There are two fragments of the Old English poem
Waldere, discovered in the nineteenth century in the Royal Library of Copenhagen. The two leaves each consist of one whole page, across the fold of the manuscript, with just a little more than the margin of the second page. One or two letters of the each of the lines on the second page are all that is left, the rest having been cut off. The pages are not in good condition, and recent editors have used ultra-violet light to read some of the obscurer lines. The two fragments each record just over 30 lines of verse.
The Walter legend was popular in the Middle Ages and it is possible to reconstruct the story from tenth-century Latin, eleventh-century Italian, and thirteenth-century German, Polish and Icelandic accounts. It is a romantic tale of
714 words
Citation: Cavill, Paul. "Waldere". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 30 October 2002 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=10537, accessed 03 December 2024.]
