The Seafarer and The Wanderer : The Cold Waters of Life's Journey - Commentary and Analysis

Imagining another time and place far distant from where a person currently lives can be difficult. Popular culture and stories often confuse what the reality might be for those from long ago and far away. Anachronisms of people, events, clothing, and how one lived are easy to add into any perceptions. England during the period of Old English is one time period when those who are not familiar with it might be mistaken about what life was like for those who lived then. Mention Old English and what comes to mind is often what existed of the island nation many generations later. There were no knights in shining armor or damsels in distress wearing fancy dresses. Kings that ruled vast territories and commanded large armies on horseback wouldn’t exist for a few hundred years. Such romantic scenes are much later during the middle ages, if they ever really existed outside of imaginative works of art and letters.

The real Old English time period was more humble and rather dangerous. It is placed between the time that Rome left the island because of internal and external threats to its own empire, and Alfred the Great’s son becomes the ruler of England. The poems were written when tribes led by chieftains fought for land and survival. Often foreign invaders (and a bit later the Vikings) sought to conquer the locals. Factions rose and fell with deadly skirmishes to take control or revenge. The common folk mostly either lived off the land when there was a good season of crop growth, or fought in wars commanded by the local Lords. Disease was rampant and death a basic part of life. Fortifications were often nothing more than the local church house or manor. There was no reliable safety from raiders or soldiers. It was an untamed frontier filled with immigrants.

Dates for when The Seafarer and The Wanderer were written is not exactly known.  As with most Old English poems, they were preserved in the Anglo-Saxon Exeter Book as part of its collection. They came from the time described above when living was hard and Christianity the newly dominant cultural religion. Both have clear similarities in descriptions, moods, and themes in the text.  No doubt they were written by different authors,  but came from the the same kind of life experiences voyaging away from their original home. The commonalities are very intriguing and give some insight into what it was like during a chaotic period of history.

What stands out before anything else is the cold. The poems start out describing a chilling season in the dead of winter. Alone on a ship they feel sorrow and fear among the ice filled waves crashing against their ships. In The Seafarer he is brought by a “night watch” to the prow or above deck to witness the dangerous sea thrashing its waves. The night watch is just as scared, as they move precariously next to the cliffs that could dash the ship into pieces. In The Wanderer, the poet says they are controlling the direction of the ship in the harsh winter ice waters. Both of them fear for their lives, but they also have much more personal concerns.

The reasons why The Seafarer is traveling is not spelled out in the poem. He is much more concerned with the voyage itself. The Wanderer on the other hand is much more clear on what brought him across these cold winter waters to travel in exile. At first it seemed that he might have killed his Lord, since “I hid my Lord in the darkness of the Earth,” and refuses to tell anyone. Later on in the poem there is more hints of what happened. He sleeps and remembers all the good times had before forced to leave the home he once knew.  But, he wakes up to remember the terrible condition he finds himself in traveling alone on the sea as a stranger to all. He describes how “war took off some” and destroyed a city. Bodies were ravaged by birds and wolves, if they weren’t buried first like the Lord he put in the dark of the Earth. Most likely the wanderer escaped death during a violent invasion of his homeland. The poem might have been written as a declaration of survivors guilt.

Hints are dropped in both poems that the writers are old and nearing the end of their lives. For The Wanderer all his friends and kinsmen are long gone, indicating years have past since he left home. He states that “a man cannot call himself wise” unless he has years behind them. They need to learn how not to be too eager or too greedy in his behavior. They must think before they make promises and act, having gotten rid of boastful pride. After all, the Wanderer most likely saw the results of a less wise life with the destruction of his homeland. The destruction left by a North Hailstorm was mostly likely a metaphor suggesting the invaders who sacked his old place. The Seafarer is no less thoughtful about the past, although in less specific terms. He looks at the world around him and questions where all the great kings and rulers have gone. He longs for the days when kings were doers of good and giver of treasure to the deserving. Those who remain are weak and live off the past actions of others. He then describes the physical condition of a dying (if not already dead) man with pale face, failing body, graying beard, and eventually losing all senses. Giving the dead gold buried with them does not improve their lost condition. The release of death is the end of exile.

Exile in life for the Seafarer is self-determined, not based on any force of evacuation by violence. Despite all the cold and sorrowful outlook on life, something internal draws him to take to the waters. The poem’s perspective is from the winter months, but other seasons are mentioned. He talks about the Groves that blossom, indicating the springtime and new beginnings. The crops in the fields grow along with the size of cities. There is a feeling of renewal that strengthens the resolve to once again leave the sedentary life and become an exile on a voyage again. Not that all is well with the spring starting a new season of travel. The sound of the cuckoo bird in the summer is a sign of the hardships that lucky rich warriors cannot understand. But, he doesn’t want that kind of life. Staying secure on the land is a kind of death, when he really wants to follow the whale’s path wherever fate might take him. He trusts in the Lord of Heaven more than the insecurities of mortal life.

