The cryptic speaker of the Old English poem we call The Wife's Lament has long been the subject of speculation. She is painted as hopeful,1 mournful,2 vindictive;3 her song is a lament by a dead woman,4 a curse by a living woman5—or, perhaps, not a woman's song at all.6 For some, she evokes erotic longing; for others, bitter regret. In many ways, however, this plethora of interpretations demonstrates the limitations of a narrative-driven analysis when that narrative remains unclear; barring future manuscript discoveries (or time travel), our speculations regarding the “true” nature of the Wife's circumstance must remain exactly that. What we are left with is the poem itself: a concrete manifestation of language and syntax that presumably has, beyond the unknown specifics of the narrative, a discrete rhetorical structure that remains intact. In this paper I aim to move beyond the identity of the Wife as speaker towards an exploration of The Wife's Lament as speech—to examine the impact rather than the origin of the text.7 In particular, I turn to grammatical rather than narrative structures, focusing on the Old English dual pronoun as an interpretive crux. I show that the dual pronoun works throughout the Old English corpus not simply to emphasize unity, but to navigate difference and negotiate power differentials between speakers. Further, I argue that because the dual pronoun so frequently highlights, even complicates, tensions between ic, “I” and þu, “you” in the larger Old English corpus, its prominent usage in The Wife's Lament must be read not as incidental but as crucial to the structural composition of the poem. Finally, drawing upon larger grammatical and historical contexts, I argue that the last section of the poem is most gainfully interpreted not as a curse or as a gnomic invocation but as a plea for reunification. The metaphoric, rhetorical, and syntactic structures used in The Wife's Lament work to reunite the poem's “broken” dual pronoun, remaking the emotional bond between the speaker and her lost lord through the textual construction of shared experience.The crux of my exploration lies in media res, as it were, at Line 24a: “Is nu,” the speaker declares of her relationship with her lost lord, “swa hit no wære / freondscipe uncer” (Our friendship is now as if it never were) (ll. 24a-25a).8 Anne Klinck describes this moment as the first of two temporal shifts within the poem; the speaker moves, according to Klinck, from an account of past circumstances through a description of her current struggles, and finally into a rumination on the future of the man who has seemingly abandoned her.9 It is also, however, the site of a distinct grammatical shift: the loss of the dual pronoun. Prior to this point in the text, the speaker refers to herself and her lord as a mentally and emotionally matched pair; they are “ful gemæcne” (fully suited to one another), to the extent that they function as a single syntactic unit (l. 18a). Even when his kinsmen arrange to divide them, ensuring that “wit gewidost in woruldrice / lifdon laðlicost” (we two, farthest apart in the world-kingdom, lived most wretchedly) (ll. 11b-13a), their bond remains grammatically intact: the wit is unbroken by temporal and physical distance. Indeed, it is only when the speaker discovers an internal shift in her lord that their unity suffers; in “mod miþendne” (concealing his mind), the man the speaker loves creates a deeper rift than that of time or space (l. 20a). His deceit fractures the whole perceived by the speaker, splitting their shared syntax—and the poem itself—into two distinct parts.The use of the dual pronoun to indicate spousal unity is, perhaps, not unexpected.10 But its rhetorically sophisticated function in The Wife's Lament is characteristic of a larger pattern of use throughout the Old English corpus: in practice, the dual pronoun often appears at sites of struggle rather than accord, working to create or assert personal bonds rather than simply to represent them.11 These contested ties can be, as in The Wife's Lament, spousal and/or sexual: in Ælfric's Lives of Saints, for example, the reluctantly wedded virgins Julian and Basilissa find grammatical unity in physical separation. “Gif wit þurhwuniað on ansundum mægðhade,” Julian tells his young bride, “and hine clænlice lufiað, þonne cume wit to his rice and wit ne beoð totwæmede ac a to worulde blyssiað” (If we two persevere in uncorrupted virginity and love him [Christ] purely, then we will come to his kingdom and we will not be divided but will rejoice forever).12 Ælfric's use of the dual pronoun to illustrate a bond superior to earthly or corporeal marriage echoes the nameless wif, “wife; woman” in the Old English Life of Malchus, who throws herself at the feet of St. Malchus when he would rather martyr himself than sleep with her: “Ic þe þonne andette, þæt ic swelte, ær ic wille beon to þe geþeodad,” she cries, “ac hafa þu me to þan geþungennestan wife, and wit