"Wulf and Eadwacer" (, approximately ) is an
Old English poem of famously difficult interpretation. It has been variously characterised, (modernly) as an
elegy
An elegy is a poem of serious reflection, and in English literature usually a lament for the dead. However, according to ''The Oxford Handbook of the Elegy'', "for all of its pervasiveness ... the 'elegy' remains remarkably ill defined: sometime ...
, (historically) as a
riddle
A riddle is a statement, question or phrase having a double or veiled meaning, put forth as a puzzle to be solved. Riddles are of two types: ''enigmas'', which are problems generally expressed in metaphorical or allegorical language that requir ...
, and (in speculation on the poem's pre-history) as a song or
ballad
A ballad is a form of verse, often a narrative set to music. Ballads derive from the medieval French ''chanson balladée'' or ''ballade'', which were originally "dance songs". Ballads were particularly characteristic of the popular poetry and ...
with
refrain
A refrain (from Vulgar Latin ''refringere'', "to repeat", and later from Old French ''refraindre'') is the line or lines that are repeated in music or in poetry — the "chorus" of a song. Poetic fixed forms that feature refrains include the vi ...
. The poem's complexities are, however, often asserted simply to defy genre classification, especially with regard to its narrative content. The poem's only extant text is found at folios 100v-101r in the tenth-century
Exeter Book
The Exeter Book, also known as the Codex Exoniensis or Exeter Cathedral Library MS 3501, is a large codex of Old English poetry, believed to have been produced in the late tenth century AD. It is one of the four major manuscripts of Old Engli ...
, along with certain other texts to which it possesses qualitative similarities.
Synopsis
The speaker of the poem is evidently separated from her lover and/or husband, Wulf, both symbolically and materially ('Wulf is on iege, ic on oþerre'
ulf is on an island, I on another, and this separation is seemingly maintained by threat of violence ('willað hy hine aþecgan'
hey will want to ?seize him, possibly by her own people ('Leodum is minum swylce him mon lac gife'
t is to my people as though someone will give him/them a gift/sacrifice. Crying out in her sorrow for her lover, she longs for him to take her in his arms ('þonne mec se beaducafa bogum bilegde'
hen/when the battle-bold one laid his arms around me. She finds comfort in his coming, but it is also bittersweet ('wæs me wyn to þon, wæs me hwæþre eac lað'
here was joy to me in that; it was also hateful to me. She then addresses 'Eadwacer', who may be her husband or her captor, and she appears to identify their 'whelp' ('Uncerne earne hwelp'
ur wretched whelp, generally understood to metaphorically imply 'child' and possibly a reference to the child's being the 'whelp' of a man named 'Wulf'. She describes this child as being taken off 'to the woods' (''to wuda'').
Text and translation
Characters
The most conventional interpretation of the poem is as a lament spoken in the first person by an unnamed woman who is or has in the past been involved with two men whose names are ''Wulf'' and ''Eadwacer'' respectively. Both of these are attested Anglo-Saxon names, and this interpretation is the basis for the common titling of the poem (which is not based on any other manuscript evidence). However, even this point proves controversial. Some interpretations favour a single male character, and virtually all commentaries acknowledge the possibility, though this is the less orthodox of the two views. In recognition of this fact, for example, preeminent Old English scholar Michael Alexander has chosen the title ''"Wulf"'' for his own reproduction of it in ''The Earliest English Poems'' (Penguin, 1973). It has also been known to be titled simply as ''Eadwacer''. The title ''Wulf and Eadwacer'', however, though editorial, has gained such widespread acceptance over time that in the majority of texts it is accepted regardless of the treatment of the titular name(s) and character(s).
