close connexion with the Cumbrian kingdom, and prepared both North and
South Wales for the reception of the northern traditions and the rise of
a true Welsh literature.

Whether the poets of the north really wrote any of the poems which in a
modified form have come down to us or not, there can be no doubt that a
number of lays attributed to them lived in popular tradition, and that
under the sudden burst of glory which the deeds of Cadwallawn called
forth and which ended in the disastrous defeat of 655, a British
literature began to spring up, and was nourished by the hopes of a
future resurrection under his son Cadwaladr, whose death was disbelieved
in for such a long time. These floating lays and traditions gradually
gathered into North Wales, brought thither by the nobility and the bards
who fled before advancing hosts of the victorious Saxon kings of the
north. The heroes of the north became now the heroes of Wales, and the
sites of the battles they fought were identified with places of similar
name in Wales and England.

Aneurin

By far the longest and the most famous poem of this series is attributed
to Aneurin. This spelling of his name is comparatively modern, and in
the old manuscripts it is given as Aneirin. The later form seems to have
been affected by the form _eurin_, "golden," and to owe the continuation
of the misspelling to a belief that the poet and Gildas, whose name is
supposed to be the Latin form of the Old English _gylden_, were one and
the same person. This poem, called the _Gododin_ (with notes by T.
Stephens and published by Prof. Powel for the Cymmrodorion Society,
London, 1888), is extremely obscure, both on account of its vocabulary
and its topography and allusions. It deals mainly with "the men who went
to Cattraeth," which is supposed to have been fought between the Britons
and the Scots under Aedan, king of Dalriada, and the pagan Saxons and
their British subjects in _Devyr_ (Deira) and _Bryneich_ (Bernicia), and
the half-pagan Picts of Guotodin, a district corresponding to the
northern half of the Lothians along the Firth of Forth. Critics have
attempted with partial success to cast some light on its obscurity by
supposing that the poem as a whole is made up of two parts dealing with
two distinct battles. This may or may not be, but there is no doubt that
many of the stanzas of the poem as found in the manuscript are not in
their proper places, and a critical readjustment of the dif