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Abstract
Because of its inclusion in practically every Old English reader, the entry for 755 from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle enjoys a wide popularity. It reports a struggle for the Wessex throne, the loyalties within factions and the bloody effects of feuding, which are generally held to be exemplary of the Germanic heroic ethos. Much discussed as the entry is, my paper seeks to illucidate some aspects that have received less critical attention, but which also can only be understood in a wider contextual reading, based especially an Old Norse and Old Frisian sources. The Germanic topoi I discuss are: (a) the kinship relation between Cynewulf and Cyneheard: uncle and nephew; (b) the woman's rôle: rape; and (c) the alliterative phrase feoh and feorh: a king's prerogative.