"Wulf and Eadwacer" ([ˈæ͜ɑːd.wɑtʃ.er], approximately ADD-watcher) is an Old English poem in alliterative verse of famously difficult interpretation.

It has been variously characterised, (modernly) as an elegy, (historically) as a riddle, and (in speculation on the poem's pre-history) as a song or ballad with refrain.

Because the audience is given so little information about her situation, some scholars argue the story was well-known, and that the unnamed speaker corresponds to named figures from other stories, for example, to Signý[1] or that the characters Wulf and Eadwacer correspond to Theoderic the Great and his rival Odoacer.

The speaker of the poem is arguably separated from her lover and/or husband, Wulf, both symbolically and materially ('Wulf is on iege, ic on oþerre' [Wulf is on an island, I on another]), and this separation is seemingly maintained by threat of violence ('willað hy hine aþecgan' [they will want to ?seize him]), possibly by her own people ('Leodum is minum swylce him mon lac gife' [it is to my people as though someone will give him/them a gift/sacrifice]).

She finds comfort in his coming, but it is also bittersweet ('wæs me wyn to þon, wæs me hwæþre eac lað' [there was joy to me in that; it was also hateful to me]).

She then addresses 'Eadwacer', who may be her husband or her captor, and she appears to identify their 'whelp' ('Uncerne earne hwelp' [our wretched whelp]), generally understood to metaphorically imply 'child' and possibly a reference to the child's being the 'whelp' of a man named 'Wulf'.

[6] In Wulf and Eadwacer there are a significant number of words which are obscure in meaning (e.g. aþecgan, dogode, and þreat).

The following translation is by Elaine Treharne: Leodum is minum   swylce him mon lac gife; willað hy hine aþecgan,   gif he on þreat cymeð.

Sindon wælreowe   weras þær on ige; willað hy hine aþecgan,   gif he on þreat cymeð.

þæt mon eaþe tosliteð   þætte næfre gesomnad wæs, uncer giedd geador.

'[3]: 387–402 The most conventional interpretation of the poem is as a lament spoken in the first person by an unnamed woman who is or has in the past been involved with two men whose names are Wulf and Eadwacer respectively.

Both of these are attested Anglo-Saxon names, and this interpretation is the basis for the common titling of the poem (which is not based on any other manuscript evidence).

Some interpretations favour a single male character, and virtually all commentaries acknowledge the possibility, though this is the less orthodox of the two views.

Though the folios on which the poem is recorded are not subject to any significant damage necessitating reconstruction, its textual problems and, particularly, the grammatical confusion of the first lines of the text, have resulted in widespread postulation that the initial lines of the poem may have been lost prior to its inclusion in the Exeter Book but subsequent to an earlier transcription.

The characterization of the poem as a riddle is the oldest of its various treatments, the argument for which characterization is based largely upon the obscurity of its subject and the placement of the poem within the Exeter Book, where it was included as Riddle I in Benjamin Thorpe's 1842 translation of the Exeter Book.

[9] Additionally, Thorpe left Wulf and Eadwacer untranslated, and he notes "Of this, I can make no sense, nor am I able to arrange the verses".

[12] Among proposed explanations for this anomaly, a Scandinavian inspiration for the Anglo-Saxon text offers one possible solution to this problem, and has similarly been considered as an explanation for its difficult language, but this theory, as with most others on the poem's prehistory, can only be regarded as hypothetical given lack of substantive corroborating evidence.

One scholar says:In Wulf and Eadwacer a woman finds herself in a situation typical of Old English poetry, torn between conflicting loyalties.