Æschere is lamented at considerable length and in some detail in Beowulf, and since he is a character who never speaks and whose sole function is to die and eventually lose his head, one might wonder why an apparently peripheral character merits such extended attention. If his actual role in the narrative of the poem is marginal, the lament for Æschere is carefully structured, and, as I hope to show, ideologically significant. Æschere, for those readers who might need to be reminded, is the sole victim of Grendel's mother's raid on Heorot, a raid undertaken to revenge the death of Grendel at the hands of Beowulf. Since Grendel's mother, unlike her son, is not invulnerable to weapons, she is actually in considerable danger during her raid on Heorot, and only has time to slay one warrior before retreating to the mere. Unfortunately the warrior she slew was a particular favorite of Hroðgar's – one whom Hroðgar and the other Danes will miss bitterly.