Nennius, there is a reference to several poets in this area during the 6th century. Having mentioned Ida of Bernicia, the founder of the Northumbrian royal line who ruled between 547 and 559, the Historia goes on to say: Nothing has been preserved of the work of Talhaearn, Blwchfardd and Cian, but poems attributed to Taliesin were published by Ifor Williams in Canu Taliesin and were considered by him to be comparable in antiquity to the Gododdin. This poetry praises Urien of Rheged and his son Owain, and refers to Urien as lord of Catraeth. Interpretation Y Gododdin is not a narrative poem but rather a series of elegies for heroes who died in a battle whose history would have been familiar to the original listeners. The context of the poem has to be worked out from the text itself. There have been various interpretations of the events recorded in the poem. The 19th-century Welsh scholar Thomas Stephens identified Y Gododdin with the Votadini and Catraeth as Catterick in North Yorkshire. He linked the poem to the Battle of Degsastan in c. 603 between King Æthelfrith of Bernicia and the Gaels under Áedán mac Gabráin, king of Dál Riada. Gwenogvryn Evans in his 1922 edition and translation of the Book of Aneirin claimed that the poem referred to a battle around the Menai Strait in 1098, emending the text to fit the theory. The generally accepted interpretation for the Battle of Catraeth is that put forward by Ifor Williams in his Canu Aneirin first published in 1938. Williams interpreted mynydawc mwynvawr in the text to refer to a person, Mynyddog Mwynfawr in modern Welsh. Mynyddog, in his version, was the king of the Gododdin, with his chief seat at Din Eidyn (modern Edinburgh). Around the year 600 Mynyddog gathered about 300 selected warriors, some from as far afield as Gwynedd. He feasted them at Din Eidyn for a year, then launched an attack on Catraeth, which Williams agrees with Stephens in identifying as Catterick, which was in Anglo-Saxon hands. They were opposed by a larger army from the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of Deira and Bernicia. The battle at Catraeth has been seen as an attempt to resist the advance of the Angles, who had probably by then occupied the former Votadini lands of Bryneich in modern north-eastern England and made it their kingdom of Bernicia. At some time after the battle,