The battle of Catraeth: other evidence and interpretation

The heroic poem Y Gododdin is one of the longest and most famous texts in medieval Welsh. It was written down in the kingdom of Gwynedd in North Wales in a thirteenth-century manuscript, but the spellings in one of the two versions suggest that it may be several centuries older. It consists mainly of a series of elegies for warriors who feasted at the court of Din Eidyn (modern Edinburgh) before setting out to fight at a place called Catraeth where many, perhaps most, of them were killed. Where might Catraeth have been?

Evidence

The evidence from the poem Y Gododdin was described in the previous post.  

Canu Taliesin

A place called ‘Catraeth’ is also mentioned in the Canu Taliesin poetry praising Urien, king of Rheged. For more information about Urien, see my earlier post 'Urien Rheged'.

The men of Catraeth arose with the dawn, 

About the Guledig, of work a profitable merchant.

This Urien, without mockery is his regret.

--The Battle of Gwen Ystrat, translation available online

I saw the ruler of Cathraeth beyond the plains

 --The Spoils of Taliesin, translation available online

In the ‘Battle of Gwen Ystrat’, Urien is described as ‘Guledig’, meaning something like leader or overlord.  The men of Catraeth appear to be under his command, although the poem does not say that the battle in question (‘Gwen Ystrat’, which translates as something like ‘white valley’ or ‘fair valley’) was being fought at Catraeth. In ‘The Spoils of Taliesin’, Urien is clearly described as the ruler of Catraeth. Although Taliesin refers to Urien’s domain as ‘Rheged’, the location of Rheged itself has not been identified more precisely than somewhere in what is now northern England and/or southern Scotland. For more information on the possible location of Rheged see my earlier posts here and here. I like the idea that Rheged was located around Carlisle, the Lake District and the Solway, but other interpretations are equally possible.

Place names

There is no modern place with a name that can be definitively and uniquely identified as Catraeth.

The most common suggestion for the location of ‘Catraeth’ is modern Catterick, located at the eastern end of the strategic Roman road that crosses the Pennines through the Stainmore Pass or Stainmore Gap (the modern A66 road follows much the same route as its Roman predecessor). Bede, writing in the eighth century, refers to it as ‘Cetreht’. The Roman name of the settlement at the site of modern Catterick Bridge was Cataractonium. The English Place-Name Society website suggests that it originally derived from a Brittonic name ‘Caturatis’ meaning ‘fortification’, which was (mis)interpreted by the Romans as the Latin ‘Cataracta’, meaning ‘waterfall’. (Misunderstanding place names on the grounds that they sound like a word you recognise evidently has a long history).

Tim Clarkson argues that although ‘Catraeth’ could be an earlier form of the modern name ‘Catterick’, this is not the same thing as proving that they refer to the same place (Clarkson 2010, p. 106). There may have been many other places with now-lost names that could have given rise to ‘Catraeth’, and the poem may refer to one of these.

Another possibility occurs to me, and that is that the name ‘Catraeth’ looks as though it might be composed of the elements ‘Cat’, meaning ‘battle’, and ‘Traeth’, meaning ‘strand’ or ‘shore’. I don’t know enough about etymology to know whether this could be a real possibility. If it is, then the ‘Catraeth’ of the poem might not be a place name at all, but a description of the event commemorated – ‘the battle on the shore’. In which case, trying to identify it from modern or recorded place names might be impossible.

Interpretation

The battle of Catraeth was fought between warriors from Edinburgh and enemies identified variously as ‘Deiran’, ‘Saxons’ or ‘Lloegr’s mixed hosts’ in the more archaic ‘B’ version of Y Gododdin. The ‘A’ version adds two mentions of Bernicia, one of which seems to bracket Bernicia alongside the Gododdin rather than as enemies (see previous post 'Catraeth: Y Gododdin').

The terms referring to Saxons or Lloegr are not geographically precise enough to be much help in identifying the location of the battle, as they could refer to groups of people in Britain anywhere from Northumbria to Wessex. The term ‘Deira’ is much more geographically precise, as Deira is quite securely located somewhere in the region of modern Yorkshire. For this reason, I would focus on ‘Deira’ as the most useful clue to the enemy, which in turn gives a possible clue to the location.

