(no subject)

One Buddhist concept I like is the idea that in all the vast eons of time, every sentient being has at some time in the past been our mother. So Happy Mother's Day to everyone.

(no subject)

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.