RIDDLE POSTS BY ARCHIVE DATE: APR 2013

Commentary for Exeter Riddle 4

MEGANCAVELL

Date: Wed 03 Apr 2013
Matching Riddle: Exeter Riddle 4

Riddle-solvers have had fun with this one, so brace yourselves. First off, Fry’s riddle-solution article lists the following suggestions: Bell, Millstone, Necromancy, Flail, Lock, Handmill, Pen and Phallus. How could someone possibly associate a bell and a phallus? I’ll leave that up to you.

But the fun doesn’t stop there. In the same year that Fry’s article was published, Ann Harleman Stewart writes an article (full ref details below) suggesting Bucket of Water, which A. N. Doane goes on to refine in another article. According to the Bucket-reading, the various rings that the riddle describes are either links on a chain, the straps surrounding the bucket (i.e. the ones that hold the pieces of wood in place) and/or a sheet of ice on the surface of the water. Certainly, the description of grumbling, chilly, early-rising servants would fit this interpretation, as does the reference to “bursting” the bound ring, if we’re talking about ice.

Red bucket with frozen water

Photo of a not-very-medieval bucket with frozen water from Wikimedia Commons (licence: CC BY-SA 2.0).

But the fun doesn’t stop there. In the very same year (1991), we have another two scholars who suggest a pretty fun solution: Dog or Watchdog. These are Wim Tigges and Ray Brown (the scholars…not the dogs). Now the "cry" is a bark, the rings are a collar and leash and someone is really unhappy to be dragged out of bed by a frolicsome pup. I promise to feed and walk it every morning, mom, really!

But the fun doesn’t stop there. If you’re a cat person, you might agree with the next person to take a crack at solving Riddle 4. In 2007, Melanie Heyworth suggests that what we’re actually dealing with here is the Devil. She compares the use of words keywords in the poem to the language of penitentials (outlines of penance for sins) and homilies and finds a lot of overlap. Noting that most of the words in the poem have double meanings, she sees a lot of condemning with fetters and violation of religious worship (not to mention sex, reading the wearm lim as a "hot penis"). All of this is to say, if you’re a sleepy medieval person, you had better get yourself out of bed and into the church…being tired means you’re not alert and that makes you vulnerable to temptation (see "Hrothgar’s Sermon" in Beowulf, lines 1700-74), if you don’t believe me).

Statue of devil and woman

Photo of a not-so-medieval devil statue from Wikimedia Commons (licence: CC BY-SA 3.0).

But, you guessed it, the fun still doesn’t stop there. I’m a big fan of the next solution, Shannon Ferri Cochran’s 2009 suggestion that we’re actually dealing with a Plough Team. This reading takes the various rings as the neck-yoke on the oxen pulling the plough, as well as the wheels of the object itself. The nice, bursty sound now becomes wheels slopping through a muddy field, and the characters in the poem become the driver and his servant. Part of what I like about this interpretation is the way it maps onto a poem we haven’t yet gotten to: Riddle 21, a similarly fettered plough. But you’ll have to wait for that one.

And finally, oh finally, the fun stops (well…for now). Patrick J. Murphy’s 2011 book, Unriddling the Exeter Riddles, brings us full circle to Bell again. That’s right, the solution that had the most supporters in Fry’s 1981 article is back in the spotlight. Here, Murphy concentrates on the rings as puns on "to ring" (you know, like you ring…well…a bell) and the binding as an allusion to the bell’s duty as a servant (it’s "bound" to carry out it’s job…ba-dum ching). Murphy also looks to other texts where bells are governed by the verb hyran, which he points out can mean both ‘"o obey" and "to hear."

Hand bells lying on their side

Photo (by Suguri F) of a not-so-medieval hand bell from Wikimedia Commons (licence: CC BY-SA 3.0).

So, what do I think? I simply do not know. To be honest with you, all these readings are pretty convincing. That’s why people keep publishing them. I suppose if push came to shove, I’d be inclined to support the Bucket (or OE wæter-stoppa, according to Niles) reading since it seems to cover all the bases. But if I’ve learned one thing from reading up on Riddle 4, it’s that there’s always room for more!

 

[Editorial Note: Another solution has now been proposed!: Sword. Check out Corinne Dale’s, “A New Solution to Exeter Book Riddle 4” in Notes and Queries, vol. 64, issue 1 (2017), pages 1-3.]