Genre
![WestStowAngloSaxon-3F7-827647-wiki](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4f/WestStowAngloSaxon-3F7-827647-wiki.jpg)
For lack of any historical evidence or attestation outside the Exeter Book's text, historical criticism is limited to study of the Exeter Book itself and, particularly, to comparative study of its various contained works. Though it is generally held that the poem's composition occurred at a date significantly earlier than the date of the Exeter Book's own compilation, the degree of the poem's age relative to the codex is difficult if not impossible to ascertain. The dating of the poem in criticism is thus generally limited to what can be ascertained from the known history of the Exeter Book, for which suggested dates of compilation range from 960CE to 990CE. Though the folios on which the poem is recorded are not subject to any significant damage necessitating reconstruction, its textual problems and, particularly, the grammatical confusion of the first lines of the text, have resulted in widespread postulation that the initial lines of the poem may have been lost prior to its inclusion in the Exeter Book but subsequent to an earlier transcription. However, there is no manuscript evidence to directly support this theory. The characterization of the poem as a riddle is the oldest of its various treatments, the argument for which characterization is based largely upon the obscurity of its subject and the placement of the poem within the Exeter Book, where it was included as ''Riddle I'' in Benjamin Thorpe's 1842 translation of the Exeter Book. Additionally, Thorpe left ''Wulf and Eadwacer'' untranslated, and he notes "Of this, I can make no sense, nor am I able to arrange the verses". However, its length and its various textual problems not characteristic of the riddles have led few scholars to pursue a simple riddle interpretation in modern textual study, and few such explanations have garnered serious attention in the recent history of its scholarship. Rather, the thematic similarity of the poem to ''
The Wife's Lament
"The Wife's Lament" or "The Wife's Complaint" is an Old English poem of 53 lines found on folio 115 of the Exeter Book and generally treated as an elegy in the manner of the German '' frauenlied'', or "women's song". The poem has been relatively ...
'', also found in the Exeter Book, has caused most modern scholars to place it, along with the ''Wife's Lament'', solidly within the genre of the ''Frauenlied'', or woman's song and, more broadly, in that of the Old English
elegy
An elegy is a poem of serious reflection, and in English literature usually a lament for the dead. However, according to ''The Oxford Handbook of the Elegy'', "for all of its pervasiveness ... the 'elegy' remains remarkably ill defined: sometime ...
. These two poems are also used as examples of the female voice in broadening early feminist literary history. However, ''Wulf and Eadwacer's'' adjacency to the riddles has continued to inform commentary and interpretation.
Manuscript evidence
![WulfnEad](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/67/WulfnEad.jpg)
Proposals regarding its heritage prior to inscription in the Exeter codex are consequently many and various. The inclusion of a refrain in the text of the poem may support an originally non-English origin, as the refrain is not conventional to the Old English elegy or to any other known Old English poetical form. Among proposed explanations for this anomaly, a
Scandinavia
Scandinavia; Sámi languages: /. ( ) is a subregion#Europe, subregion in Northern Europe, with strong historical, cultural, and linguistic ties between its constituent peoples. In English usage, ''Scandinavia'' most commonly refers to Denmark, ...
n inspiration for the Anglo-Saxon text offers one possible solution to this problem, and has similarly been considered as an explanation for its difficult language, but this theory, as with most others on the poem's prehistory, can only be regarded as hypothetical given lack of substantive corroborating evidence. The suggestion is that the poem derives from some interpretation of the
Wayland story; that the woman is
Beadohilde, Wulf is Wayland, and Eadwacer her angry father. This episode is also discussed in the poem ''
Deor
"Deor" (or "The Lament of Deor") is an Old English poem found on folio 100r–100v of the late-10th-century collection the Exeter Book. The poem consists of a reflection on misfortune by a poet whom the poem is usually thought to name Deor. The po ...
''.
Differing interpretations
Even though the poem is a mere nineteen lines there are many differing interpretations, not least because the poem contains several obscure words and some ambiguous grammar. One interpreter considers that the word ''Eadwacer'' in the poem is not a proper noun, but a simple common noun which means "property watcher". This brings the characters in the poem from three to two, the speaker and her lover, Wulf. If one adopts this interpretation then her exclamation ("Do you hear me, Eadwacer?") could be meant to be sarcastic or a calling out of his manhood. She is saying that his long absences have made him anything but a protector to her and their child whom she worries about. Using this interpretation, the speaker's use of irony when speaking of her lover makes the last two lines make sense. The speaker may be saying that Wulf has been her lover and her child's father, but has never treated her as or actually been her husband. Therefore, the complications of their relationship is easily unbound. However, this seems to be more easily done by Wulf than the speaker herself (Adams).
