RIDDLE POSTS BY ARCHIVE DATE: FEB 2018

Commentary for Exeter Riddle 53

MEGANCAVELL

Date: Tue 06 Feb 2018
Matching Riddle: Exeter Riddle 53

This commentary comes to us once again from Sharon Rhodes of the University of Rochester. Congratulations on successfully defending your thesis this week, Sharon!

 

There have been three major solutions proposed for Riddle 53: battering ram, gallows, and cross. Battering ram seems the most literal — something that was a once tree, but was then chopped down, outfitted with metal fittings and used to storm castles. But gallows and cross stretch our perspectives. In any case, the development of these modern solutions has a history.

In 1859, F. Dietrich solved Riddle 53 as “battering ram.” The iron work involved in battering rams allows us to read line 6 quite literally: deope gedolgod, dumb in bendum (deeply wounded, silent in his shackles). Cross and gallows are less clear and more dependent on context: there are multiple ways of constructing a gallows, crucifix or otherwise. The first solution also allows for an easy reading of lines 8b through 10a: Nu he fæcnum weg / þurh his heafdes mægen hildegieste / oþrum rymeð (Now he, through the might of head, clears the path to another treacherous enemy). If the solution is “battering ram,” then this is a simple description of attacking and then plundering a castle.

Battering ram

Photo of a battering ram (by eltpics) from Flickr (licence: CC BY-NC 2.0).

But “battering ram” is a solution that is contextually lacking: there were no battering rams in early medieval England! At least, according to Craig Williamson, “there is no archaeological evidence for the existence of an Anglo-Saxon battering ram,” which makes sense when we recall that there were no early medieval castles to lay siege to with a battering ram (page 297). Of course, there’s no reason to think that the early English couldn’t comprehend battering rams and Aldhelm’s Riddle 86 — a Latin riddle written in early medieval England — suggests a battering ram at least twice (Williamson, page 297):

Sum namque armatus rugosis cornibus horrens.
Herbas arvorum buccis decerpo virentes,
Et tamen astrifero procedens agmine stipor;
Culmina caelorum quae scadunt celsa catervis.
Turritas urbes capitis certamine quasso
Oppida murorum prosternens arcibus altis.
Induo mortales retorto stamine pepli;
Littera quindecima praestat quod pars domus adsto.
(Aldhelm, ed. by Juster, pages 52-3)
(Yes, armed with wrinkled horns, I’m quite a fright. / I chew huge mouthfuls of the meadow grass, / Yet starry swarms escort me as I pass; / They rise in hordes to Heaven’s highest height. / Headstrong, I bang the turrets of the town / So its tall fortress walls will tumble down. / With twisted thread I fill man’s clothing needs; / I’m right at home if letter fifteen leads.)

Battering ram with head

Photo of a battering ram head (by Clarinetlover) from Wikimedia Commons (licence: CC BY-SA 3.0).

However, while Aldhelm’s riddle dances between the idea of a ram (male sheep) and the siege weapon — the Latin word aries can refer to either — there’s no real sheep reference in Exeter Riddle 53, unless you consider sheep inveterate thieves of the night.

Ram

Photo of a Gute ram (by Oskari Löytynoja) from Wikimedia Commons (licence: CC BY 3.0).

So too, the imagery of Riddle 53 is strikingly similar to that of the famous Old English poem The Dream of the Rood. For instance, the dreamer describes the Rood tree as forwundod mid wonnum (sorely wounded with wounds) at line 14, which is reminiscent of Riddle 53’s line 7: wriþen ofer wunda, wonnum hyrstum (racked all over with wounds, adorned with dark ornaments). In fact, Jonathan Wilcox reads Riddle 53 as an analog of The Dream of the Rood and, accordingly, suggests the solution of “gallows,” and Andy Orchard reads The Dream of the Rood as a riddle writ large and, consequently, solves 53 as “cross”: a very specific gallows.

Riddle 53 Bewick Gallows and Crows.jpg

Image of crows and gallows from Bewick, page 71.

