The problem of the lacuna posited in Beowulfat 11.389b-90a has recently been reopened by Kevin Kiernan. The lines, as they stand in Klaeber's edition (I include the two preceding half-lines to complete thesence), are as follows: "gesaga him eat wordum, bzt hie sint wilcuman Deniga leodum." [ba to dura eode widcuir hale&] word inne abead: (11.388-90)' The immediate context is Hrothgar's welcoming of Beowulf. Hrothgar has just ordered Wulfgar to bring the Geats in and to bid them welcome, and here Wulfgar begins to execute those orders. Editors have generally dealt with this oassaae much as does Klaeber here above. They postulate a lacuna of two half-lines and till it-with narrative which identities Wulfgar as the sneaker and gets him from Hrothaar to the door.2 Kieman. on the other hand. arguing that defective alliteration is not sufficient grounds for the conjectural restoration of supposedly missing text,3 would allow the manuscript reading to stand. An examination of the passage from the perspective of direct speech, however, suggests that neither approach fully addresses all the points at issue here. There are no physical grounds for postulating a lacuna: Deniga leodum is followed immediately in the manuscript by word inne abead. Kieman suggests that the manuscript reading can be made to make sense simply by placing closing quotation marks after Deniga leodum and opening quotation marks after word inne abead. With this punctuation, Deniga leodum remains, as has been traditional, part of Hrothgar's speech ("Tell them also with words that they are welcome to the people of the Danes"), and word inne ubeadbecomes the introduction to Wulfgar's speech, with the understood third person pronoun of ubead identifying the speaker ("He announced the words within"). The problem with the passage is not simply a matter of alliteration, however. The manuscript reading, even with the question of alliteration set aside, is so much at odds with the poet's treatment of direct speech elsewhere in the poem that emendation still seems justified. Under the poet's normal practices, both the identity ofa speaker and the location from which he speaks are adequately accounted for. These points, previous emendations have adressed. However, in this poem direct speech invariably terminates with the full poetic line. What has not hitherto been taken into account in any treatment of the passage is the anomalous ending of Hrothgar's speech, and the consequent likelihood that part of the lost material came not from the narrative but from that speech. The Beowulf-poet is, by and large, remarkably careful in matters pertaining to direct speech. As a rule, speakers are explicitly identified, whether by proper name, descriptive phrase, or epithet. Beowulf, in the early speech exchanges, is variously se yldesta (1. 258a), wisa werodes (1.259a), ellenrof(substantive, 1.340a), and w&c Wederu leod(1.34 la), as well as "Beowulf," and Wulfgar himself appears twice under his own name (11. 348a and 360a) and once as the wlonc h&e d (1.33 1 b). In fact, onl...