'This is a riddle from the Exeter Book, an anthology of Anglo-Saxon poetry, which the Bishop Leofric donated to the library of Exeter Cathedral in 1072: ‘I mycel englisc boc be gehwilcum thingum on leothwisan geworht’: a big English book about everything, worked into song.' (Introduction)
Epigraph:
The wave, over the wave, a weird thing I saw,
through-wrought, and wonderfully ornate:
a wonder on the wave – water became bone.