Deor
A court poet who has lost his place and his lands to a rival recites six older calamities — Weland hamstrung and shut in a smithy, Beadohild carrying his child, thirty winters under a tyrant — and after each repeats that it passed away, and so may this. The catalogue is consolation by precedent, working through legends the first audience knew in outline and needed only a phrase to recall. It is the only Old English poem built in stanzas with a refrain.
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Closest analogues
- 48% · 7 shared
- 44% · 8 shared
- 44% · 8 shared
- 44% · 8 shared
- 44% · 7 shared
- 44% · 7 shared