Catterick Bridge is in modern North Yorkshire, and therefore either within or close to the territory of sixth-century Deira (as usual, the exact boundaries of Deira are not known). It is therefore a plausible location for a battle in which Deira was one of the sides (although I agree with Tim Clarkson that it is not proven).

Furthermore, Catterick Bridge is on a major north-south Roman road (Dere Street), at a river crossing (the Swale), and close to the junction with the major east-west Roman road across Stainmore Pass. River crossings are common battle sites, and the Roman road network would have been obvious routes for moving armies across country. Catterick is approximately 150-170 miles from Edinburgh, depending whether you take the shorter route over the Cheviot hills or the longer route via the coast. Although this is a long way, it is within the known campaigning range of early medieval armies (see earlier post on campaigning ranges). Given that armies from Northumbria are known to have fought near Chester and in Pictland, and that an army from Gwynedd and the West Midlands invaded and occupied Northumbria, it does not seem at all unreasonable that an army from Edinburgh could have fought at Catterick Bridge.

To get from Edinburgh to Catterick Bridge, the warriors in the poem would have had to cross or skirt the territory of Bernicia, which in the late sixth century was ruled by the aggressive and militarily successful king Aethelferth. Bernicia was probably Gododdin’s closest territory ruled by an English king. However, Catwallaun of Gwynedd had no problem crossing the territory of English Mercia when he invaded Northumbria in 633, and indeed the English king of Mercia was his ally in the campaign. I see no reason why the Gododdin could not have had a similar arrangement with Bernicia as Catwallaun had with Mercia a few decades later. Bernicia could have been an active ally of Gododdin during the campaign, as Mercia was to Gwynedd, which would be consistent with the reference to ‘the army of Gododdin and Bernicia’ in stanza A-47. Or it may have played a more passive role, simply allowing the Gododdin warriors to pass unhindered.

The reference in Canu Taliesin to Urien as ‘ruler of Catraeth’ is more problematic for the Catterick Bridge location. Although Rheged’s location is uncertain, the likely areas are on the western coast of Britain roughly from Strathclyde to Lancashire. Catterick Bridge is distinctly on the eastern side. I don’t think any likely location for Rheged can easily be made to include Catterick Bridge. My best suggestion is that if Urien was a ruler of Catterick Bridge it would be in the sense of being some sort of overlord. This might reflect anything from outright military conquest, through some kind of tribute-paying client relationship (with varying degrees of asymmetry and coercion), to an amicable alliance by blood or marriage. The location of Catterick Bridge near the junction between Dere Street and the main trans-Pennine Roman road over Stainmore gives it obvious strategic importance. The ruler of a kingdom based around the western end of the Stainmore Pass road may well have wanted to control the other end of the pass as well. Historia Brittonum makes it clear that Urien was a powerful military leader, so outright conquest may be possible. Or, if there was a post-Roman Brittonic kingdom based around York (see my earlier series of articles on post-Roman York), Catterick Bridge may well have been part of its territory. Catterick Bridge is in the Vale of Mowbray, and only about 40 miles from York along the main north-south Roman road of Dere Street. Urien shares a (claimed) descent from Coel Hen with Peredur, tenuously associated with York (see post on Peredur), and it may be possible that Urien had some sort of claim to authority in the York area, including Catterick, based on this shared descent. Or, more prosaically, Taliesin may just have been flattering his patron by giving him an additional title.

If this mention of Urien as ‘ruler of Catraeth’ means that Catraeth was in the territory of Urien’s kingdom of Rheged, then either Rheged was in Yorkshire rather than in the west (which seems most unlikely to me, see the post on Rheged), or ‘Catraeth’ was not at Catterick Bridge. Tim Clarkson argues a case for locating ‘Catraeth’ somewhere much further north, perhaps in the valley of the River Tweed or in Lothian (Clarkson 2010, p. 108-9), and this is certainly a possibility. It is a long way from the territory of the Deiran enemies identified in the poem (just as Catterick Bridge is a long way from the territory of the Gododdin warband), but there is no obvious reason why the Deirans should not have been just as capable of long-distance campaigning as the Gododdin.

For my part, I prefer the traditional location of ‘Catraeth’ at Catterick Bridge. 

