about votadini

The Votadini were a Celtic tribe inhabiting the Borders region and the Scottish lowlands in the Roman period. Their capital was at Traprain Law, and their southern stronghold was Yeavering Bell. When the Romans came, they stopped and built a wall between the Votadini and the Empire. Metal smiths and horsemen, the Votadini were a capable military force and received silver from the Romans, presumably as wages for protecting the frontier from the Picts. The Roman auxiliaries, in particular the Scythians, would have liased with Votadini warriors on border skirmishes. The Scythians were highly evolved cavalry, who brought the Dragon to Britain from the orient. They used standards which bore a hollow metal dragons head that carried a red silk windsock behind. Galloping under this device would give the impression that real dragons flew over the cavalry, adding to the terrifying effect of their charge.

You can see these 'Draco' standards at Segedunum. The Scythians wore scale mail, and so did their horses. They would have been very important in shaping the cavalry tactics of the Votadini. When the Roman’s pulled out of Britain, the Picts began raiding the South of the island. The ‘Scots’ or Irish had invaded Powys. The only maintained military force in Britain was the Votadini. They sent a taskforce down to Wales in about 425-440AD and the Irish ‘Scots’ were kicked out so hard they never came back. The grateful Welsh Britons gave the Votadini land in Gwynedd , in exchange for protection from the sea wolves. The Votadini gave the Welsh the symbol of the dragon.

The main forces of the Votadini were based around Edinburgh in about AD 500, when they were known as the Gododdin. The name of the hill, Arthur’s Seat gives a clue as to the future of the Gododdin. When the Saxons began to flood into Britain, they cut off the Gododdin as they were now called, from the other Britons. Realising that to stay on the Firth of Forth, they would be vulnerable to both Saxons and Picts, the Gododdin resettled in the mountains of Wales. The war band of the Gododdin rallied the other Britons and fought back. Giving up areas that were logistically hard to defend, the Britons pulled back into modern Wales. The Britons in the mountains south of the great Caledonian forest, or modern day Cumbria, held out to this day. The Gododdin war chief leading the Britons was known as the Bear. From his name, Yr Arth, celtic for 'The Bear', could have come the name Arthur. The last mention in history of the Gododdin is the battle of Cattraeth, or Catterick, in about 570AD. 300 warriors rode there and allegedly fought 54,000 Saxons. Only one Briton, a bard named Aneirin, survived. He wrote this up as ‘Y Gododdin’, among the oldest British poems.