Wulf and Eadwacer

Wulf and Eadwacer survives in the Exeter Book, a manuscript donated to Exeter Cathedral by Bishop Leofric around 1072. It's one of only four major surviving collections of Old English poetry. The book also contains The Wanderer, The Seafarer, and nearly 100 riddles. Wulf and Eadwacer sits right next to the riddles, and for centuries scholars thought it was one.

Scholars have been arguing about this poem since the 19th century. Is it a love triangle? A woman trapped between a husband and a lover? A mother losing her child? An allegory? A riddle? Every reading makes sense and none are definitive. The poem resists interpretation the way a river resists being held.

This is one of the only Old English poems written from a woman's perspective. Whether composed by a woman or not, the voice is unmistakably female. She speaks of her body, her longing, her joy-and-loathing. In a literature dominated by warriors and kings, this voice cuts through like nothing else.

Until 1888, Wulf and Eadwacer was printed as Riddle 1 in editions of the Exeter Book. Scholar Henry Bradley was the first to argue it was a separate dramatic poem, not a riddle. The debate about where riddle ends and poem begins says something about the work itself — it has always refused to be categorized.

Many words in this poem are still recognizable: is, on, me, us, was, and, never, wolf, wood, hear, sick, mood, other, fast. The bones of English haven't changed. You're reading a poem from the 900s and you can still feel the shapes of modern words inside it.

Old English had three number categories: singular (I), dual (we two), and plural (we all). Uncer means 'of us two' — a grammatical form that died out by Middle English. No modern English word can express what uncer does in a single syllable: this belongs to exactly two people, no more.