“Wretched” (Wulf and Eadwacer)
Authorship unknown
Translated by Elaine Treharne

For my tribe it’s like being given a tribute.
They’ll want to consume him if he comes on that crowd.
It’s not like that for us.
Wulf’s on one island, I’m on the other.
Fast-bound is that island, surrounded by fen.
They are murderous men there on the island.
They’ll want to consume him if he comes on that crowd.
That’s unlikely for us.
I traced the wide travels of Wulf in my wonderings
when it was rainy weather, and I sat weeping.
Then he, battle-hardened, laid arms about me.
That was pleasure for me; still, there was pain for me too.
Wulf, my Wulf, my wonderings of you
made me sick—your seldom comings,
my mourning mind—not the missing of meals.
Can you hear, Eadwacer? Wulf will carry our wretched whelp to the woods.
That may easily be split apart what was never spliced, the riddle of us both together.

In Old English:

Leodum is minum     swylce him mon lac gife.
Willað hy hine aÞecgan     gif he on Þreat cymeð.
Ungelic is us.
Wulf is on iege,     Ic on oÞerre.
Fæst is Þæt eglond,     fenne biworpen.
Sindon wælreowe     weras Þær on ige.
Willað hy hine aÞecgan     gif he on Þreat cymeð.
Ungelic is us.
Wulfes Ic mines widlastum     wenum dogode
Þonne hit wæs renig weder,     one Ic reotugu sæt.
Þonne mec se beaducafa     bogum bilegde:
Wæs me wyn to Þon;    wæs me hwæÞre eac lað.
Wulf, min Wulf,    wena me Þine
seoce gedydon,    Þine seldcymas,
murnende mod,    nales meteliste.
Gehyrest Þu, Eadwacer?     Uncerne earmne hwelp bireð wulf to wuda.
Þæt mon eaÞe tosliteð     ðætte næfre gesomnad wæs, uncer giedd geador.

(For your annotations of this poem, we’re doing a bit of background historical research–choose a line or word or image and try to discover what specific historical reference the poet is making)

Ashburnham

By Melissa Range, from Scriptorium, 2016.

 

With a name like that,
the librarian shouldn’t have been surprised

when late night hearth-spearks
kindled mantel-tree and wainscot,

turned the hallways to tinder,
cindered the vellum

already almost too fragile to touch–
an antiquarian’s collection

amassed when the monasteries
were dissolved, when books

were flung from scriptoria, torn
parchment used for bootblacks’ rags.

A gospel, an epic, a charter aflame,
the only copies thrown from a window

when the librarian could no longer wait
for the bucket brigade;

the next morning, schoolboys
pocketed the black and buckled scraps.

The poem about the seafaring hero,
bound into a larger volume

of monster-tales and marvels,
smoked as if from dragon-fire,

parts of the tale already worm-eaten,
and though the restorationists

cleaned and pinned the leaves–
fire-brittle, water-warped–

to a line to dry, the story kept
disintegrating, its margins

crumbling further at each touch,
leaving scholars less to copy

of what was already less a copy
than a shadow–the original

unpreserved, irretrievable
the instant the pen quenched

the harp: a smoldering
smothered, a ruin of the tongue.

 

Note

On October 23, 1731, many singular volumes and manuscripts in the Cotton Library, including the only extant copy of Beowulf, were irreparably damaged or destroyed in the Ashburnham House Fire. Some of this poem’s details are from A Report from the Comittee Appointed to View the Cottonian Library . . . [signed by] W. Whiston. Printed for R. Williamson and W. Bowyer, London, 1732. This poem is in memory of John Miles Foley.