Gododdin is, in several senses, the first indigenous regional name which has survived for what we now call Lothian. The name comes from the Brythonic language which was spoken here throughout much of the first millennium, and is first recorded in C1st AD Latin with reference to the tribe inhabiting the region - the "Votadini". As with many early tribal names, it is simultaneously an ethnonym and a regional descriptor, much as we find even today in the use of Cymru to denote both the principality of Wales and its people.
However, like the later, medieval Lothian per se, Gododdin is thought to have extended beyond the modern Lothians into most of South-eastern Scotland, and towards Stirling and Lanark in the West. Furthermore, in the post-Roman era, there existed a Western region known as Manaw Gododdin, possibly leaving its traces in placenames such as Slamannan, Clackmannan, Cremannan, Dalmeny (originally Din Manyn), and not forgetting Emonia, the Latinate form of the first known name of the island of Inchcolm in the River Forth, opposite Dalmeny.
It is worth stressing that the Gododdin, although Celtic, were by no means a Gaelic tribe. In fact, they were Britons, speaking Brythonic, the forerunner of modern Welsh (Cymraeg), Cornish (Kernewek) and Bréton (Brezhoneg), and probably a close relative of the Pictish spoken North of the River Forth. The same was also true in the South-west of Scotland in the first millennium, which formed a second Brythonic kingdom of Y Strad Glud (Strathclyde), with its capital at Dumbarton, or Din Brython (Fortress of the Britons). Indeed, much of the early medieval mythology and literature of what later became Wales derives from such ancient Northern kingdoms as Gododdin and Strathclyde, along with the other late Brythonic kingdoms in what is now Northern England, such as Rheged (Cumbria), Brynaich (Northumberland), Deifr (East and North Yorkshire), and Elfed (West Yorkshire).
All of these kingdoms emerged following the withdrawal of the Romans and were apparently built on the foundations of the old, near-prehistoric sub-kingdoms of Brigantia. Collectively, they were known to early medieval Welsh scholars as Y Gogledd ("The North"), and their peoples as Y Gwyr y Gogledd ("The men of the North"). The old Welsh druidical bards such as Taliesin spent much of their time writing heroic poetry for the kings of the North, and Myrddin (Merlin) is even said to have spent his last years in Coed Celyddon (the Caledonian Forest), probably located in the modern Scottish Borders, on the Southern fringes of Gododdin itself. More historically perhaps, it is said that the foundations of the ruling dynasties of medieval North Wales derived from one Cunedda, a ruler from Manaw Gododdin who was asked to help the Welsh expel Irish invaders in the fifth century. Furthermore, as is discussed below, the "first Welsh poem", Aneirin's Y Gododdin, from the seventh century, was written in and about Gododdin itself.
The first conjectured capital of Gododdin was the famous hillfort at Traprain Law in East Lothian, with Traprain possibly meaning "Wooden Town" (tra pren), but also formerly called Dunpelder, meaning "Fortress of Spear-shafts". Traprain is particularly famous for its hoard of mainly Roman silverware, although opinion differs as to its origins. Perhaps, as some suggest, it was a payment made by the Romans to the Gododdin for services rendered. Alternatively, it may have been the result of a Gododdin raid on the Romans. One theory even suggests that it was the result of a Pictish campaign against Roman positions, perhaps even across Hadrian's Wall and into Britannia proper.
But by the seventh century, the capital seems to have moved West to Edinburgh (Din Eidyn - "Eidyn's Fortress"), possibly as a result of Anglian pressure from the South. However, two alternative locations for Din Eidyn have been suggested: Carriden (Caer Eidyn) by the River Forth in modern Falkirk, and Edin's Hall Broch on the South-eastern edge of modern Lothian. Nonetheless, Edinburgh remains the generally accepted location, and its central position within Gododdin territory, along with the existence of a major Brythonic fort on Castle Rock beneath the medieval Edinburgh Castle are highly suggestive.
Significantly, the first major poem to survive in the early Brythonic form of the Welsh language, Aneirin's Y Gododdin (c.600AD), records the defeat of the Gododdin at the hands of the newly-arrived Germanic tribe of the Angles. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles claim that the Angles came to what we now call "England" around 443-449AD, but the Annals of Ulster place it in 464AD, and the genuinely historical date is still a matter of much speculation. Nonetheless, by the C7th things were not going well for the kingdoms of the old Celtic North. The post-Roman kingdom of Brynaich (Northumberland) had already fallen to the Angles, who now called it Bernicia, and Deifr (East and North Yorkshire), renamed in Anglian as Deira. The Anglian Deirans were also making inroads into Elfed (West Yorkshire), which fell to them in 617AD, and the Annals of Ulster specifically mention battles between British and Germanic tribes in 632 and 642 AD. The conquest of Gododdin was clearly a key component in the itinerary of this overall Germanic expansion in the seventh century.
Aneirin's Y Gododdin is well-known to Welsh school-children today as "the first Welsh poem", although it is thought to have been written in or around Edinburgh. Unfortunately, it isn't so well-known in contemporary Scotland as "the first Scottish poem". Indeed, the entire Brythonic (Welsh) heritage of Southern Scotland is obscure to most contemporary Scots - something which this website aims to remedy as far as it can!
In Y Gododdin, amongst other things, we learn of the heroism, honour, and beauty of the Gododdin warriors, their love of huge quantities of mead, and ultimately their downfall under the leadership of King Mynyddawg Mwynfawr at the Battle of Catraeth, thought to have been at modern Catterick in North Yorkshire around 600AD, but possibly as early as 570AD. Mynyddawg is portrayed as a generous king in almost Bronze Age epic style, feasting his warriors in his sumptuous halls for no less than a year as they train for the looming and tragic war against the Angles:
Men renowned in difficulty, careless of their lives;
In bright array around the viands they feasted together;
Wine and mead and meal they enjoyed.
From the retinue of Mynyddawg I am being ruined;
And I have lost a leader from among my true friends.
Of the body of three hundred men that hastened to
Catraeth, alas! none have returned but one alone.
Significantly, Mynyddawg's retinue included not only local warriors from his own kingdom, but Celtic nobles from other Brythonic regions of the Old North, including Strathclyde, Rheged, Elfed and at least one Pict called Bubon, recalling the old alliances of the Roman period. But the combined Celtic force was doomed to failure, radically outnumbered, and according to Aneirin, few survived to tell the tale.
Catraeth signifies the beginning of the end for Gododdin, and thus also for the traditional Celtic culture of Lothian. Shortly afterwards, the Angles of Bernicia and Deira united to form the kingdom of Northumbria, one of the strongest and most formidable nations of first millennium Britain, and one of the primary roots of Anglo-Saxon England. With what we can only assume was a terminal power vacuum in Gododdin following the Battle of Catraeth, the region was open to Anglian invasion. And the Angles were indeed intent on expansion. Certainly, we can infer from entries in medieval Irish sources such as The Annals of Ulster and Chronicon Scotorum, which refer to "obsessio Eten" (the beseiging of Eidyn), that the Gododdin capital itself was overrun by the new Northumbrian around 638AD under their King Oswald. We also know that the old Celtic religious site at Abercorn in modern West Lothian had become a Northumbrian episcopal centre around 681AD, and that it made claims of jurisdiction not only over Gododdin, but also Pictavia, North of the River Forth.
However, although Catraeth lead to the fall of the kingdom of Gododdin, the Angles would find their control of Lothian somewhat ambiguous and relatively short-lived. Once more, Lothian was to become a turbulent border territory between rival powers.