| Gweith Gwen Ystrat | |
| Alternative Title(S): | "The Battle of Gwen Ystrad" |
| Author(S): | unknown |
| Ascribed To: | Taliesin |
| Language: | late Old Welsh or Middle Welsh |
| Manuscript(S): | Book of Taliesin (NLW MS Peniarth 2) |
| Genre: | praise poem |
| Period Covered: | late 6th century |
| Personages: | Urien, prince of Rheged |
Urien Yrechwydd (in English: Urien of Yrechwydd) is a late Old Welsh or Middle Welsh heroic poem found uniquely in the Book of Taliesin. It is among those poems in the manuscript thought by Ifor Williams possibly to have originated as part of a sixth-century corpus of Canu Taliesin, a series of poems really composed by the semi-legendary sixth-century court poet of Rheged, Taliesin.[1]
This poem and another of the Taliesin corpus Argoed Llwyfain, characterise Urien as lord of Yrechwydd/Erechwydd, a place whose whereabouts has occasioned much debate, with implications for guessing the historical extend of the kingdom of Rheged.[2] The Welsh word echwydd is thought to have meant 'fresh (of water); fresh water; ?cataract', suggesting that Yrechwydd was in the vicinity of fresh water. The most recent extensive studies, by Andrew Breeze, conclude that
Sir Ifor Williams thought it might be the Lake District, with plenty of fresh water (if not too much), where he is hesitantly followed by John Koch. But this makes no sense. The great area of fresh water in the Old North was that on the lower Ouse and Trent, a prodigious marsh that stretched from north of York to south of Gainsborough, sixty miles away in Lincolnshire. We can be sure that Yrechwydd was the area bordering that marsh, and hence equivalent to modern North Yorkshire, including York itself.[3] [4] [5]