Dogode in Wulf and Eadwacer and King Alfred's Hunting Metaphors

Auden, Translation, Betrayal: Radical Poetics and Translation from Old English

“…This is notable because ‘hound’ is the common word for dog (which is of unknown origin in English) at least until Chaucer. However, as recently as 2000 Marijane Osborn argued for the retention of * dogian as a reference to a “larger hunting dog used for tracking” and as integral to the animal metaphor of the poem, suggesting that the poet may even have “invented” it (3–9).’ It is not implausible that both of these readings shed light on the * dogian , which most plausibly might suggest tortuous tracking in the manner of a dog, especially since it here takes the compound widlast as its object (a word which contains wid (‘far’) and last , a track, trail, trace, step or path).…”