Qualla: Battle of Catraeth https://qualla.com/battle-of-catraeth en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:24 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/w/v/battle-of-catraeth-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Battle of Catraeth https://qualla.com/battle-of-catraeth Battle of Catraeth: Introduction https://qualla.com/battle-of-catraeth/ Photo credit Nilfanion, created using Ordnance Survey data, CC BY-SA 3.0. They feasted for a year before they died. Three hundred chosen warriors gathered at Din Eidyn - the great rock fortress that would one day become Edinburgh - and the Brythonic king Mynyddog Mwynfawr fed them honey and mead and roasted meat until they were utterly committed to the ride south. The poem that survives says they rode in golden torcs and gilded mail. They went to Catraeth and almost all of them were killed. The Welsh poet Aneirin lived to record what happened, or so tradition holds, and the result is Y Gododdin - one of the oldest surviving works of literature in any Celtic language, a long elegiac roll-call of named dead.

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Image: Nilfanion, created using Ordnance Survey data | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/w/v/battle-of-catraeth-wp/gcwv-battle-of-catraeth-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Battle of Catraeth: The Old North https://qualla.com/battle-of-catraeth/ Photo credit Alexrk2, CC BY-SA 3.0. Around the year 600 the political map of northern Britain looked very different from anything we would recognise. Most of what is now southern Scotland and northern England spoke a Brythonic language, the ancestor of Welsh. Their territory was the Hen Ogledd, the Old North, a pat...

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]]> Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/w/v/battle-of-catraeth-wp/gcwv-battle-of-catraeth-the-old-north.mp3 0:06 2 full Battle of Catraeth: The Ride to Catraeth https://qualla.com/battle-of-catraeth/ Photo credit Nilfanion, created using Ordnance Survey data, CC BY-SA 3.0. Catraeth is almost certainly Catterick in North Yorkshire, the old Roman station of Cataractonium on the Great North Road. By 600 it was in Anglo-Saxon hands, a forward post of Deiran power. The poem describes a Gododdin force of about 300 mounted warriors, drawn from across the ...

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]]> Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/w/v/battle-of-catraeth-wp/gcwv-battle-of-catraeth-the-ride-to-catraeth.mp3 0:06 3 full Battle of Catraeth: Disaster and Memory https://qualla.com/battle-of-catraeth/ Photo credit Nilfanion, created using Ordnance Survey data, CC BY-SA 3.0. The battle itself was a catastrophe for the Britons. They were opposed by a larger Angle army from both Deira and Bernicia, and they were nearly all killed. The poem is structured around the deaths, stanza by stanza naming the warriors and praising their courage and their bright ...

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]]> Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/w/v/battle-of-catraeth-wp/gcwv-battle-of-catraeth-disaster-and-memory.mp3 0:06 4 full Battle of Catraeth: The Long Echo https://qualla.com/battle-of-catraeth/ Photo credit Nilfanion, created using Ordnance Survey data, CC BY-SA 3.0. Y Gododdin matters because it is one of the earliest pieces of vernacular European poetry we possess - perhaps the oldest surviving Welsh literature, certainly the oldest substantial poem from anywhere in what is now Scotland. Modern fiction keeps returning to it. John James used...

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]]> Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/w/v/battle-of-catraeth-wp/gcwv-battle-of-catraeth-the-long-echo.mp3 0:06 5 full