The Celtic Pages

Y Gododdin

Celtic Historic Literature by Aneirin, translation by Joseph Clancy

56

Warriors rose together, formed ranks with a single mind they assaulted.
Short their lives, long their kinsmen long for them.
Seven times their sum of English they slew: their fighting turned wives into widows;
Many a mother with tear-filled eyelids.

57

For wine-feast and mead-feast they swore to wreak havoc.
Praiseworthy lad of his word, he made before the hill, before Buddugre's slope,
Crows arise, a cloud climbing, soldiers were falling like a swarm upon him:
Not a move towards fleeing.
Far-sighted, quick-moving, from white steeds a sword's edge and from the wall a sword-stroke.
First in feasting, sleepless, not sleepless today, Rheiddun's son, lord of battle.

58

Because of wine-feast and mead-feast they left us, mail-coated men, I know death's anguish.
Before their grey hairs came their slaughter.
Of Mynyddawg's men, great is the grief, of three hundred, but one man returned.

verses 59, 60 & 61