Note 327 — Chapter V · THE FOUR KINGDOMS.
Reading edition
Bede says that ‘prope fluvium Winuaed pugnatum est,’ and ‘Hoc autem bellum rex Osuiu in regione Loidis tertio decimo regni sui anno, decimo septimo die kal. Decembrium cum magna utriusque populi utilitate confecit.’
The continuator of Nennius, ‘Et ipse (Osguid) occidit Pantha in Campo Gaii et nunc facta est Strages Gai campi et reges Britonum interfecti sunt qui exierant cum rege Pantha in expeditione usque ad urbem quæ vocatur Judeu. Tunc reddidit Osguid omnes divitias quæ erant cum eo in urbe, usque in Manau, Pende et Penda distribuit ea regibus Britonum, id est, Atbret Judeu. Solus autem Catgabail rex Guenedote regionis cum exercitu suo evasit de nocte consurgens; qua propter vocatus est Catgabail Catguommed.’Catguommed.’—Chron. Picts and Scots, p. 13.
It is obvious that the event in the second sentence preceded the first, and that it was a night attack.
Florence of Worcester says that Penda with thirty legions and an equal number of noble chiefs entered Bernicia for the purpose of attacking Oswy.
There is a very ingenious paper by Mr. D. W. Nash, in the Cambrian Journal, vol. iv., Second Series, p. 1, in which, identifying this battle with the battle of Catraeth, which forms the subject of the poem of the Gododin, he was the first to point out the probability of the scene of the battle being in the north. He identifies the town Judeu with Bede’s Giudi, but supposes it to be the same as Jedburgh, and endeavours to show from the poem itself that it relates to this battle. The author concurs with him so far that the battle in which Penda was slain took place in the north, and that by the ‘regio Loidis’ Lothian is meant, and he can hardly doubt that the name ‘Gaius Campus’ is merely a Latin rendering of Catraeth; but he cannot agree in the identification with Jedburgh, because Catraeth was evidently on the sea-shore, and Bede, whose authority cannot be questioned, places Giudi in the Firth of Forth. He can discover no resemblance between the incidents in the poem and this battle, though the locality may be the same. Tighernac has at 656 ‘Cath Pante regis Saxonum in quo ipse cum xxx regibus cecidit. Ossiu victor erat.’ The Chronicle annexed to Nennius has in 656 ‘Strages Gaii Campi,’ and in 657, ‘Pantha occisio,’ thus placing the battle and the death of Penda in two different years, but this is against all authorities.