| Sumario: | This article discusses the poetic dialogues in the Old English poem Solomon and Saturn. It is stated that the most memorable passage in the poetic dialogues is the sequence in which the letters of the Pater Noster are personified as warriors and their attacks upon the Devil vividly described. The weapons of the letters and the method which these bellicose characters adopt often depend upon their particular shapes and forms. For other letters, the relationship between their forms and their methods of warfare is more difficult to see. In an age distinguished for its many fanciful allegories and stories, the fighting letters of fictitious characters Solomon and Saturn still stand out as among the most fanciful. Even the most seemingly original and idiosyncratic vagaries of the medieval imagination are often based on time-honoured and long-standing traditions, or a combination of traditions. The epithets which are addressed to the Pater Noster in Solomon and Saturn and which treat the prayer as if it were a person are reflected in the Irish tradition of the lorica. Although each of these traditions could have contributed something to the elements of the poem, none of them really explains or parallels the personification of the letters themselves.
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