their own word for fort, now becoming Eidyn-Burh, and possibly the earliest forerunner to Edinburgh.
Stand on the battlements of Edinburgh Castle, and look in any direction, you get an idea of, just how important, this fort was.
There were quite a few hill forts in the area, but this steep volcanic rock is only accessible on one ridge. Also it looks over, the meeting of two old roman roads, as well as a natural barrier, The Firth of Forth.
Controlling the surrounding area became more important as trade increased; this is a credible reason why Edinburgh survived and prospered, whilst other forts in the area lost their reasons for existence, as civilization came to what was to become Scotland.
