| The primary text of is executed in a insular half-uncial as per the Lindesfarne Gospels and Book
of Kells, using 8th and 9th century simple forms for the large capitals detailing the initial address 'It is' and
the recipient's name. The illumination style draws from many sources; the zoomorphs ornamenting the pieces found
at Sutton Hoo (7-9th century); the knotwork carpet pages of the Lindesfarne Gospels, book of Kells and the
Book of Dimma (8th century). The framework follows the style of a carpet page from any of these sources, with
geometric shapes patterned in shaped layers to highlight the knotwork shapes.
The circular text around the body of the document is a selection from the Y Gododdin; the earliest surviving
Welsh poem. While the manuscript in which it is preserved, commonly called the Book of Aneirin, dates to the 13th
century, it is generally agreed that the manuscript preserves a much older text. The Y Gododdin is a series of
elegies for the men of the Gododdin who died at a battle in Catraeth - now thought to be Catterick in Yorkshire -
around the year 600. The poem thus is an account of the fighting which occurred between Saxons and Britons at the
time of the Saxon invasions. One of the early consequences of that invasion was the cutting off of the kingdoms in
the north from those in the southwest (one study of the poem, by Kenneth Hurlstone Jackson, is called The Gododdin:
The Oldest Scottish Poem); this poem seems to report on a failed attempt to regain some of that lost ground, and may
bear references to what eventually became Arthurian/Grail myth.
The stanzaic text, in its original 13th century Welsh, is taken from Ifor Williams's Canu Aneirin translation
(Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1938), the most authoritative version of the work. The poetic text begins on
the right center, traces around the bottom and arcs up over the top to meet the beginning again. It is written
entirely in the original welsh, using the same calligraphic hand as the primary award text.
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