"The Husband's Message" is a title given to this poem by later scholars. Most Anglo-Saxon poems like this one are anonymous (we don't know who wrote them), and they don't have actual titles. This tacked-on-later title is a little boring and uninspired if you ask us. It also might be misleading, since the poem doesn't actually say that the lord and lady are married. It says many times that the two spoke vows of some sort, but who knows if those were marriage vows. Couldn't they have simply been vows of love, or a promise to marry at some later date? How does the assumption that these two are married change your response to the poem – or does it?