Old Saxon
The Old Saxon features predominate in the opening part of the poem and show a number of errors, which argue against an Old Saxon original. The alliteration of "riche" and "reccheo" in line 48 is often regarded as conclusive: the equivalent Old Saxon forms, "rīke" and "wrekkio", do not alliterate and would have given a malformed line. Earlier scholars envisaged an Old Saxon original, but an Old High German original is now universally accepted.