Comments on: Catraeth and Gwen Ystrat

By: Tim

Tim — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 17:52:05 +0000

Curiosity led me to look up the Raith tradition. It has an entry on Wikipedia (Battle of Raith) and seems to derive from local folklore or antiquarian theories about Aedan mac Gabrain. Hard to see any real connection with Catraeth or the Gododdin poem but I suppose there may be some residual folk-memory of an ancient battle in the area.

By: Phil

Phil — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 23:05:09 +0000

What are your thoughts on the battle having been fought at Raith in Fife ? There is a local tradition suggesting this.

By: Tim

Tim — Thu, 28 May 2009 15:34:50 +0000

I suppose the only circumstance in which a Scottish place name could derive from Latin cataracta would be if a name coined by Roman soldiers passed into local (Brittonic) use. An unlikely occurrence, admittedly. My instincts point me instead to Catraeth deriving from cat/cad + traeth as the name of some place on the southern fringe of Lothian.

By: Michelle Ziegler

Michelle Ziegler — Tue, 26 May 2009 16:22:38 +0000

How mnay places in southern Scotland have Latin derived names? I can’t think of any….

By: Tim

Tim — Tue, 26 May 2009 15:34:55 +0000

If we take Catraeth to mean cataract (as opposed to battle-fort or whatever) then I guess we would need to look for some distinctive waterfalls to explain the name. The Grey Mare’s Tail is certainly a distinctive landmark, despite being in a fairly remote location off the Moffat-Selkirk road.

By: Mike

Mike — Mon, 25 May 2009 16:26:39 +0000

Catraeth- I read that it might mean waterfall/cataract. Might it be the region containing the Grey Mares Tail and several other smaller cataracts which pour off the hills, over which the Gododdin must have ridden (Down modern A72), passing the source of the Clyde (Pen Clwyd)? Seems like a more realistic route and battle site.

By: Tim

Tim — Tue, 12 May 2009 20:36:57 +0000

Translating Catraeth as “Battle-fort” seems to fit with the context of Y Gododdin, i.e. a specific site where one or more battles occurred, but to me it fits less well with Taliesin’s image of Catraeth as a district or domain of sufficient size to sustain the “men of Catraeth” who acknowledged Urien as lord.

By: Michelle

Michelle — Mon, 11 May 2009 00:14:39 +0000

Nice picture of Edinburgh!

I’ve always been skeptical about the title Lord of Catraeth because the battle took on such mythic proportions. I do like Fraser’s hypothesis that its a fusion Scots-British word of a type that is found elsewhere in Scotland. That could mean that the cad-rath (Battle-fort) is quite close to Din Eidyn. On the other hand with a name like ‘battle fort’ is would be easy to turn into myth, the place where every great hero fights a battle.