The main reasons for this are:

• it has a name that could be derived from Catraeth;
• it seems a likely sort of site for a battle, since it is on an important Roman road and at a river crossing;
• it is in or close to the known location of Deira, and therefore a plausible location for a battle in which Deira was one of the sides;
• although it is a long way from Edinburgh, early medieval armies are recorded by Bede as campaigning over similarly long distances, and I don’t think there is any obvious reason why the army of Gododdin should have been any less capable than its approximate contemporaries in Gwynedd or Northumbria.

I think the main difficulty with locating ‘Catraeth’ at Catterick Bridge is Taliesin’s line describing Urien as ‘ruler of Catraeth’. I’ve suggested above that this could be explained by some sort of overlordship over an area outside his core territory, but I will readily admit that this involves a certain amount of hand-waving. However, most explanations are likely to, given the shortage of evidence.

So I chose to place ‘Catraeth’ at Catterick Bridge in Paths of Exile. I don’t claim that this is a proven location; however, I think it is reasonably plausible. Other explanations are possible.

References

Clarkson T. The Men of the North. Birlinn, 2010. ISBN 978-1-906566-18-0

Canu Taliesin, The Battle of Gwen Ystrat, translation available online

Canu Taliesin, The Spoils of Taliesin, translation available online

English Place-Name Society website, Catterick

Map links

General map showing the approximate locations of Gododdin, Bernicia and Deira 

Catterick Bridge (Cataractonium) 

Edinburgh 

Stainmore 

 

The Crosby Garrett Helmet

The Crosby Garrett Helmet is a spectacular example of a Roman cavalry sports helmet, in the form of the face of a young clean-shaven man with luxuriant curly hair, wearing a Phrygian cap (shaped like a bent cone) topped by a winged griffin.

The Crosby Garrett Helmet on display. Photo by Daniel Pett, available under Creative Commons on Flickr

For more photographs, see the Portable Antiquities Scheme record.

The helmet is constructed of copper alloy.  The visor shows traces of having been tinned, so the face would originally have been a silvery colour.  The helmet was well-used, with signs of wear from the visor being opened and closed, and had been repaired with a sheet of bronze riveted over a split. The bowl of the helmet was broken into many pieces when discovered, and had been folded before being buried. The face mask was intact and had been placed face down. For more details, see the Portable Antiquities Scheme record and the initial report by Ralph Jackson.

The helmet was discovered by metal detectorists in 2010, buried in pastureland near the hamlet of Crosby Garrett in the Eden Valley, northern England.

Map link: Crosby Garrett

An archaeological investigation of the find spot was conducted by Tullie House Museum (Carlisle) and the Portable Antiquities Scheme. This has now been published (Breeze and Bishop [Eds] 2013), and is also reported in the February 2014 issue of Current Archaeology (CA), Issue 287.

The field where the helmet was found is on sloping ground on a ridge plateau.  Survey identified the remains of earthworks surrounding a large ditched enclosure measuring 500 metres along its southern edge (other dimensions and full size unknown). The shape of the enclosure is consistent with a local settlement, rather than a Roman fortification. However, there was a short straight length of earthwork outside and parallel with the enclosure boundary, resembling the defensive structure called a titulus that protected the entrance to Roman temporary military camps, perhaps indicating that the inhabitants had chosen to copy a Roman military construction technique.

Within the enclosure more low earthworks surrounded a much smaller enclosure shaped ‘like a fattened kidney bean’ (roughly 100 m on its long axis by roughly 60 m on its short axis) and a hut circle.  Geophysical survey identified more hut circles, a rectangular building and a variety of terraces and boundaries, with the buildings tending to concentrate in the northern half of the area surveyed.  Stuart Noon, the Finds Liaison Officer interviewed for the CA article, suggested that the lower area of the settlement could have been used for outbuildings and perhaps a paddock.

The helmet find spot was on a terrace where buildings had stood during the Roman period, directly in front of a boundary ditch, and at the lower end of the settlement in a place that has ‘an amazing view’.  Excavation of a small trench on the spot indicated that the helmet had been buried in some form of artificial stone construction, with two layers of stone cobbles set in soil on top of two paving slabs.  The helmet had been placed on the slabs, soil mounded around it, and the stone cobbles put on top as a cap. There was no wear on the cobbles, suggesting that they were not a road or track surface.  Stuart Noon described the structure as cairn-like, and suggested that it was a formal monument.  He also suggested that the weight of soil may not have been enough to crush the helmet bowl, as the helmet was buried only 50 cm deep, and thus that the helmet may have been deliberately broken before it was buried, suggesting a ‘ritual connotation’. 

