Anglo-Saxon Riddles of the Exeter Book/Annotated/51

The solution is certainly, at first, a Sword, as is doubtless intentionally obvious. Then about midway the sword seems to be personified and obscurities set in. The piece is thus one half a transparent riddle and then a kind of heroic lay in the best tradition, in which the sword speaks as a follower who has somehow killed a friend of his master (or so I understand it) and is banished. He cannot marry, but he involves himself with a scolding woman. There is some disorder in the manuscript, the gatherings indicating the loss of a whole folio, which contained the conclusion of this riddle and perhaps other riddles. Compare 41 ( 60).