Get out the microscope, because we’re going through this poem line-by-line.
Lines 6-8
ærest min hlaford gewat heonan of leodum
ofer yþa gelac; hæfde ic uhtceare
hwær min leodfruma londes wære.
First my lord left his people
for the tumbling waves; I worried at dawn
where on earth my leader of men might be.
- The Old English word "hlaford" refers here to the speaker's husband. Many translations also assume this term doubles as lord of the people, or as it appears in this version: "leader of men."
- Regardless of the husband's actual significance in the community, we learn here that he has left. This is troubling, no doubt, to his wife, who wonders where he has gone. It's also unclear why he left. Some critics believe it was because of a feud, or even a crime.
- "Uhtceare," in Old English, refers to the time of night right before dawn. During this period, according to Anglo-Saxon tradition, emotions of grief, worry—and also sexual longing—were especially pronounced.
- Here the poem introduces an ancient trope as common to Old English narrative as it is to your average Nicholas Sparks romance: the lament of a lost lover.
Lines 9-14
ða ic me feran gewat folgað secan,
wineleas wræcca, for minre weaþearfe.
Ongunnon þæt þæs monnes magas hycgan
þurh dyrne geþoht, þæt hy todælden unc,
þæt wit gewidost in woruldrice
lifdon laðlicost, ond mec longade.
When I set out myself in my sorrow,
a friendless exile, to find his retainers,
that man's kinsmen began to think
in secret that they would separate us,
so we would live far apart in the world,
most miserably, and longing seized me.
- The wife decides to leave her home in search of her husband (9-10). Then things start getting confusing.
- Whether or not she ends up leaving at all is unclear.
- The speaker explains that some of her husband's kinsmen, or "magas," devise a secret plan to separate ("todælden") them (12). Here's the weird part, though: if the husband left for a foreign country, aren't they already separated? Certain translations adapt this phrase to mean "keep the pair apart," though that meaning is not stated explicitly in the text.
- Either way, the syntax of the poem does not yield a clearly defined solution to this issue of plot. Or, in simpler terms: it just don't make no sense.
- The bit about the plotting kinsmen sounds a little like that one Shakespearean romantic tragedy, does it not? "Two households, both alike in dignity…"