 

Notes:

References and Suggested Reading:

Brown, Ray. “The Exeter Book’s Riddle 2: A Better Solution.” English Language Notes, vol. 29 (1991), pages 1-4.

Cochran, Shannon Ferri. “The Plough’s the Thing: A New Solution to Old English Riddle 4 of the Exeter Book.” Journal of English and Germanic Philology, vol. 108 (2009), pages 301-9.

Doane, A. N. “Three Old English Implement Riddles: Reconsiderations of Numbers 4, 49, and 73.” Modern Philology, vol. 84 (1987), pages 243-57.

Heyworth, Melanie. “The Devil’s in the Detail: A New Solution to Exeter Book Riddle 4.” Neophilologus, vol. 91 (2007), pages 175-96.

Murphy, Patrick J. Unriddling the Exeter Riddles. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2011, esp. pages 71-7.

Niles, John D. Old English Enigmatic Poems and the Play of the Texts. Turnhout: Brepols, 2006, esp. page 147.

Stewart, Ann Harleman. “The Solution to Old English Riddle 4.” Studia Philologica, vol. 78 (1981), pages 52-61.

Tigges, Wim. “Signs and Solutions: A Semiotic Approach to the Exeter Book Riddles.” In This Noble Craft: Proceedings of the Xth Research Symposium of the Dutch and Belgian University Teachers of Old and Middle English and Historical Linguistics, Utrecht, 19-20 January, 1989. Edited by Erik Kooper. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1991, pages 59-82.



Tags: anglo saxon  exeter book  riddles  old english  solutions  riddle 4 

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Exeter Riddle 5

MATTHIASAMMON

Date: Tue 09 Apr 2013
Matching Commentaries: Commentary for Exeter Riddle 5
Original text:

Ic eom anhaga         iserne wund,
bille gebennad,         beadoweorca sæd,
ecgum werig.         Oft ic wig seo,
frecne feohtan.         Frofre ne wene,
5     þæt me geoc cyme         guðgewinnes,
ær ic mid ældum         eal forwurðe,
ac mec hnossiað         homera lafe,
heardecg heoroscearp,         hondweorc smiþa,
bitað in burgum;         ic abidan sceal
10     laþran gemotes.         Næfre læcecynn
on folcstede         findan meahte,
þara þe mid wyrtum         wunde gehælde,
ac me ecga dolg         eacen weorðað
þurh deaðslege         dagum ond nihtum.

Translation:

I am a lone-dweller, wounded by iron,
savaged by a sword, worn out by war-deeds,
battered by blades. Often I see battle,
fraught fighting. I do not expect succour,
5     that relief from war might come to me,
before I perish utterly among men,
but the leavings of hammers lash me,
hard-edged and sword-sharp, handiwork of smiths,
they bite me in strongholds; I must wait for
10     the more hateful encounter. Never am I able
to find medic-kin in the dwelling-place,
those who might heal my wound with herbs,
but the scars of swords become wider on me
through a death-blow by day and by night.

Click to show riddle solution?
Shield (most widely supported), Chopping Block, Guilt


Notes:

This riddle appears on folio 102v of The Exeter Book.

The above Old English text is based on this edition: Elliott van Kirk Dobbie and George Philip Krapp, eds, The Exeter Book, Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records 3 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1936), pages 183-4.

Note that this edition numbers the text Riddle 3: Craig Williamson, ed., The Old English Riddles of the Exeter Book (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1977), page 71.



Tags: anglo saxon  exeter book  riddles  old english  solutions  riddle 5 

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Commentary for Exeter Riddle 5

MATTHIASAMMON

Date: Tue 09 Apr 2013
Matching Riddle: Exeter Riddle 5

This riddle is most commonly solved as "shield" and this is the solution I’m adopting here. The shield is one of the most common accessories of the protagonists of heroic poetry (see for example the importance of this piece of battle-equipment in poems like Beowulf or The Battle of Maldon) and as such is one of the most important symbols of this social world. In this riddle, the usual connotations are subverted. While the poem uses the common associations of the shield with swords (ecg, bill) and battle (wig, beadoweorc), the shield is cast in the role of an exile, as suggested by the poetic term anhaga, familiar to readers of Old English poetry from the first line of The Wanderer (Oft him anhaga are gebideð…, "Often the solitary man himself experiences favour…"), a poem which explores the mental landscape of somebody who is no longer a part of the heroic social world (full translation here). It may for example also be considered significant that the shield cannot find any security in the burg, the "stronghold," a word that is etymologically and semantically connected to other words relating to "safety" in Old English.