Underneath the hardships, declared sorrows, ice cold waters, and hail storms, the poems are not about the physical journeys of exiled sailors. There is a religious and moral message that both of them want to pass on to the readers. Once again, what they have to say is very similar to each other with only slight disagreements or differences. The Seafarer is much more direct in his approach to what he is wanting the reader to spiritually understand. As a traveler who seeks to find a home in a foreign land, the least he has to worry about is his Lord. No earthly pleasures of music, women, glory, or any such mortal experiences exist for him. The treasures of the world don’t last very long. All people’s lives end either with disease, old age, or at the end of a sword in a violent struggle. Living a life full of good deeds is all that remains. Those who do good in the world will be remembered by those who come after, while the angels in heaven share in the joy of an eternal reward. The wanderer agrees that life is harsh and hardly worth the trouble. He councils to not talk about the grief and sorrow they are feeling unless they “already know the remedy” - that most likely means religious instructions. The only one who can understand the inner turmoil and help sooth the raw emotions is the father in heaven, or God. In both poems, it is the next life for those who live good lives where true treasures and happiness can be found.

In the modern Western world communication allows people to instantaneous communicate to anyone far away from each other. The idea that we can be exiled or do so on our own is not easily geographically probable anymore. For most of human history it only took going a few miles away from a city or settlement to become lost. Yet, some studies have suggested that we humans are alone as individuals like never before. The Internet might be a place of infinite personal connections with those we know and people we will never meet, but we remain like The Wanderer hiding our true selves. We keep our experiences locked within our hearts and minds even when letting the whole world see our lives. It is a psychological exile where the search for new information and experiences masks the loss or lack of real relationships. Considering the poems views, the world has changed only cosmetically. We break up into factions while wars continue to destroy towns and cities. People seek self-made exile in video games and other quasi reality entertainment, while not paying attention to other people. It can be a lonely and sad existence equal to the Seafarer and Wanderer.

Consider the questions:

Why do you think the two poems are so similar in theme and viewpoint?

How can you compare the personalities of the two exiles by the differences?

What might the reasons be today for a person to take a very long or seasonal journey?

The Husband's Message and The Wife's Lament Analysis: Love and Separation

The Old English Poems The Husband's Message and The Wife's Lament have come from what is called the Exeter Book, a collection of Anglo Saxon poems collected around the first part of 100 AD by monks. There is an argument if the Riddle 60 is its own poem or related to The Husband’s message as they have similarities about writing on wood. The first part of The Husband’s message has been lost to time, and therefore the speculation that Riddle 60 is the true preamble. Both poems talk about a tree or wood conveying a message between two people. It most likely is a secret code, as only the two intended are supposed to understand the conversation. This theory of secrets might be contradicted by The Husband’s message where it has been delivered by a messenger, depending on how personified one interprets the wood in that poem. A person could have read to the wife or simply delivered the wood that holds the writing.

The Husband wants to know if the wife has been loyal to him, as he is to her. He continually reminds her of the many oaths they made to bind them in love. He insists that everything would be normal for them if he wasn’t exiled because of a feud with powerful people. He calls her “The bracelet-adorned one,” to bring to mind a physical representation of the love vows. This is probably similar to a wedding ring that is used for the same, although far more official, purpose. Those who wear a ring are promised exclusively to love one individual. Of course, that doesn’t mean the relationships remain strong or permanent. He goes further by setting up a kind of long term test, almost begging her to travel when the cuckoo bird signals the season to go by sea. He wants her to leave the safety of shore and find him on a trip in the open waters. It is the ultimate test to determine if the love of his life is still true to him.

After all he has done, there is no reason for her to doubt the love he holds for her after all these years. That is, if what the message says can be believed. There are a few hints that his own loyalty and love for her is in doubt. Nothing of personal property, other than the wood message, has been sent to her as a token of continued love. Perhaps he thought sending anything of value would get lost or stolen after a long voyage. He claims the reason to send for her after all this time is how rich he has become. They can now as a couple do anything together, including buy off friends and loyal supporters. He tells her that, even with all the wealth amassed after all these years by fighting his enemies and winning, that riches don’t matter, He says only her love and loyalty, matched by his own for her, are what matters. Perhaps it was not safe for him to send for her before, but he could have asked her to travel much sooner if the love was that strong. Even the message bearer hints at the questionable nature of his reason to send for her with the words “he instructs me to say,” how much he wants and loves her. Obviously the husband instructs the messenger to say a lot of things, but that moment of most emotional pleading is what stands out as needing instructed. He ends in an oath using a code of letters to once again provide evidence his love was never broken. Yet, the husband left his wife behind and didn’t seek her for long enough that he created a new life. Perhaps his loneliness or a marriage requisite for greater power is what drives him to send for her over what has to be treacherous waters for uncertain love.

