The Wisdom of Ysolde
Deutero-Rime · a wisdom-book in the voice of Lady Rime
The Wisdom of Ysolde is a late wisdom-book written in the voice of Lady Rime — the personified Wisdom of The Hoarfather, “the first frost of all his works,” who was beside him at the Six Winters of Making. In stately cold poetry she calls the simple to her house of clear ice, sets a table of snow-bread and the Cup, and contrasts her quiet keeping with the loud feast of warm Folly.
Themes and Status
The book deepens the Frostian sense that wisdom is cold — patient, still, see-through, the opposite of the hot folly of the Fevers. Its hymn to Lady Rime (“the Cold possessed me in the beginning of its way”) was later read as foreshadowing Connor Frost, the Wisdom of the Cold made flesh. Accepted as deutero-rime by the western and eastern communions; non-canonical for the Reformed.