Red replica shield

Here’s a reconstructed Viking shield from the Barrow-in-Furness Dock Museum.

Like the main character of The Wanderer, the shield is unable to do anything about what’s happening to it – note that it talks about the things being done to it, with me as the object of the sentences in the middle of the poem and the final two lines. Where the shield is the subject, the verbs are not ones of action (seo: "I see"; forwurðe: "I perish"; findan meahte: "I might find"). As we have already seen in some of the other riddles, the shield – an inanimate object – speaks in the first person (a literary technique known as "prosopopeia"). Through this, the shield to a certain extent takes on the persona of a human warrior, scarred by many battles and left without companions.

The riddle therefore plays with several aspects of the shield’s identity: it is a heroic object, used in potentially glorious battles, but its essentially defensive nature means it’s less glamorous than an active, attacking weapon like a sword – it has things done to it and can do nothing to change its fate. Like the exiles whose plight is evoked in the Old English elegies, the description of the shield shows what one might call the flipside of the heroic world: the scars, the injuries, the grittiness of battle, the potential for the individual to be left without help or companionship.

Tags: anglo saxon  exeter book  riddles  old english  solutions  riddle 5 

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Exeter Riddle 5

Exeter Riddle 6

MATTHIASAMMON

Date: Thu 25 Apr 2013
Matching Commentaries: Commentary for Exeter Riddle 6
Original text:

Mec gesette soð         sigora waldend
Crist to compe.        Oft ic cwice bærne,
unrimu cyn         eorþan getenge,
næte mid niþe,         swa ic him no hrine,
5     þonne mec min frea         feohtan hateþ.
Hwilum ic monigra         mod arete,
hwilum ic frefre         þa ic ær winne on
feorran swiþe;         hi þæs felað þeah,
swylce þæs oþres,         þonne ic eft hyra
10     ofer deop gedreag         drohtað bete.

Translation:

Christ, the true ruler of victories, placed me
in battle. Often I burn the living,
uncounted peoples I oppress upon the earth,
crush them cruelly, when my lord
5     commands me to fight, but I do not touch them.
Sometimes I comfort the mind of many,
sometimes I console those whom I earlier struggled against
from very far away; although they feel it,
just like that other time, when I again
10     improve their way of life above deep tumult.

Click to show riddle solution?
Sun


Notes:

This riddle appears on folios 102v-103r of The Exeter Book.

The above Old English text is based on this edition: Elliott van Kirk Dobbie and George Philip Krapp, eds, The Exeter Book, Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records 3 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1936), page 184.

Note that this edition numbers the text Riddle 4: Craig Williamson, ed., The Old English Riddles of the Exeter Book (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1977), page 71.



Tags: riddles  riddle 6 

Exeter Riddle 10

MATTHIASAMMON

Date: Thu 25 Apr 2013
Matching Commentaries: Commentary for Exeter Riddle 10
Original text:

Neb wæs min on nearwe,         ond ic neoþan wætre,
flode underflowen,         firgenstreamum
swiþe besuncen,         ond on sunde awox
ufan yþum þeaht,         anum getenge
5     liþendum wuda         lice mine.
Hæfde feorh cwico,         þa ic of fæðmum cwom
brimes ond beames         on blacum hrægle;
sume wæron hwite         hyrste mine,
þa mec lifgende         lyft upp ahof,
10     wind of wæge,         siþþan wide bær
ofer seolhbaþo.         Saga hwæt ic hatte.

Translation:

My nose was in a tight spot, and I beneath the water,
underflowed by the flood, sunk deep
into the ocean-waves, and in the sea grew
covered with waves from above, my body
5     touching a floating piece of wood.
I had living spirit, when I came out of the embrace
of water and wood in a black garment,
some of my trappings were white,
then the air lifted me, living, up,
10     wind from the water, then carried me far
over the seal’s bath. Say what I am called.

Click to show riddle solution?
Barnacle goose


Notes:

This riddle appears on folio 103v of The Exeter Book.

The above Old English text is based on this edition: Elliott van Kirk Dobbie and George Philip Krapp, eds, The Exeter Book, Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records 3 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1936), pages 185-6.

Note that this edition numbers the text Riddle 8: Craig Williamson, ed., The Old English Riddles of the Exeter Book (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1977), page 73.



Tags: anglo saxon  exeter book  riddles  old english  solutions  riddle 10 

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