In lines 14b–15a of The Dream of the Rood the cross is said to be honoured by a garment, or garments (wædum geweorðode) and in a 21b–2a it is said to change (wendan) because of or along with or with respect to these garments. What they might be is a question which has racked many brains. The usual opinion at the present day is that they are some kind of cloth trappings. Cook, for instance, was reminded of a streamer which, he said, formed part of the labarum (but in so saying he was misled either by memory or by mistranslation, for the only cloth which the labarum comprised might, from its size and shape, more properly be called an apron). Ebert proposed silk cords or tassels. Others prefer the veil or pall with which the cross is shrouded on Good Friday, to be dramatically revealed on Easter Sunday. The weakness of all such explanations is that their proponents feel bound not to leave the spot without discovering an explanation: they scrupulously refrain, that is, from looking either backwards or forwards, with the result that, as the reference fails to explain itself, they are compelled to look outside the poem. They fail to take into account repeated references within the poem itself to coverings that, however unexpected and however diverse their materials, all agree in performing, to a greater or lesser degree, the principal office of a garment, that of enveloping the cross: in line 5b it is described as leohte bewunden, ‘suffused, or wrapped round, with light’ and in 16a, and again in 23b and 77, gold is said to ‘clothe’ it (gyrwan), the verb signifying, as it may, more than a sporadic embellishment. Nor is it to be overlooked that the first reference to the cross's wæde is in the immediate context of its glory: it is wuldres treow (14b) that is so clothed.
