C D
481“YE THAT PASEN BY THE WEYE” ANONY-
MOUS (ca. 1372) Taking as its starting point the bibli-
cal passage Lamentations 1:12, this poem imaginatively
represents what Christ might have said to onlookers
passing by and seeing him nailed on the cross. He begins
by asking passersby to stop and look at him, and he
then asks whether they have encountered anyone in a
situation such as his, nailed to a cross, with a spear
wound that has penetrated his side and heart.
Remarkable in this piece is that Christ as speaker is
also making a direct appeal to the poem’s contempo-
rary audience. Those who “pasen be þe wey þe” are not
only those who literally walked by Christ as he was
being crucifi ed, but also those hearers and readers of
the poem who move through life without stopping to
refl ect on what Christ did for humankind. The poem
asks that audience to pause for a moment and imagine
themselves as witnesses to the Crucifi xion. In so doing,
it attempts to evoke sympathy for Christ’s suffering,
asking the audience to recognize the sacrifi ce that
Christ made for them and spurring them to refl ect on
whether they have been deserving of that sacrifi ce.
There is a similar poem, which appears in more than
one medieval manuscript, with the same theme and
approach called “Abide, Ye Who Pass By.” Analogous
lines occur also in the play The York Crucifi xion of Christ.
FURTHER READING
Brown, Carleton, ed. Religious Lyrics of the XIVth Century.
Oxford: Clarendon, 1924.
Kathryn C. Wymer
Y GODODDIN ANEIRIN (ca. 600) In his ninth-
century Historia Brittonum, Nennius names a number
of Welsh poets, including Aneirin, whom he describes
as the “son of Dwywai,” perhaps linking him with the
chieftain families of the North. He is the named author
of a long elegiac poem, Y Gododdin, one of the earliest
surviving pieces of Welsh literature. The title refers to
the Gododdin tribe, a Brythonic-speaking Celtic peo-
ple inhabiting the southeastern corner of present-day
Scotland. During the Romano-British era, their tribal
center was at Din Eidyn (Edinburgh), which is why Y
Gododdin is sometimes described as “the oldest Scottish
poem.”
Geography aside, the poem is set in an area that was
culturally and linguistically Welsh, and the poem is
composed in medieval Welsh. Most scholars agree that
Y Gododdin was composed as an oral-formulaic piece
shortly after the Battle of Catraeth (c. 600), today’s
Catterick, North Yorkshire. It consists of 99 alliterative
and internally rhymed STANZAs, which record the bold
deeds of the warriors who fought and fell fi ghting the
Saxons. In the poem, Aneirin claims to be a survivor of
the battle.
Y Gododdin is a celebratory poem, written explicitly to
commemorate the bravery and virtue of the Briton war-
riors led into battle by their chieftain, Mynyddog. All
pledge to fi ght either to victory or to death, and indeed,
nearly all 300 of the Gododdin warriors are slain. Indi-
vidual warriors or small, closely knit groups of warriors
are eulogized separately in individual stanzas. In each,