as
"the men of Cattraeth, who set out with the dawn." Cattraeth is now
believed by eminent archaeologists to be a locality situated at the
eastern end of Antonine's wall, on the Firth of Forth--Callander,
Carriden, or more probably the castle hill at Blackness, which contains
various remains of ancient structures. Urien's foes at the battle of
Gwen-Ystrad were apparently the Angles or Saxons of Bernicia--this last
term of Bernicia, with its capital at Bamborough, including at that time
the district of modern Northumberland, and probably also Berwickshire
and part of the Lothians. An army marching from Cattraeth or the eastern
end of Antonine's Wall, to meet such an army, would, if it took the
shortest or coast line, pass, after two or three hours' march, very near
the site of the Cat-stane. A ford and a fort are alluded to in the poem.
The neighbouring Almond has plenty of fords; and on its banks the name
of two forts or "caers" are still left--viz. Caerlowrie (Caer-l-Urien?)
and Caer Almond, one directly opposite the Cat-stane, the other three
miles below it. But no modern name remains near the Cat-stane to
identify the name of "the fair or white strath." "Lenny"--the name of
the immediately adjoining barony on the banks of the Almond, or in its
"strath" or "dale"--presents insurmountable philological difficulties to
its identification with Gwen; the L and G, or GW not being
interchangeable. The valley of Strath-Broc (Broxburn)--the seat in the
twelfth century of Freskyn of Strath-Broc, and consequently the cradle
of the noble house of Sutherland--runs into the valley of the Almond
about two miles above the Cat-stane. In this, as in other Welsh and
Gaelic names, the word Strath is a prefix to the name of the adjoining
river. In the word "Gwen-Ystrad," the word Strath is, on the contrary,
in the unusual position of an affix; showing that the appellation is
descriptive of the beauty or fairness of the strath which it designates.
The valley or dale of the Almond, and the rich tract of fertile country
stretching for miles to the south-west of the Cat-stane, certainly well
merit such a designation as "fair" or "beautiful" valley--"Gwen-Ystrad;"
but we have not the slightest evidence whatever that such a name was
ever applied to this tract. In his learned edition of _Les Bardes
Bretons, Poemes du vi^e Siecle_, the Viscount Villemarque, in the note
which he has appended to Taliesin's poem of the battle of Gwen-Ystrad,
suggests