The place of The Wife’s Lament in the Exeter Book gives no hint any real relationship between the two poems exist, but many critics do see familiarity between them. They both talk about a husband that leaves a wife for distant lands, and the impact it has on the relationship. There are strong differences, but mostly because of the point of view. The husbands was him having left the wife alone. The wife is the one who was left behind to fend for herself. From the start of the wife’s poem, “Sorrowfully I sing the song of woe,” there is a different mood and set of emotions from the other one. She isn’t begging for his return, giving in to the fact he has left her for good. There is no hope of reuniting.

She too is in exile, the same as her husband. The difference is her exile is not just geographical, but social and emotional. His leaving was not an adventure and treasure seeking outcome for her, but isolation and perhaps doom. She is stuck in a land, by the husband’s command, where she has very few family and friends. Worse yet, his own family members are not happy about the union. They seek to split them apart as a couple, and more than likely succeeding.

Here is where the ambiguity of her condition really shows up, because her exile might be more than based on where she lives. She could even be a ghost, having been murdered. The love of the husband is more specifically, instead of hinted at like the other poem, pointed out to have been lost. At first the love was promised that it would never be broken “nothing less end our love,” than death. That didn’t turn out that way as “Alas all is changed.” Later on in the poem we learn that her relationship to the husband is as if it never existed. He is described as angry and filled with murderous thoughts. Did he kill her in the end and force her to wander the world? She is living in a cave to look out into the world of the living, only to ponder under a tree. Perhaps under a tree is where her body has been hastily buried, leaving her with no true home. Caves have also since ancient times been considered the entrance to the afterlife where the dead go for final rest. But the murdered cannot rest, and the wife states she wanders the world looking for her love, then always return to the tree and the cave.

Where the husband’s message ends with an oath to demonstrate loyalty, the wife’s lament ends in a curse. She wants him to remember her for his whole life. It doesn’t matter if his behavior is careless about her departure and separation. She wants him to wander the world alone and never be happy. He can remember when life was much better, but cannot have that same peace ever again. She wants him to wander the earth, feel sorrow, remember better times, and have loneliness the same as herself. Assuming she has been murdered and is dead, her cures could imply wanting him dead in the same manner.

Long distance relationships are hard to maintain even in the modern era. Imagine what it would be like when it took months or years to travel from one place to another.  For most people they lived and died within a few hundred miles distance, leaving for longer trips only as soldiers or by command of a Lordship. What these poems reflect is the burden of love, or the loss of it, when the couple cannot be together for any reasons. The saying “absence makes the heart grow fonder” is refuted by writers of these two poems. When two people are away from each other, and the longer they are gone, the harder it is to maintain emotional bonds. Modern technology helps bridge that gap to a degree.

Comment if you believe the wife was murdered, or is that too literal a reading?

Did the husband’s message have any truth that he still loved and was loyal to the woman he left behind?

Is it easier to have long distance relationships in the modern world?

Old English Poetry : Dream of the Rood and The Ruin Analysis

Dream of the Rood

Within the poem Dream of the Rood, there are several comparisons, juxtapositions, and dichotomies. These are where two opposing descriptions or ideas are used for the same object. It may not at first make much sense until put together to enhance the meaning of what the author is trying to express. In this case, how normal or unremarkable people and things can become far greater than outward appearances.

The poet starts by describing a tree like any other, but far greater than at first thought. The tree is not only an object of wonder, but the greatest tree that has ever existed. What makes the tree so great at first sight is how it is covered in brilliant light and precious gems of magnificent quality. Angels also watch over its existence. This hides the original ominous and horrible use of the tree. In fact, without that terrible history there would be no reason for the current veneration and glory.

The author himself is not the most worthy of people to witness the tree. He claims to be full of sin and unrighteousness. Despite that, like the unremarkable tree, he is chosen to have a holy dream explaining why the tree is so important. Most likely the poet is describing a reliquary that houses a relic or holy object. A simple piece of wood, fabric, or human remains is placed in a special highly decorated container for religious practitioners to gaze upon as they worship.

As with any dream, there are unrealistic elements that otherwise would be dismissed as nonsense. In this case the great tree starts to speak. The inanimate tree becomes personified with a human voice. There is no hesitation of acceptance or questioning how the tree is talking. Like any otherwise absurdity in a dream the talking is perfectly natural. What the tree talks about is how it transformed from a normal tree to the greatest in history so far as the poem is concerned.