syn ma þurh þa sawle tosamne geþiodad, þonne wit syn þurh þone lichaman” (I confess to you that I will die before I will be joined to you, but have me as your most pious wife, and we two shall be more united together through the soul than we are through the body).13 The dual pronoun here underscores the sincerity of her claim: in their desire for chastity, they are truly one. In both texts, the dual pronoun legitimates nontraditional spiritual marriages, asserting at a syntactic level what might be socially contested.But while contemporary critics often interpret The Wife's Lament in the context of romantic or erotic longing, wit is not limited to the language of marriage or lovers’ vows; it may also assert bonds of familial affection, shared experience, or moral obligation.14 We see these rhetorical patterns attested elsewhere, in poetry as well as in prose, and in secular as well as religious contexts. Syntactic unity can be brought about by shared suffering as well as shared pleasure: in the aforementioned Life of Malchus, for example, the text employs the dual pronoun long before any question of sexual intimacy arises. Instead, Malchus refers himself and his unsæligan wif, “unfortunate wife” as a syntactically unified pair from the moment they are sold into slavery until the moment he (much later) deposits her in a nunnery.15 And in another of Ælfric's works, the (previously syntactically separate) brothers Valerian and Tiburtius are told by an angel of God that “git sceolan, begen þu and þin broðor, beon gemartyrode samod” (you two, both you and your brother, shall be martyred together).16 In martyrdom, their pure Christian spirits are shown to be cut from the same grammatical cloth; faith and suffering bind the brothers in a way that blood could not. In Exeter Riddle 60, the dual pronoun similarly indicates an intensification of closeness, this time through the private space of writing. The speaker, most likely a reed pen, who “sceolde / for unc anum twam ærendsprec” (must before the two of us only speak my message) (ll. 15a-15b), is not separated from its audience but instead is intimately dependent upon their relationship.17 Here the dual pronoun underscores a unique type of internal accord: the speaker's message must be delivered by the hand of the recipient, revealed only when its initial audience—in this case the scribe—writes with it. Only together may the reed and the writer produce the message; in a somewhat puzzling temporal conundrum, the scribe must write what the speaker wishes to reveal to them.Elsewhere in the Exeter Riddles, the speaker of Riddle 88 poignantly described as gumcynnes anga, “solitary among men,” echoes many of the sentiments expressed in The Wife's Lament while mourning a lost brother: [E]om ic gumcynnesanga ofer eorþan; is min agen bæcwonn ond wundorlic. Ic on wuda stondebordes on ende. Nis min broþor herac ic sceal broþorleas bordes on endestaþol weardian stondan fæstene wat hwær min broþor on wera æhtumeorþan sceata eardian scealse me ær be healfe heah eardadewit wæron gesome sæcce to fremmanne. (ll. 17b-26b)(I am alone among men upon this earth; my own back is dark and wonderful. I stand on wood, at the end of the board. My brother is not here, but, brotherless, I must remain in my place, stand fast on the end of the table. I do not know where my brother must dwell among the possessions of men, he who used to live by my side. We two were united in waging war.)18This riddle's use of anga, recalling the anhaga, “solitary one” of The Seafarer, in combination with familiar themes of exile and loss, invokes a wider tradition of OE elegiac poetry.19 The speaker has been separated from his brother, and mourns his loss; like the speaker of The Wife's Lament, he must remain in a state of isolation, unable to leave his place at the table just as she is unable to abandon her “eorðscræf” (earthen cave) (l. 28b). Though weardian can mean “to stand” or “to guard,” it seems best translated here as “to remain behind.”20 This sense of the word is attested elsewhere in the OE literary corpus, and echoes the wunian, “to remain, dwell” of the Wife, who suffers a similar distress at her own immobility.21 In Riddle 88, however, the wit of the poem clearly indicates a familial, rather than a romantic, bond; the brothers, usually solved as ox horns or antlers (the speaker has been made into an inkwell), are literally born of the same flesh and bone. Though not erotically linked, nor indeed literally connected, the speaker asserts the essential nature of their bond. Syntax combats the distance created not only by time and space but by a potential disparity of current form and function.The dual pronoun is thus not used simply to represent the bonds between individuals, but to create them in a literary context. As the examples above suggest, social ties are often emphasized, contested, or complicated by the appearance of the dual pronoun. This is not merely a feature of the riddles or of Ælfrician