Manaw Gododdin
Manaw Gododdin was adjacent to – and possibly included in – Eidyn, the region surrounding modern Edinburgh.
[3][4] In the chapters of the Historia Brittonum discussing the circumstances leading up to the death of Penda of Mercia in 655, Oswiu of Northumbria is besieged at "Iudeu" by Penda and his allies and offers up the wealth (i.e. the royal dignities) of that place, which had been recently captured by the Northumbrians (the "Restoration of Iudeu", so-called), as well as that which he held "as far as Manaw".
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle gives the year as 710, saying that "Beorhtfrith the ealdorman fought against the Picts between Haefe and Caere".
It was common to retain original place-names, but to alter the pronunciation to be in accord with the language that was then current.
William Forbes Skene (The Four Ancient Books of Wales, 1868) has a chapter on "Manau Gododdin and the Picts",[22] and later historians either repeat him or cite him, but do not add more.
[27] Christopher Snyder (An Age of Tyrants, 1998) mentions Manaw twice in passing, saying nothing about it there or in his references to the literary Y Gododdin.
[28] D. P. Kirby (The Earliest English Kings, 1991) mentions Manaw several times, but only in passing and with no information about it.
[31] The earliest reliable information on the region of the Firth of Forth during the time when Manaw Gododdin existed is from the archaeology of Roman Britain.
However, the Romans were frequently at war with the more northerly peoples now known as Picts, and their military lines of communication (i.e. their roads) were well-fortified.
The earliest reliable historical reference to the peoples of Northern Britain is from the Geography of Ptolemy in c. AD 150.
The Picts were constantly pressing southward, and by the early 3rd century the Roman Emperor Severus ineffectively campaigned against them.
Known then as the Maeatae, the local Picts would ultimately push south to the Firth of Forth and beyond, and by the 7th century the Votadini were being squeezed between them and the Anglian Bernicians, who were expanding northward.
The definitive years were the middle of the 7th century, when Penda of Mercia led an alliance of Mercians, Cymry (both from the north and from Gwynedd), East Anglians, and Deirans against Bernicia.
Penda was defeated and killed at the Battle of Winwaed in 655, ending the alliance and cementing Bernician control over all of Britain between the English Midlands and the Scottish firths.
