362 Study Questions: "The Wife's Lament"
Vocabulary:
Old English, Anglo-Saxon, oral-formulaic, elegy, lament,
peace-weaver, blood-feud, hapax legomenon
Identification: the Wanderer (the earth-walker)
Lecture Notes:
- How might the Old Norse tradition's The Lay of Brunhilde
in the Edda shed some light on a possible interpretation
of this poem?
- What unusual grammatical feature does this poem have
in the original Old English concerning its pronouns?
- The first sentence of the third paragraph states, "My
lord commanded me to stay in this place." The word
your translator Alfred David diplomatically calls "place"
is in Anglo-Saxon herheard. This word is a hapax
legomenon--it appears nowhere else in recorded writing.
Some editors have suggested it might actually be two words--either
her heard "hard place, cruel place"
or herh eard "temple-land." How does
each of these possible readings radically change the setting?
How does it radically change our interpretation of the
woman's lord who commanded her to remain there?
- In the fourth paragraph, the wife is told to live
in an "earth-cave." The text is rather blurry,
and some scholars suggest the word may be eor∂-scraefe
("earth-room") or ear∂-sele
("earth-hall"). How might these change the
setting?
- How likely is it that the actual author of this poem
is female, even though the poetic speaker is female?
Introduction Questions:
Why do Anglo-Saxon scholars think the speaker of this poem
is female? The editorial introduction assumes what about
the identity of the "lord" she refers to?
Reading Questions:
- What does the speaker say her subject-matter will be
in this poem?
- What happened to the wife's lord that has left her alone?
- How did the man's kinfolk behave when the wife went
to seek shelter with them?
- Where did the wife's lord command her to live?
- The wife "weeps her exile" when she sees what
lying together?
- Why do you suppose the wife says a young person must
have a "glad countenance" even though that person
experiences heart-ache?
Identifications: the Wife
A: "First, my lord went away from
his people here across the storm-tossed sea. At daybreak
I wondered in what land my lord might be. Then I set out--a
friendless exile--to seek a household to shelter me against
wretched need. Hiding their thoughts, the man's kinfolk
hatched a plot to separate us so that we two should live
most unhappy and farthest from one another in the wide world.
And I felt longing."
B: "I was told to live in an earth-cave
beneath an oak tree amid the forest. this earthen hall is
old. I am overcome with longing. These dales are dark, and
hills high, bitter bulwarks overgrown with briers, a joyless
dwelling. Here very often my lord's going away has wrenched
me. There are couples on earth, lovers lying together in
bed, while at dawn I come out of this cave to sit under
the oak tree the summerlong day alone."