prose; the Beowulf poet uses the dual pronoun at multiple points in the text to depict subtle power plays and shifting dynamics between individual speakers. One example of this is Beowulf's exhortation to Hrothgar at the edge of Grendel's mere: Geþenc nu . . . . . . ic eom siðes fus,goldwine gumena, hwæt wit heo spræcon:gif ic æt þearf þinre scoldealdre linnan, þæt ðu me a wæreforðgewitenum on fæder stæle. (ll. 1474a-1479b)(Think now . . . that I am ready for this venture, on what we two spoke of before: that if I should lose my life at your need, you would stand for me, departed, always in my father's stead.)Here Beowulf uses the dual pronoun to invoke an imagined flesh and blood relationship between himself and Hrothgar, holding the latter to the promise (or, perhaps, boast) he has made: that in the event of Beowulf's death in his service, he will carry out the same social obligations and duties that Beowulf's own father would be expected to perform. These duties are costly; Hrothgar must protect Beowulf's own men, and send the treasure that would have been due to Beowulf across the sea to his lord and uncle, Hygelac. Yet Beowulf, anticipating such treatment, is also delivering high praise: he expects impeccable honor from the king of the Danes, trusting that the latter will fulfill the obligations of kindred—even without the presence of an actual blood relationship, or Beowulf himself, to hold Hrothgar to his oath.22 The wit of the poem here serves both to evoke the imagined kinship between Beowulf and Hrothgar, and to underscore Beowulf's own commitment to the oath that binds them: he has syntactically, as well as socially, allied himself with the goldwine gumena, “gold-friend of men.” It also applies a subtle emotional pressure; Beowulf reminds the Danish king that failure to fully reciprocate this alliance would be in direct opposition to their shared societal ideal of lordship. The threat of dishonor is inherent in the expectation of virtue: Hrothgar cannot emerge from their relationship with his reputation intact unless he fulfulls his promise.The Beowulf poet, perhaps unsurprisingly, shows a particular finesse with the dual pronoun.23 When Unferth challenges Beowulf's honor, claiming that Breca bested him in a swimming contest, the son of Ecgþeow sets the record straight with a finely nuanced telling of the event: Wit þæt gecwædon cnihtwesendeond gebeotedon– wæron begen þa giton geogoðfeore– þæt wit on garsecg utaldrum neðdon on þæt geæfndon swa.Hæfdon swurd nacod, þa wit on sund reon,heard on handa wit unc wið hronfixaswerian þohton. No he wiht fram meflodyþum feor fleotan meahtehraþor on holme no ic fram him wolde.Da wit ætsomne on sæ wæronfifnihta fyrst, oþ þæt unc flod todraf. (ll. 535a-545b)(We said as children, and boasted, when we were both still in boyhood, that we dared with our lives out on the sea—so we did it. We each had, when we swam in the ocean, a naked sword, hard in hand, with which we thought to drive the whales away from us. He could not float one whit further from me on the flood-waves, no swifter in the sea, nor would I [go] from him. Then we were together in the sea for five nights, until that flood drove us apart.)Beowulf's use of the dual pronoun in this passage emphasizes the bond between himself and his childhood friend, while highlighting his own superior strength; Breca cannot move beyond him, and he will not abandon Breca. But when the sea separates them, Beowulf describes his own battle below the waves in a way that leaves no doubt as to the true victor of the contest. Breca surfaced first—but in this, he failed. The shift from the dual to the singular underscores not simply the moment of their physical separation, but also the moment in which Beowulf, as it were, crosses the finish line, breaking the stasis of their shared ordeal. His syntactic individuation frees him to move beyond his competitor, and beyond the competition itself.Similarly, and perhaps most interestingly, Beowulf uses the dual pronoun to refer to Grendel as he boasts about the battle yet to come: “ac wit on niht sculon / secge ofersittan gif he dear gesecean wig ofer wæpen” (But we two shall abstain from the sword tonight, if he dares to seek battle without a weapon) (ll. 683b-685a). Here it seems that Beowulf is emphasizing the fairness of the fight; he and Grendel are perfectly evenly matched in battle. The rhetorical weight of this claim lies in the problem of Grendel's (in)humanity, and the possibility of Beowulf's monstrosity, and has been discussed elsewhere. Yet while the argument need not be revisited, the dual pronoun does imply that Beowulf's relationship with Grendel is more complicated than, say, his relationship with the sea monsters that bested Breca.24The dual pronoun is thus used to invoke both literal and figurative kinship, as well as the social obligations that this kinship implies, in addition to romantic or erotic bonds. It can also be rhetorically coercive, allowing the