Details of Taliesin's life are sparse. The first mention of him occurs in the Saxon genealogies appended to four manuscripts of the "Historia Brittonum". The writer names five poets, among them Taliesin, who lived in the time of Ida of Bernicia (fl. mid-6th century) and a British chieftain, (O)utigirn (Modern Welsh Eudeyrn). This information is considered fairly credible, since he is also mentioned by Aneirin, another of the five mentioned poets, who is famed as the author of "Y Gododdin", a series of elegies to the men of the kingdom of Gododdin (now Lothian) who died fighting the Angles at the Battle of Catraeth around 600.