Two Roman coins were found in the trench. One was a coin of Constantine from 300–335 and the other, in a cavity in the cobbles, was a barely worn coin of Constantius II dating to 335–337.  There were also some fragments of copper alloy that could be more fragments of the helmet, a blue glass bead, and an unidentified iron object that might possibly be part of a weapon. These may indicate that the helmet was buried with other objects, and the coins may date the construction of the cairn-like structure.  The decorated rivets that would have held the strap to fasten the helmet are of a type dated to the late second to third century AD.  So, if the two fourth-century coins date the burial, the helmet would already have been old when it was buried.  (Caveat: the coins can indicate the earliest possible date at which they were buried, since they cannot have been buried before they were made, but not the actual date, since they may have been buried many years after they were made.  The unworn coin had presumably not been rattling around someone’s pocket or being handed around in numerous transactions, otherwise it would show signs of wear, but it could have been sitting undisturbed in a protected environment such as a strong box.  So the helmet is considerably older than the coins, but both might have been old when they were buried).

Helmets of this type were used for a military display-come-training-exercise called the hippika gymnasia, in which elite cavalry units staged a mock battle watched by important dignitaries, sometimes the Emperor himself.  Mike Bishop explains in the CA article that cavalry sports helmets first appeared in the first century, initially as face masks that could be fitted to ordinary cavalry helmets, became progressively more ornate through the second and third centuries, and disappeared by the fourth century after Emperor Diocletian (285–304 AD) reformed the army. During the late second and third century, it was fashionable to stage the hippika gymnasia as a sort of re-enactment of the Trojan War legends. The Phrygian cap was a style associated with the east and could be used to signify a Trojan.

Unlike combat equipment, which was Roman Army property and had to be returned at the end of service, sports helmets were the personal property of individual cavalrymen and can be found in non-military contexts (Jackson 2010).

  

Interpretation

Among the many interesting issues raised by the article, two particularly struck me.

The first was the idea that the helmet may have been old when it was buried (if the coins date the burial, maybe a hundred years old or more).  This suggests that it may have had several owners, one of whom chose to bury it.  It’s not surprising that the helmet might have had several owners; it looks an expensive and prestigious item, and unless it was badly damaged in a mock battle it could probably be expected to last longer than one term of service.  Perhaps some soldiers sold their sports equipment on to colleagues when they left the army, if they reckoned that the cash would be more useful to them in setting up their retirement, or perhaps gave items as gifts to close comrades or protégés.  Or perhaps the personal possessions of soldiers who died in service were auctioned off to their colleagues and the money sent to their families, rather than trying to ship personal effects home.  Or, for that matter, maybe some managed to lose their equipment to a colleague in a bet or a duel.  Either way, maybe the helmet had a long and varied life being handed on to successive soldiers in an elite unit before one of them decided to take it home when he retired.  Another possibility is that it could have been a family heirloom inherited by successive generations of a family living at Crosby Garrett, either as a piece of equipment actively used by successive owners (e.g. if the family had a tradition of sons following their fathers into the cavalry), or as an ornamental heirloom displayed on the Roman equivalent of the mantelpiece to commemorate an increasingly distant ancestor.

If the helmet had several owners, why might one of them have chosen to treat it differently, by burying it in a cairn rather than passing it on?  This is a question to which we can never know the answer. One possibility is that the last owner brought it home and interred it as a symbolic way of marking his discharge from the army. Another is that it was interred as a memorial to someone with whom it was especially closely associated.  Or perhaps the last owner had no-one to pass it on to – if it was a family heirloom, perhaps there was no son or son-in-law or grandson to inherit, or none who had a need or desire for a sports cavalry helmet – and so it was buried by the family when the last owner died. 

