In Old English, concessive clauses introduced by the conjunction þēah (þe) are almost always associated with the subjunctive mood. According to Burnham (1911: 24), the prose texts provide 693 instances of the þēah-clause where only 10 (1.4%) are in indicative mood. In a work intended as a companion volume to Burnham's monograph, Quirk (1954: 31, 33) made a comprehensive study of concessive clauses in Old English verse texts, stating that “the mood of verbs in dependent þēah-members is overwhelmingly subjunctive”: of 223 finite verbs in the þēah (te)-clauses, 127 are clearly subjunctive, 87 are ambiguous, and 9 are indicative, of which Quirk dismisses four problematic cases to reach “five unchallenged instances of indicative, … that is, 2.2 per cent of the total of the verbs in dependent þēah-members.” A preponderance of the subjunctive in the þēah-clauses can, for instance, be seen in Beowulf: there occur 27 instances of the þēah-clause, only two of which contain verbs unambiguously in indicative mood (hereafter emphasis in quotations mine):

In both of the instances, the þēah-clause describes a fact. But, as Campbell (1956: 65) states, “[þ]ēah takes the subjunctive in subordinate clauses by rule, and quite independently of the reality of the concession.” In the verse below, which looks very much similar to verse 2467b in wording as well as in meaning, the poet used the subjunctive wǣre in the þēah-clause with reference to a fact:

Meter affords the key to the use of the indicative in verses 1613b and 2467b.