While debatable among scholars, some argue the character of Wulf is the speaker's child and not her lover. In this instance, she could be lamenting after her son, hoping that he was okay, or mourning his death. One scholar says:
In Wulf and Eadwacer a woman finds herself in a situation typical of Old English poetry, torn between conflicting loyalties. Many commentators see this particular situation as a sexual triangle, with Wulf the woman’s lover and Eadwacer her husband. If so, then Wulf and Eadwacer is not typical, because most Old English loyalty crises occur within the family group…It is…true that romantic or sexual love was not the literary commonplace before the twelfth century it has been since; other loves took precedence…The situation in Wulf and Eadwacer is far more typically Anglo-Saxon than as usually interpreted, if the speaker is understood to be the mother of the person she addresses as Wulf, as well as of the 'whelp' of line 16.
His argument that Wulf is actually the narrator’s son gives a different depth to the elegy—it becomes a poem of mourning for her son that seems to be exiled or dead.
Translations and adaptations
Verse translations and adaptations
* 'Wulf', by
Kevin Crossley-Holland
Kevin John William Crossley-Holland (born 7 February 1941) is an English translator, children's author and poet. His best known work is probably the Arthur trilogy (2000–2003), for which he won the Guardian Prize and other recognition.
Cros ...
, published in ''The Battle of Maldon and Other Old English Poems'' (1965).
* 'Wulf and Eadwacer', by
Michael Alexander, published in ''The Earliest English Poems'' (1966).
* Craig Raine, in ''Rich'' (London: Faber, 1984), p. 27.
* 'Wulf and Eadwacer', by
Fiona Sampson
Fiona Ruth Sampson, is a British poet and writer. She is published in thirty-seven languages and has received a
number of national and international awards for her writing. A former musician, Sampson has written on the links between music a ...
, published in ''Folding the Real'' (2001).
* 'Love's Medium', by
Bernard O'Donoghue
Bernard O'Donoghue FRSL (born 1945) is a contemporary Irish poet and academic.
Early life and education
Bernard O'Donoghue was born on 14 December 1945 in Cullen, County Cork, Ireland, where he lived on a farm. “My father was a terrible and r ...
, published in ''Outliving'' (2003) to celebrate the marriage of two of his ex-students, Elanor Dymott and Simon Marshall.
* 'Wulf and Eadwacer', by
Paul Muldoon
Paul Muldoon (born 20 June 1951) is an Irish poet. He has published more than thirty collections and won a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and the T. S. Eliot Prize. At Princeton University he is currently both the Howard G. B. Clark '21 University Pr ...
, published in ''The Word Exchange: Anglo-Saxon Poems in Translation'' (2010).
*
Four Departures from Wulf and Eadwacer, by
Vahni Capildeo
Vahni Anthony Ezekiel Capildeo (born
Surya Vahni Priya Capildeo; born 1973) is a Trinidad and Tobago-born British writer, and a member of the extended Capildeo family that has produced notable Trinidadian politicians and writers (including V. S. ...
, first published in ''Utter'' (2013).
* 'Wulf and Eadwacer/Daylight is Our Evidence', by Kerry Carnahan, published in the ''
Boston Review
''Boston Review'' is an American quarterly political and literary magazine. It publishes political, social, and historical analysis, literary and cultural criticism, book reviews, fiction, and poetry, both online and in print. Its signature form ...
'' (2017). Carnahan uses the poem to explore the terror of white nationalism and violence against women.
*'Wulf and Eadwacer', by
Miller Wolf Oberman
Miller Wolf Oberman is a former Ruth Lilly Fellow as well as a 2016 winner of the 92nd St Y’s Boston Review/ Discovery Prize. His translation of selections from the “Old English Rune Poem” won Poetry’s John Frederick Nims Memorial Prize ...
