Place-name evidence and the poem's preservation as part of the Book of Aneirin show it must have been composed somewhere in modern day Northern England or Southern Scotland, in one of the British kingdoms which controlled parts of that region between the 5th and the 11th century. The poem mentions a river called Derwenyd , deriving from the Brittonic , the origin of the modern river name Derwent which is found at various locations in Northern England. The mention of a rayadyr (modern Welsh rhaedr, "waterfall") on the Derwenyd also argues against the Durham Derwent, which has no waterfalls along its course. For this reason, and its proximity to mountains (vynyd in the poem) R.G. Gruffydd proposed the Cumbrian Derwent as the identity of Derwenyd , and this view is now generally accepted. The identity of the animal referred to in the text as llewyn has been widely debated by scholars. Some, such as Ifor Williams and John Koch, believed it to refer to the red fox, Gwyn Williams and T. Conran translated it as "wildcat", whereas still others, such as Alfred Owen Hughes Jarman and Eric Partridge, identified it as the Lynx. The presence of a lynx in 7th century Britain was initially thought to be unlikely as the animal was believed to have been extirpated from the island long before the historical period. However, radiocarbon dating of lynx bones discovered at Kinsey cave in Craven revealed that lynx were definitely present in the 5th century. Kinsey cave is only 80 km southwest of the Cumbrian Derwent, which is the most widely accepted location for the river Derwenyd mentioned in Dinogad's smock, making the survival of the lynx in the area into the seventh century plausible. Following the radiocarbon dating of the Kinsey cave bones, John Koch stated that, while he still believed llewyn to refer to a fox, the local extinction of the lynx meant that no words for it had survived into modern Celtic languages, and therefore it was not impossible that llewyn did indeed mean "lynx".
Place-name evidence and the poem's preservation as part of the Book of Aneirin show it must have been composed somewhere in modern day Northern England or Southern Scotland, in one of the British kingdoms which controlled parts of that region between the 5th and the 11th century. The poem mentions a river called Derwennyd , deriving from the Brittonic , the origin of the modern river name Derwent which is found at various locations in Northern England. The mention of a rayadyr (modern Welsh rhaedr, "waterfall") on the Derwennyd also argues against the Durham Derwent, which has no waterfalls along its course. For this reason, and its proximity to mountains (vynyd in the poem) R.G. Gruffydd proposed the Cumbrian Derwent as the identity of Derwennyd , and this view is now generally accepted. The identity of the animal referred to in the text as llewyn has been widely debated by scholars. Some, such as Ifor Williams and John Koch, believed it to refer to the red fox, Gwyn Williams and T. Conran translated it as "wildcat", whereas still others, such as Alfred Owen Hughes Jarman and Eric Partridge, identified it as the Lynx. The presence of a lynx in 7th century Britain was initially thought to be unlikely as the animal was believed to have been extirpated from the island long before the historical period. However, radiocarbon dating of lynx bones discovered at Kinsey cave in Craven revealed that lynx were definitely present in the 5th century. Kinsey cave is only 80 km southwest of the Cumbrian Derwent, which is the most widely accepted location for the river Derwennyd mentioned in Dinogad's smock, making the survival of the lynx in the area into the seventh century plausible. Following the radiocarbon dating of the Kinsey cave bones, John Koch stated that, while he still believed llewyn to refer to a fox, the local extinction of the lynx meant that no words for it had survived into modern Celtic languages, and therefore it was not impossible that llewyn did indeed mean "lynx".
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