If the coins date the burial to the 330s or later, I wonder if a couple of specific cultural changes could have played a part. If Diocletian’s army reforms abolished the hippika gymnasia this may have rendered the helmet obsolete. In which case, even if there was a son who had followed his forebears into the traditional cavalry unit there may have been no use for the helmet, and a dignified burial as a memorial to the last family member to perform in a hippika gymnasia may have seemed appropriate.  Religious change could be another possibility.  The Emperor Constantine showed overt favouritism to Christianity after he won the Battle of the Milvian Bridge in 312, and Christianity became the official state religion in 381.  The pagan god Mithras is always depicted wearing a Phrygian cap, very similar to the Crosby Garrett helmet.  The Mithras mystery cult was very popular in the Roman army, and would surely have been well known to anyone serving in a cavalry unit.  Even if the Crosby Garrett helmet originally signified a Trojan, it may also have come to be associated with Mithras.  As Christianity became the prevailing religion in the Roman Empire during the fourth century, owning a helmet that looked like a pagan idol may have become a bit embarrassing, perhaps even dangerous if it attracted hostile attention from zealous Christians. In which case, respectfully interring it may have seemed appropriate, possibly to mark a conversion to Christianity.

It is interesting that the helmet was buried on a terrace with an impressive view over the landscape.  Perhaps that just happened to be the owner’s favourite spot, where he liked to stand and survey his domain (or just admire the view) and so it was a suitable place for a memorial.  However, it does remind me of the location of some Bronze Age tumuli, such as the one on nearby Wild Boar Fell which is placed not on the broad flat summit of the fell (where it would be invisible except to someone right on the summit plateau), but at the break of slope on the edge of the summit ridge, where it commands a wide view and is visible on the skyline to someone looking up from the valley below. There is a theory that some of these tumuli were positioned as a claim of ownership over the lands that could be seen from them, and I wonder if the burial spot for the Crosby Garrett helmet could have been chosen for the same sort of reason.   

Map link: Wild Boar Fell

As well as the helmet’s age, the second issue that caught my attention is the presence of what appears to be a substantial, previously unknown, Roman-period settlement in the upper Eden Valley, presumably with considerable wealth as the Crosby Garrett helmet must have been an expensive and prestigious item.  The hut circles suggest that traditional building forms were in use, yet the titulus may indicate familiarity with Roman military techniques and a willingness to adopt those that were considered useful.  The presence of the Crosby Garrett helmet indicates some sort of connection with an elite Roman cavalry unit.  The connection could be merely one of loot, or possibly a one-off trade transaction, if someone happened to see the helmet, liked the look of it and bought it. Or it may indicate some more substantial relationship. Cavalry auxiliaries in the Roman army were routinely recruited from the provinces.  Perhaps someone from the Crosby Garrett settlement served as a Roman cavalry auxiliary and brought his prestige sports helmet home when his service was finished, or perhaps a cavalryman serving at one of the Roman forts in the area married a local girl and settled down with her.  There may also be a possibility that the settlement supplied the Roman army with something.  It’s not difficult to imagine a retired cavalryman taking up horse-breeding and horse-training, and supplying cavalry mounts to his former colleagues as a profitable business.  As the helmet is second- or third-century and the Roman coins are fourth-century, it may indicate a long-term connection between the Crosby Garrett settlement and the Romans, perhaps extending over several generations.  Again, it is not hard to imagine a family developing a tradition of sons and grandsons serving in their fathers’ and grandfathers’ old cavalry unit, and/or supplying horses to it, although this is pure speculation.

Speculating further, one of the models for the transition from Roman administration to small post-Roman kingdoms postulates that some Roman fort commanders may have become local warlords as central authority broke down, supporting themselves by collecting supplies from the local population instead of taxes when the salary payments stopped arriving.  Such a process would have been smoother – indeed, may have been effectively underway long before the formal end of Roman rule – if local Roman commanders were already closely integrated with the local tribal leaders.  If the finds at Crosby Garrett do indicate an important local settlement with strong ties to the Roman army, it would fit easily into this sort of model.  It may even be significant that Crosby Garrett is in the Eden Valley, which is one of the (many) candidates for the location of the sixth-century kingdom of Rheged (see earlier posts on the location of Rheged here and here). I need hardly say that this is so tenuous that it doesn’t even qualify as speculation.  Nevertheless, the idea that the heroes of sixth-century Rheged might have had some distant connection with the Roman elite cavalryman who owned the spectacular Crosby Garrett helmet has a certain romantic appeal.

 

References

Breeze DJ, Bishop MC (Eds). The Crosby Garrett Helmet. The Armatura Press, ISBN 978-0-9570261-7-9 (£5). Excerpt available online.

CurrentArchaeology, Issue 287 

Jackson R. Roman Cavalry Sports helmet from Crosby Garrett, Cumbria. Report for the Portable Antiquities Scheme, 2010. Available online