Exeter Riddle 17
MEGANCAVELL
Date: Tue 24 Dec 2013Matching Commentaries: Commentary for Exeter Riddle 17
This week’s translation is a guest post from Wendy Hennequin. Wendy is an Associate Professor at Tennessee State University where she is currently researching the connection between Grendel’s mother and Beowulf’s kings, as well as the comitatus bond in contemporary literature. We’re posting her translation and commentary back-to-back because the commentary discusses issues of translation and so is best read alongside the poem.
Ic eom mundbora minre heorde,
eodorwirum fæst, innan gefylled
dryhtgestreona. Dægtidum oft
spæte sperebrogan; sped biþ þy mare
5 fylle minre. Frea þæt bihealdeð,
hu me of hrife fleogað hyldepilas.
Hwilum ic sweartum swelgan onginne
brunum beadowæpnum, bitrum ordum,
eglum attorsperum. Is min innað til,
10 wombhord wlitig, wloncum deore;
men gemunan þæt me þurh muþ fareð.
I am herd-protector, hand-ruler of the flock,
fast in wire-fences, and filled inside
with army-treasures. Often, in daytime,
I spit spear-terror. My success is greater,
5 luck-might, with fullness. The lord sees how
battle-arrows from my belly fly.
Sometimes, I begin to swallow dark
brown battle-arms, bitter spear-points,
painful poison-spears. Precious to the proud
10 is my bright womb-hoard, wonderful stomach.
People remember what passes through my mouth.
Notes:
Here are some notes on my translation.
- Line 1. I have rendered mundbora twice in this line, though it appears only once in the original text. Clark Hall glosses mundbora as “protector” (242), though it literally breaks down to “hand-ruler.” I have used the second half-line, translated literally as “of my flock,” to make a kenning in the first half-line and preserve the line’s alliteration.
- Line 5a: This half-line translates literally as “with my fullness,” which doesn’t have enough stresses to complete a half-line. I have added, “luck-might,” as a variation of sped in the previous half-line, to fill out 5a.
- Line 9a: “Painful poison-spears” is a literal translation; as a poet, I would have preferred the stronger meter of “Poison pain-spears.”
- Lines 9b-10b: I have rearranged these three half-lines for grammatical sense and alliteration. I have taken a slight liberty with the meaning of the word til, “good, apt, suitable, useful, profitable: excellent: brave: astounding,” by rendering it “wonderful” (Clark Hall 341).
This riddle appears on folio 105r 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 189.
Note that this edition numbers the text Riddle 15: Craig Williamson, ed., The Old English Riddles of the Exeter Book (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1977), pages 77-8.
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Commentary for Exeter Riddle 16
MATTHIASAMMON
Date: Tue 24 Dec 2013Matching Riddle: Exeter Riddle 16
Happily (or boringly, you decide), this is one of the few riddles for which there is little to no argument about the solution. Ever since Franz Dietrich proposed "anchor" in the 19th century, people have looked at it, nodded appreciatively and moved on. So, what can we say about it? Well, first of all, it’s (presumably) based on a Latin riddle by a chap called Symphosius (whose name literally means "party-er" – which is not only cool in and of itself but may also give us a hint about when riddles might have been performed), though the Old English riddler expands on the original. So, for example, the anchor (an inanimate object) speaks of itself as if it were a living creature – it has a steort (which I have translated as"‘end" but can also mean "tail") and, as Dieter Bitterli puts it, strives against wind water like a restless exile or a wild beast (page 101). The paradox is that despite these struggles it remains stiff and still, a description that tells us that it’s probably not an actual living thing.
A reconstruction of an early medieval anchor from Poland from Wikimedia Commons (licence: CC BY-SA 4.0).
But let’s look a bit more carefully at this riddle. Like a lot of Old English riddles, this one can be read on two levels – on the one hand we have the literal solution of "anchor," an everyday object, but on the other we can again draw comparisons with the character of the exile in Old English poetry (such as in The Wanderer, which we have already referred to in Riddle 4). The exile has been cast out of his homeland which has become alien to him (compare line 4 – eþel usually specifically means "homeland"). He yearns for stability in his life because the transience and constant movement of his restless earthly existence seem horrible to him. What he wants is a place of security, something fixed and unchanging – which he can ultimately only find with God in the afterlife. But like the anchor striving against the elements, he needs to resist the pulls of worldly possessions and enjoyments because they want to "ferry away what he is meant to protect," i.e. his soul and spirit. He needs to find a place where he can be still and fastened to something, otherwise the "bad things" will be stronger than him and overcome him. In this way, what looks like a fairly straightforward riddle about an object that would have been familiar to many early medieval folks becomes a metaphorical description of the trials of an individual soul, anchored in faith.
References and Suggested Reading:
Bitterli, Dieter. Say What I am Called: The Old English Riddles of the Exeter Book and the Anglo-Latin Riddle Tradition. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009.
Jember, Gregory K. “Literal and Metaphorical: Clues to Reading the Old English Riddles.” Studies in English Literature (Tokyo), vol. 65 (1988), pages 47-56.
Tags: anglo saxon exeter book riddles old english solutions riddle 16
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