As in the case of the Ossianic compositions, a great dialectic battle was fought over the origin of these Cymric poems, some, such as Malcolm Laing and John Pinkerton, denying, and others affirming their antiquity, but the outcome of the controversy has been to establish their genuine authenticity. While it is freely admitted by the best critics that many of the pieces traditionally attributed to Taliessin are not older than the twelfth century, no one now disputes that Aneurin, Taliessin, Llywarch Hên, and Myrddin were famous bards who lived and composed in the sixth century, and that we have some of their poems preserved in the above-mentioned books with the exception, perhaps, of Myrddin’s. The honour of the title “King of the bards” lies between the first two, both of whom have been so designated. Stephens, in his _Literature of the Cymry_, gives the palm to Aneurin. His great poem, the “Gododin,” has attracted much attention on account of its peculiar character and recognised historic value. It is practically divided into two parts by stanza forty-five, where the author speaks in his own name. The first part is consistent throughout, and Dr. Skene regards it as the original, as distinguished from the second, which may be a later continuation made up of other incidents. The poem is found in the Book of Aneurin, and various theories have been advanced as to the locality and date of the battle it treats of. One of these assumed that the subject was a struggle between the tribe Ottadeni and the Saxons in the sixth century. Another, that it referred, on the contrary, to the traditional slaughter of the British chiefs at Stonehenge by Hengest in “The Plot of the Long Knives.” A third would find in it the battle mentioned by Bede as having been fought between Aidan, King of the Scots of Dalriada, and Ethelfrid, King of Northumbria, in 603. A fourth theory suggests _that_ between Oswy and Penda. But the name of the Scottish Donald Brec emerges in the story, “A phen dyvynwal vrych brein ae cnoyn,” which in English means, “And the head of Donald Brec the ravens gnawed it.” The scene of the struggle appears to have been Catraeth and Gododin. And it is interesting to note that one of the editors of the _Myvyrian Archaiology_ (Mr. Edward Williams) locates it in Roxburghshire, as the battle fought between the Cymry and Saxons in 570. Villemarqué, on the other hand, in his, _Poems des Bardes Bretons_, places the contest on the banks of the Calder in Lanarkshire in 578. While Dr. Skene is equally sure that the requirements of the case are met “in that part of Scotland where Lothian meets Stirlingshire in the two districts of Gododin and Catraeth, both washed by the sea of the Firth of Forth, and where the great Roman wall terminates at Caredin, or the Fort of Eidinn.” The style of the poem may be gleaned from the following rendering:—