speaker to establish a “level playing-field” in anticipation of conflict, or to assert unity where two parties might, in fact, be at odds. Yet in each of the examples discussed above, which in themselves are certainly not exhaustive, the wit of the poem is internal: the “we two” imagined by the speaker relies upon or pushes against a unity of mod, “heart; spirit” or material (bone; antler) rather than a state of physical proximity. It is thus unlikely, in the context of The Wife's Lament, that the literal separation of the speaker from her lord is what has fractured the poem's dual pronoun. Instead, it is her discovery of his emotional treachery.25 But the speaker, unlike Beowulf in his exhortation of Hrothgar, has limited social and legal means to seek recourse for her lord's broken vow. As Anne Klinck points out, in early medieval English law tracts, “women, whatever their rank in society or stage in life, remain in the guardianship of men.”26 Although Klinck acknowledges that the legal rights of early medieval English women improved over time, she points out that early law codes depict women as property: “Gif mon mæg gebigeð, ceapi geceapod sy, gif hit unfacne is. Gif hit þonne facne is, eft þær æt ham gebrenge, ond him man his scæt agefe” (If one buys a maiden, the sale shall stand, if it is not fraudulent. If it then is fraudulent, bring her home again, and give him his money).27 Klinck sees this as reflective of larger patterns of cultural belief: [T]here is no hint in these earliest laws themselves that what looks like purchase and ownership is actually something different. If we wish, we can translate agend as “guardian” rather than “owner,” but the fact that the two concepts are not thus differentiated in the Old English surely indicates that the attitude of mind behind these laws did not distinguish them either.28While more recent scholarship has shown that early medieval English women did have considerable legal agency over their own persons and property, they also remained heavily reliant on male kinsmen.29 Even when women did enter into legal dispute, they often did so through a male interlocutor.30 And although these laws and legal proceedings do not explicitly map onto the situation described (however amorphously) by the speaker of The Wife's Lament, they do give some sense of the difficulty a woman in early England was likely to encounter if forced to seek reparation for failed societal obligations from a husband or lover without the support of her male kinsmen.31The speaker of The Wife's Lament, however, does not speak to her lord as a woman: she speaks as his retainer.32 Throughout the poem, the speaker uses language normally associated with bonds of fealty or the war-band to describe her relationship; the man is min hlaford, “my lord,” and she, without him, must “folgað secan, wineleas wrecca” (seek service, a friendless wretch) (ll. 9b-10a), as a warrior might seek a new war-band if abandoned by his eorl, “leader.” Many have seen this invocation of a masculine relationship through the feminine voice as reflecting an internal conflict of identity; for Jane Chance, the speaker is “so acutely conscious of her social failure as a conventional peace-pledge that she must resort to heroic diction to define her presently anomalous situation” (emphasis mine), while Marilynn Desmond suggests that the speaker uses terms that “refer to a man's position within the martial or political spheres of heroic society” in order to express (and grapple with) the speaker's subordinate status within her lord's household.33 Yet these interpretations ignore a vital aspect of the poem's rhetorical stance: within the logic of the monologue, it is not the speaker who has failed to fulfill her social contracts. Instead, it is her lord who has reneged upon his vows. As a woman, she cannot demand reparations; she remains an object in his household, subject to his rule. Though he has betrayed her trust, he has not transgressed societal boundaries in a way that elicits collective disapproval, and thus cannot be held accountable for what she perceives as his “fæhð” (feud, enmity, or foul deed) (l. 26b).34I propose that the speaker's use of a traditionally masculine discourse in The Wife's Lament is thus tactically related to her perception of the poem's ruptured wit. The language of men evokes the honor between men; in claiming such discourse as her own, the speaker effectively accuses her lord of a social failure equivalent to the disgrace with which Beowulf threatens Hrothgar. He has committed a betrayal among kinsmen, a true fæhð, and thus an offense for which justice can be sought.35 The language of the retainer, far from indicating the speaker's sense of her own inadequacy, instead becomes a means by which she may legitimize her complaint. The poem's opening lines are worth reexamining within this context: Ic þis giedd wrece bi me ful geomorre,minre sylfre sið. Ic þæt secgan mæg,hwæt ic yrmþa gebad, siþþan ic up