Next

Someone posted an excerpt from an Old English poem (The Wanderer) in old_english. And that made me start thinking about the next thing I want to write--something set in that time, working around the hints of a story in Wulf and Eadwacer, a poem that seems to be a woman's lament for her exiled lover--maybe.

Here's Wulf and Eadwacer in OE
And here's the translation

I espcially love the last lines:


þæt mon eaþe tosliteð þætte næfre gesomnad wæs,
uncer giedd geador.


One easily slits what never was joined:
our song together.


I know Tolkien pretty much covered the OE territory with the Riders of Rohan, but I love it so much. I think that's what drew me to Tolkien in the first place--I'd just finished a year of OE and Beowulf and was so taken with the language and atmosphere in the poems.

So: does anyone know if this has already been done, exactly (I mean a historical novel set in OE England, drawing on these poems, with a woman as the central figure)? It'll be a while until I get to it, since I'm still a-revising of the Alice story, but I think that's what I'd love next.