, published in
The Unstill Ones' (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017), pp. 6-8 and 57 .
*'From WULF', by Rowan Evans, published in ''Reliquiæ'' (2017).
*M. L. Martin,
W & E' (Action Books, forthcoming), with excerpts published in several journals, including
Waxwing' (2018),
Brooklyn Rail : In Translation' (August 2018), and ''
Columbia Journal
Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhattan ...
'' (2019).
Novels and short stories
* ''Wulf'' by
Hamish Clayton
Hamish is a Scottish masculine given name. It is the anglicized form of the vocative case of the Gaelic name ''Seamus'' or ''Sheumais''. It is therefore, the equivalent of James.
People Given name
* Hamish Bennett, retired New Zealand cricketer ...
, published by Penguin New Zealand (2011). ''Wulf'' tells the story of 'Wulf and Eadwacer' interwoven with that of
Ngāti Toa
Ngāti Toa, Ngāti Toarangatira or Ngāti Toa Rangatira, is a Māori ''iwi'' (tribe) based in the southern North Island and in the northern South Island of New Zealand. Its ''rohe'' (tribal area) extends from Whanganui in the north, Palmerston N ...
chief
Te Rauparaha
Te Rauparaha (c.1768 – 27 November 1849) was a Māori rangatira (chief) and war leader of the Ngāti Toa tribe who took a leading part in the Musket Wars, receiving the nickname "the Napoleon of the South". He was influential in the original ...
.
* The poem is featured heavily in ''After Me Comes the Flood'' by
Sarah Perry
Sarah Grace Perry (born 28 November 1979) is an English author. She has had three novels published, all by Serpent's Tail: ''After Me Comes the Flood'' (2014), ''The Essex Serpent'' (2016) and ''Melmoth'' (2018). Her work has been translated ...
(2014), reflecting the book’s themes of impenetrability, loneliness and love.
Music
* 'Wulf and Eadwacer' by American
neofolk
Neofolk, also known as apocalyptic folk, is a form of experimental music blending elements of folk and industrial music, which emerged in punk rock circles in the 1980s. Neofolk may either be solely acoustic or combine acoustic folk instrumenta ...
band
Blood Axis
Blood Axis are an American band, made up of journalist and author Michael Moynihan (journalist), Michael Moynihan, music producer Robert Ferbrache, and musician and author Annabel Lee.Liner notes of the ''Ultimacy'' compilation
Overview
Early B ...
, released on their album ''Born Again'' (2010).
References
Sources
*Adams, John F. "Wulf and Eadwacer: An Interpretation." Modern Language Notes 73.1 (1958): 1-5.
*Alexander, Michael. "Wulf." ''The Earliest English Poems.'' London: Penguin, 1973. p. 56-62.
*Baker, Peter S. "Wulf and Eadwacer: A Classroom Edition." ''
Old English Newsletter
The ''Old English Newsletter'' is a peer-reviewed academic journal established in 1967. It covers Anglo-Saxon studies and is published by the University of Massachusetts for the Old English Division of the Modern Language Association of America.
T ...
'' 16.2 (1983): 179-180.
*Baker, Peter S. "Wulf and Eadwacer." ''Introduction to Old English.'' Oxford: Blackwell, 2003. p. 206-207.
*Mitchell, Bruce. "Wulf." ''An Invitation to Old English & Anglo-Saxon England.'' Oxford: Blackwell, 1997. p. 308-309.
*Mitchell, Bruce and Robinson, Fred C. "Wulf and Eadwacer." ''A Guide to Old English.'' 6th ed. Oxford: Blackwell, 2001. p. 297-299.
*Treharne, Elaine, ed. "Wulf and Eadwacer." ''Old English and Middle English c.890-c.1400.'' 2nd ed. Oxford: Blackwell, 2001. p. 64-65.
External links
''Wulf & Eadwacer,'' an experimental translation of the Anglo-Saxon poem
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wulf And Eadwacer
Old English poems