Madog Elfed (Modern Welsh spelling; Madawc Elvet in standardised Middle Welsh spelling) is a hero mentioned in the medieval Welsh poem ''
Y Gododdin
''Y Gododdin'' () is a medieval Welsh poem consisting of a series of elegies to the men of the Brittonic kingdom of Gododdin and its allies who, according to the conventional interpretation, died fighting the Angles of Deira and Bernicia a ...
'', set sometime around 600, who fights and dies at the
Battle of Catraeth
The Battle of Catraeth was fought around AD 600 between a force raised by the Gododdin, a Brythonic people of the ''Hen Ogledd'' or "Old North" of Britain, and the Angles of Bernicia and Deira. It was evidently an assault by the Gododdin party on ...
. His real place in history has been the subject of debate.
The name ''Madog'' appears several times in ''Y Gododdin''. In one stanza, it is associated with the epithet ''Elfed'':
This is the only stanza clearly to refer specifically to a 'Madog Elfed', but the other mentions of a 'Madog' are usually assumed to refer to the same character: the poem has warriors returning to 'Madog's tent' ('Pebyll Madawc'). Stanza 31 mentions him in passing alongside other fallen warriors. It is possible but not certain that we are to imagine Madog as king of Elfed.
The Elfed in Madog's epithet has traditionally been assumed to refer to the Brittonic kingdom of
Elmet
Elmet ( cy, Elfed), sometimes Elmed or Elmete, was an independent Brittonic kingdom between about the 5th century and early 7th century, in what later became the smaller area of the West Riding of Yorkshire then West Yorkshire, South Yorkshir ...
in what is now West Yorkshire, in which case ''Y Gododdin'' provides interesting evidence for the salience of this kingdom in either post-Roman history, later Welsh literary imagination, or both. However, recent work has suggested that the name ''Elfed'' could have occurred elsewhere in Britain too, including
Elvet
Elvet is an area of the city of Durham, in County Durham, in England. It is situated on the opposite side of the River Wear from Durham Cathedral and forms the south-eastern part of central Durham. Elvet is currently unparished. Historically, ...
near Durham, and
Elvet Hundred in Carmarthenshire,
[Tim Clarkson, ''The Men of the North: The Britons of Southern Scotland'' (Edinburgh: Donald, 2010), .] and that Madog Elfed might in fact have been imagined to have come from either of those.
References
{{reflist
Monarchs of Elmet
Hen Ogledd