A Note on the Runes in "The Lover's Message"

The runic message carved on a wooden stave in the 54-line-long Old English elegy usually known as "The Husband's Message" has always been recognized as a crux by scholars, and therefore has given rise to a wide spectrum of different interpretations. After revising the major previous proposals, a new reading of the message will be attempted in this study, which will be argued to be closer to the text both semantically and linguistically - since it tries to integrate the runes within the context in which they appear, keeping interpolation to a minimum.