Within the poem is the idea that despite its dream qualities, the objects and events depicted are very much real. The tree might as well be able to talk because of the grand story behind the vision. Although happening far in the past, the dream progresses as if the events were unfolding in real time. Raw emotions of the tree and visionary spill out for all readers to feel.

Strong men, Romans to specific, tore the tree down in a violent act in preparation for a violent purpose. The most retched criminals were, by Romans standards of punishment, to be crucified on the tree. This proposed act horrified the tree, but who was to be crucified on it changed the perspective. A hero in the form of Jesus, known as the Christ or Savior, was placed on the tree as a sacrifice. Even while wanting to either bow to the holy figure or falling on the Roman soldiers it did not move. The importance of who is about to die forces the tree to reconsider its own actions and play the part fate has given it.

The tree’s fate becomes so intertwined with the suffering and death of Jesus, that they become in the mind of the poet practically one and the same. Both of them have the marks of nails pounded into them. Blood covers Jesus and the tree that he hangs upon. It is a terrible vision with a victorious outcome when they suffer and are glorified together.

Before they are glorified, Jesus body is put into a tomb and the tree buried in the ground to be forgotten. Early followers mourn and cry at the loss and then quietly leave after the burials. As anyone who knows the Christian religion can explain, Jesus Christ rises out of the tomb and saves humanity from sin and permanent death. The Rood, another word for the cross, also is found and raised from the ground. Jesus Christ becomes the Salvation of the World and the remnants of the Rood, or cross, to be Venerated.

No matter how real life might be, it is seen by believers and this poet as nothing compared to the eternal rewards for those who worship Jesus as the Christ. The dreamer, having seen the cross decked in finery and glory, decides to search for his eternal reward of living forever with Jesus who returns to Heaven from whence he came. Theologically, Jesus Christ is considered both a man and a God similar to how the tree is both a piece of wood and a holy object. The instrument of death becomes the inspiration for living a holy life.

The Ruin

The other poem, The Ruin, is a look back at a glorious time in history when Rome was at its most splendid. The poet has visited the now gone physical remnants of the once powerful Empire and is awe inspired. The writer is amazed by the forms of buildings that once represented a rich nation filled with promise and delights.

He goes on to say that the marvels he sees are mostly in crumbles. A terrible event transpired to bring down the buildings and the people who lived among the sprawling metropolis. The men in the city had gold, silver, and many other kinds of wealth, but they too are gone. What remains are, presumably, piles and heaps of stone and tile as a testament to the grandness that once was. Interesting enough, the poem itself is fragmented. Part of the middle and what was the end have been lost. A few words can be pieced together in the missing sections, but nothing completely coherent. Despite that, the text mostly can be read and understood.

As for the city the poem describes, it lasted for a very long time. Houses were built, elaborate baths of luxury were used, and great walls constructed to keep it safe. Only after years of survival did the place become abandoned and fell apart. It is hard to say if the poet believed the end of the city happened all at once or over a long cycle of events. The poem could be interpreted to either use the word “fail” implying a quick loss and the word “days” a far longer period of time. They don’t have to necessarily have an opposite meaning. One can have a slow failure, but the abandonment seems all at once. Whatever the poet might have thought of the ruins now sitting dormant, it has a very tragic feeling to the dilapidated structures.

Both The Ruin and The Dream of the Rood take a look back at history that even at the time they were written was ancient. The former saw terrible events and consider them to have been leading up to a glorious future. The latter saw a glorious past and despaired at a tragic loss that can never return. Early English literature is filled with looking back in awe and wonder of what came before, with hope to return to such a condition either in the world or heaven. The world may have always been harsh, but war, poverty, and disease of their time seemed excruciating.  They sought to remember, rebuild, and repeat what they saw as a golden age lost in time.

What we can learn from these poems today is that no matter how far apart history might be, there is always a looking back at what came before and a hope for the future. The past may be glorious and it might be filled with destruction and horror. We can be both horrified and impressed by events and places from what seems like long ago. Think of it as the half filled and half empty glass of water. To someone who is thirsty it might not be very impressive and perhaps full of worry. On the other hand, they might be happy that there was any water to drink. Perspective is a very powerful source of human opinion and decision making. Where a door closes, another might be open. It is the oppositions in life that make it interesting. To be honest, the current era seems more like the pessimistic Ruin poem than the optimistic Dream of the Rood even if that poem deals with something far more horrible than crumbling buildings.

A final note on the poems as written. They are Old English Anglo Saxon, and do not read like the English we have today. For modern English speakers and readers it seems like a completely different language, but it is linguistically the same.