The Wanderer (Old English poem)

The Wanderer is an Old English poem from the 10th century, preserved in the Exeter Book. The date of composition is unknown but most certainly predates 1070 AD, as it was probably part of an earlier, oral literary culture.

It is a profoundly mournful poem, to the extent that it is an elegy, in which the author, an aged man, speaks of an attack upon his people that happened in his youth. In this attack, his close friends and kin were all killed, and memories of the slaughter have remained with him all his life. He questions the wisdom of the impetuous decision to engage a possibly superior fighting force: the wise man engages in warfare to preserve civil society, and must not rush into battle but seek out allies when the odds may be against him. This poet finds little glory in bravery for bravery's sake.

Three notable elements of the poem are the use of the "Beasts of Battle" motif, the "ubi sunt" formula and the siþ-motif.

The "Beasts of Battle" motif is here modified to include not only the standard eagle, raven and wolf, but also a "sad-faced man". It has been suggested that this is the poem's protagonist.

The "ubi sunt" or "where is" formula is here in the form "hwær cwom", the Old English phrase "where has gone". The use of this emphasises the sense of loss that pervades the poem.

The preoccupation with the siþ-motif in Anglo-Saxon literature is matched in many post-conquest texts where journeying is central to the text. A necessarily brief survey of the corpus might include Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress, Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, Samuel Taylor Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and William Golding's Rites of Passage. Not only do we find physical journeying within "The Wanderer" and those later texts, but a sense in which the journey is responsible for a visible transformation in the mind of the character making the journey.

The Wanderer vividly describes his loneliness and yearning for the bright days past, and concludes with an admonition to put faith in God, "in whom all stability dwells". It has been argued that this admonition is a later addition, as it lies at the end of a poem that is otherwise solely secular in its concerns.

The structure of the poem is of four stress-lines of different lengths, divided by a caesura. Like most Old English Poetry, it is written in alliterative meter.

Reference in Tolkien

In J. R. R. Tolkien's The Two Towers, Aragorn sings a song about the kingdom of Rohan that begins:

Where now the horse and the rider? Where is the horn that was blowing?

Where is the helm and the hauberk, and the bright hair flowing...

In the film version of The Two Towers, Peter Jackson takes liberties so that Tolkien's prose has been somewhat abridged, and they are instead uttered by King Theoden (whose name is Anglo Saxon means 'chief') before the Battle of Helm's Deep:

Where is the horse and rider? Where is the horn that was blowing?

They have passed like rain on the mountain, like a wind in the meadow.

The days have gone down in the West, behind the hills into shadow.

How did it come to this?

Whichever version is considered this poem is clearly based on this section of The Wanderer:

Where is the horse gone? Where the rider?

Where the giver of treasure?

Where are the seats at the feast?

Where are the revels in the hall?

Alas for the bright cup!

Alas for the mailed warrior!

Alas for the splendour of the prince!

How that time has passed away,

dark under the cover of night,

as if it had never been!

See also

• Deor
• The Seafarer

External links

• The Wanderer Project
• The Wanderer Online text of the poem
• The Wanderer Online text of the poem with modern English translation
• The Wanderer A modern musical setting of the poem