Dunedin was founded by the Lay Association of the Free (Presbyterian) Church of Scotland at the head of Otago harbour in 1848. Captain William Cargill was the secular leader and Reverend Thomas Burns, nephew of Robert Burns, the spiritual one. Charles Kettle, the city's Surveyor, emulated Edinburgh and the new city was named Dunedin after Edinburgh, which in the original Old British was Din Eidyn,” the Fort of Eidyn”, “translated” by the Anglo-Saxons as Edin-Burh ( modern Edinburgh) and by the contemporary Gaelic Scots as Dun Eiden (modern Dun Eideann).
Granta Kerr's grandparents came from Islay, were members of the Free Church and spoke only Gaelic, essentially an Ulster Gaelic, which I call Ulidian.When Gaelic was planted on the British mainland, its verbal system was remoulded on the lines of the Old British language,which originally had no future tense. Scottish Gaelic was also to preserve archaic features now lost in Irish Gaelic, an instance of colonial shift also exemplfied by Ullans with mainland Scotch.
Although no literature has survived of the Old British language in Ulster, the Goddodin of Aneirin and the Odes of Taleisin, who wrote in praise of the war-like deeds of his Lord, Urien of Rheged ( Stranraer) in South-West Scotland have survived. The Goddodin is therefore known as the oldest Scottish poem. It tells the story of Mynyddog, sometimes entitled Mwynfawr,”the Wealthy” or “Luxurious”. Both his land and the men of his land are Goddodin, Britons. His capital is Eidyn, also called “the Fort of Eidyn”. Mynyddog gathers together an army of warriors, chiefly his own men from Goddodin, but from other parts of Britain such as “beyond Bannog (Bannockburn)”, from “beyond the Sea of Iuddew (Firth of Forth)” ie Picts, “from Aeron (Ayr)”, “from Elfred (Leeds)” and” from Gwynedd (Wales ) and Mon (Anglesea)”.
About the year 600 AD the army of these 363 Gwyr y Gogledd or “Men of the North” feasted for a year in the Great Hall of Din Eidyn. They then met their enemies, 100,000 strong, the Lloegrwys,” men of Lloegr, or more specifically Dewr and Brynaich (Deira and Bernicia), modern Northumbria, in the Battle of Catraeth (Catterick in Yorkshire) when they were annihilated. Only three, including the poet, survived.
The men of Lloegr are described as Eingl (Angles) and Saeson (Saxons) and are Gynt and Gynhon ie Heathens. The Goddodin are the British tribe known to Ptolemy in the 2nd Century as Vottadini (Wotadini). Gododdin (Guotodin) covered Lothian and most of the Eastern Lowlands. The region of Manau of the Goddodin lay in the environs of Stirling and both Stirling and Edinburgh were Goddodin strongholds.
Links
Dunedin – Wikipedia
Aneirin – Wikipedia
Book of Aneirin – Wikipedia