aweox,niwes oþþe ealdes, no ma þonne nu.A ic wite wonn minra wræcsiþa. (ll. 1a-5b)(I recite this song about myself, full sorrowful: my own plight. I may say that what miseries I have endured since I grew up, new or old, were never more than now—I have always struggled against the pain of my banishments.)Though some early editors took wite, from witan, “to know, experience,” as the verb in the last line of this passage, Klinck, R. D. Fulk, and others treat wonn (Fulk emends to wann) as the preterite form of winnan, which Klinck translates as “have suffered.”’36Winnan, however, can also be translated as “to strive against; to resist,” conveying a sense of obduracy or conflict.37 If we take this latter sense to be operating in The Wife's Lament, the speaker's song becomes a form of resistance to, rather than an endurance of, exile. In adopting a masculine register, she is able to imbue her suffering with a sense of legitimate injustice; in voicing her complaint, she then conveys that injustice to a wider audience, speaking out against the deeds of her lord. Finally, in identifying those deeds as a form of fæhð, a feud, she identifies his betrayal as something that can be avenged—and, in vengeance, set right.38 This adds an edge to the use of the verb wrece in the opening line; though wrecan, “to recite, tell,” cannot, in this context, be taken to mean “avenge” rather than “tell” or “relate,” the resonance of the former imbues the latter with a sense of purpose. This is not a song sung for the sake of sorrow alone; it becomes, instead, a call to action.The call for vengeance appears to have been a conventionally feminine role in early Icelandic literature. According to Paul Acker, “inciting is women's business, but revenge is men's business,” and Leslie Lockett notes that “the role of women in Germanic feud was, with few exceptions, limited to goading.”39 When a woman cannot rely upon her kinsmen, however, a need for justice may override conventions of gender performance: Bróka-Auðr dresses as a man and wounds her former husband as vengeance for divorcing her, while Hervör, daughter of Angantýr, takes up the sword of her father to continue what Acker calls “the family Viking tradition” after his death.40 Similarly, religious women in early medieval England might choose God over traditional gender roles: Anglo-Saxon hagiography . . . could allow for female saints who took up masculine, aggressive roles, including the wrestling of demons . . . such saints were considered to act werlice (Lat. viriliter, “in a manly fashion”), spiritually fulfilling the masculine role of Christ's champion even as they fulfill[ed] the feminine role of Christ's bride.41Masculinized female saints, however, such as Eugenia and Euphrosyne, inhabit a male persona within a religious English framework in order to defend and advocate for their souls.42 In the same way, transgressing gendered norms of clothing and behavior are desperate measures within the Icelandic sagas; women take on a masculine role when their male kinsmen have failed to protect them in body or reputation. Such narratives suggest that the transgression of conventional gender performance in early Germanic and Scandinavian cultures was undesirable—but not, when faced with extraordinary circumstances, unforgivable.The Old English Soul and Body I and II's selective use of the dual pronoun by a grammatically feminine speaker to assert separation further demonstrates the role of syntax in self-advocacy. In these poems, the grammatically feminine sawle, “soul” is forced to cohabit in death with her dryhten, “lord”: the body.43 The poem's Pauline paradigm, in which the body has the capacity to deny or thwart the desires of the soul, is at odds with Augustinian theology, but not unattested in Old English religious texts; it also manifests in Vercelli Homily IV, Ælfric's De auguriis, and in the rhetoric of Exeter Riddle 43.44 Allen Frantzen suggests that the poem's emphasis on bodily practice as the root of redemption was in keeping with the practical, pastoral aims of the early English Church: to produce virtuous physical behavior, such as fasting and prayer, in the daily lives of the devout.45 But this theological approach also aligns quite nicely with the conceit of the body and soul as a spousal coupling: the sawle of Soul and Body I and II is powerless to resist her dryhten's will, much as the speaker of The Wife's Lament is placed at the mercy of her husband's kin. Though the Soul is described both as a feminine sawle and a masculine gast, “spirit,” it is not uncommon for natural and syntactic gender to face some misalignment in Old English texts; the grammatically neuter wif, “wife, woman,” for example, is only ever used to describe femininely-gendered subjects.46 Moreover, there are contextual reasons to interpret the Soul as femininely-gendered. In De auguriis, Ælfric describes the soul as seo hlæfdige, “mistress; lady” of the flesh: “Ac seo sawl is ðæs flæsces hlæfdige, and