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The Wanderer

Old English elegy in the Exeter Book — the ubi sunt that became the Riders' lament

ca. 3 min

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In briefanswer capsule

A man who has lost his lord walks the winter sea-roads and remembers the hall, the gold-giver, the joys of the mead-bench, and asks where they have gone: Hwær cwom mearg? hwær cwom mago? — where is the horse, where the young warrior? When Aragorn, riding towards Edoras, renders a song of Rohan into the Common Speech, it begins 'Where now the horse and the rider?' The lament is the poem's ubi sunt passage carried over almost phrase by phrase, and it fixes in a few lines what the Rohirrim are: a people whose poetry is elegy.

The Wanderer — Exeter BookThe first page of the Old English poem of the homeless warrior. Its question “Where is the horse, where the rider?” returns in Rohan.© Exeter Cathedral Library, MS 3501 · Public domain
The source text itself

Below stands the original wording of the source, public domain, with a translation of our own or one that is public domain. Marked words lead to the entry in the register that took something from them.

  • Lines 92–96

    Hwǣr cwōm mearg? hwǣr cwōm mago? hwǣr cwōm māþþumgyfa? hwǣr cwōm symbla gesetu? hwǣr sindon seledrēamas? Ēalā beorht bune! ēalā byrnwiga! ēalā þēodnes þrym! hū sēo þrāg gewāt, genāp under nihthelm, swā hēo nō wǣre!

    Where has the horse gone? where the young man? where the giver of treasure? Where are the seats of the feast? where are the joys of the hall? Alas, the bright cup! alas, the mailed warrior! Alas, the prince's glory! How that time has passed, grown dark under night's helm, as if it had never been!

    our own translationBright's Anglo-Saxon Reader (New York 1894), The Wanderer, ll. 92–96

    Length marks follow Bright's edition. Tolkien's own version of this passage is verse and under copyright; the translation above is ours.

What became of it

  • Rohirrim

    Aragorn's rendering of the Rohan song at the approach to Edoras follows the ubi sunt of The Wanderer: horse, rider, gold-giver, hall-joy, all asked after in turn. Shippey reads the whole culture of the Mark through this poem and Beowulf.

Sources

Cite this page

Legendarium (2026): „The Wanderer“. Last updated September 3, 2026. https://www.legendarium.page/tolkien/the-wanderer/

APA
Legendarium. (2026). The Wanderer. Last updated September 3, 2026. https://www.legendarium.page/tolkien/the-wanderer/
MLA
„The Wanderer“. Legendarium, 2026, https://www.legendarium.page/tolkien/the-wanderer/. Last updated September 3, 2026.
BibTeX
@misc{legendarium-the-wanderer-en,
  title        = {The Wanderer},
  author       = {{Legendarium}},
  year         = {2026},
  howpublished = {\url{https://www.legendarium.page/tolkien/the-wanderer/}},
  note         = {Last updated September 3, 2026}
}