hire gedafnað þæt heo simle gewylde ða wylne, þæt is þæt flæsc, to hyre hæsum” (But the soul is the lady of the flesh, and it is fitting that the will, that is the flesh, be always subject to her desires).47 Ælfric's soul is not wedded to her body, but the metaphor of marriage I discuss here is not unique to the Soul and Body poems; both Juliana and Guthlac B, as Lockett points out, respectively depict “a close and loving relationship between body and soul,” using the phrase sinhiwan tu, “two wedded partners” to describe their bond.48 The helplessness of the soul within the body, which Lockett discusses further, echoes the helplessness of an early medieval English woman in the household of her male relatives, and an anonymous homily predicts that the soul's ultimate fate will depend on “hwilce ladþeowas heo hæbbe” (which leaders she has), much as the law codes rule early medieval English women according to the status of their husbands and kinsmen.49The damned Soul struggles with a porosity of social selfhood: she is subsumed into the agency, and thus made complicit in the acts, of the Body. As a result, she is judged for his deeds. Yet the Soul uses the dual pronoun to claim the right to separate judgment: she has not sinned. She declares her helplessness to prevent the Body's sins—“no ic þe of meahte, / flæsce bifongen, ond me firenlustas/ þine geþrungon” (I could not come out of you, ensnared by flesh, and your sinful lusts oppressed me) (ll. 30b-32a)—and declares of their forced cohabitation that “ic uncres gedales bad earfoðlice” (I awaited our separation with difficulty) (ll. 36b). She underscores their unity only to carve herself out of it, inserting ic, “I” before uncres, “our” in a literal refusal to occupy shared syntactic space. And looking ahead to Judgment Day, she laments that wit, “we two” must endure what þu, “you” ordained for us; þu shall answer for unc bæm, “us both.” “But what will you say to the Lord?” she demands.50 The implication, of course, is that she has already spoken; the damned Soul has locked herself away in a kernel of individuated “ic-ness,” divorcing herself from the Body's sins even though she cannot prevent them. In this, she seems to invoke a kind of legislative authority, much like Cnut's legal protections for the wife of a thief: Gyf hwa forstolen ðingc ham to his coton bringe ond he arefned wyrðe . . . buton hit under ðæs wifes cæglocan gebroht wære, sy heo clæne. Ac ðara cægan heo sceal weardian, þæt is hire heddernes cæge ond hyre cyste cæge (ond hire tægan); gyf hit under ðyssa ænigum gebroht byð, ðone bið heo scyldig. And ne mæg nan wif hire bundan forbeodan þæt he ne mote into his cotan gelegian þæt þæt he wille.51(If any man brings home stolen property to his cottage, and he is found out . . . unless it has been brought under the wife's lock and key, she is to be clear. But she must guard the keys: that is, her store-room key, and her chest-key (and her coffer); if it is brought inside any of these, she is guilty. And no wife can forbid her husband to place inside his cottage what he wishes.)The damned Soul essentially crafts a grammatical “coffer” of virtue in her own defense. Her selective use of the dual pronoun produces a self-enclosed, inviolate space within the “household” of her dryhten (lord), raising the legal possibility of her innocence.52 In a world in which most women were reliant on male kinsmen for legal and financial protection, she speaks to defend herself only when her dryhten has failed her; “we” become “you” and “I” because the two quantities are no longer equivalent.The Wife's duress, then, may act as the catalyst for her masculine speech acts, just as the damned Soul's duress produces syntactic separation. In exile, deprived of kith and kin, the speaker of The Wife's Lament strives to inhabit a double role: she becomes both the feminine voice, calling for justice, and the masculine audience capable of answering that call. In the absence of her kinsmen, the speaker's use of the multivalent wrecan, combined with the adoption of a masculine speech register, situates the poem itself as a site of reckoning: a verbal drag performance, as it were, to exact justice in the speaker's hour of need.53 In this context, John D. Niles's suggestion that the last twelve lines of the poem represent an “outright curse upon a man who has wronged her” would seem to supply a logical culmination for the rhetorical case the speaker has built for herself.54 When the subjunctive scyle, “shall, must” of lines 42a-52b is taken as hortatory, and the indicative verbs read with a future sense, the passage becomes a prescription for punishment: A scyle geong mon wesan geomormod;heard heortan geþoht swylce habban scealbliþe gebæro, eac þon breostceare,sinsorgna gedreag. Sy æt him sylfum gelongeal his worulde wyn, sy ful wide fahfeorres folclondes, þæt min freond siteðunder stanhliþe storme behrimed.Wine werigmod, wætre beflowenon dreorsele, dreogeð se min winemicle modceare.