As Orchard points out, The Dream of the Rood uses the word beam — which occurs in Riddle 53 — with a number of meanings. Beam can mean “tree,” “gallows” or “sunbeam” — the cross’s function as Christ’s retainer — so this singular word accounts for the rood-tree’s three states, a trinity, so to speak. Through its homonyms, beam points to multiple aspects of the rood-tree’s function and identity. And beam of course is exactly how we’re introduced to the solution of Riddle 53 in line 1: Ic seah on bearwe beam hlifian (I saw a tree towering in a wood).

Cross

Photo of a cross (by Ian Britton) from Flickr (licence: CC BY-NC 2.0).

Each of these solutions — battering ram, gallows and cross — reconfirms that the Exeter riddles are poems that force us to consider the parallels between different things by viewing them from unfamiliar perspectives. John D. Niles points out that the cross is a gallows — an instrument of execution — and a source of life in the Christian tradition (page 147; note that Niles suggests the Old English solution of gealg-treow (gallows-tree)).

Riddle 53 Biogradska_suma.jpg

Photo of Biogradska forest in Montenegro (by Snežana Trifunović) from Wikimedia Commons (licence: CC BY-SA 3.0)

Perhaps most significantly, Riddle 53 stands with The Dream of the Rood and other riddles of torture in forcing the audience to consider the world from the point of view of what humanity typically views as “raw materials” for our built world. As Jennifer Neville points out, “in Exeter Book Riddles 53 and 88, [. . .] a tree and the antler of a deer, both dwelling happily and naturally in the forest (bearu, holt), are seized, removed from their environment, wounded and used by human beings; as tools, as battering rams and ink-horns” (page 115). These things “are forced on wera æhtum ‘into the possessions of men’ (Exeter Book Riddle 88, 23b)” (page 115).

If we keep “battering ram” while adding “cross” and “gallows,” then we can start exploring the idea of Christ and the crucifix as invaders. Perhaps this is an oblique reference to the harrowing of hell — when Christ invaded hell to bring salvation to the righteous who died before his crucifixion, thereby “stealing” souls from Satan. As with so many of the Exeter riddles, no one solution is totally satisfying; it’s the collection of possible answers that allows us to see a tree in a forest for all of the potential lives it may lead after its felling.

Notes:

References and Suggested Reading:

Aldhelm. Saint Aldhelm’s ‘Riddles.’ Edited and translated by A. M. Juster. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015.

Bewick, Thomas. A History of British Birds. Vol. I (Newcastle: R. Ward and Sons, 1885) [Memorial Edition]

Bitterli, Dieter. Say What I Am Called. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009 (esp. pages 151-69).

Neville, Jennifer. Representations of the Natural World in Old English Poetry. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.

Niles, John D. Old English Enigmatic Poems and the Play of the Texts. Turnhout: Breopols, 2006.

Orchard, Andy. “The Dream of the Rood: Cross-References.” In New Readings in the Vercelli Book. Edited by Samantha Zacher and Andy Orchard. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015, pages 225-53.

Wilcox, Jonathan. “New Solutions to Old English Riddles 17 and 53.” Philological Quarterly, vol. 69 (1990), pages 393-408.

Williamson, Craig. The Old English Riddles of the Exeter Book. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1977.



Tags: anglo saxon  exeter book  riddles  old english  solutions  riddle 53  sharon rhodes 

Related Posts:
Commentary for Exeter Riddle 53
Commentary for Exeter Riddle 55
Commentary for Exeter Riddle 73

Commentary for Exeter Riddle 54

MEGANCAVELL

Date: Thu 22 Feb 2018
Matching Riddle: Exeter Riddle 54

For this post, we’re going to experiment with a new commentary style. I’m all for collaboration, so Andrea Di Carlo and I are going to take turns talking about Riddle 54. Will it work? You can be the judge of that! (but don’t actually judge us, because our egos are too fragile for all that)

Let’s start with the basics: what are the “obscene” riddles and how does Riddle 54 fit in?

 

Andrea: Over the last few decades, the riddles of the Exeter Book have attracted a lot of scholarship, especially after the critical reviews carried out by Mercedes Salvador-Bello, Glenn Davis, Patrick Murphy and Ruth Evans. If, in 1910, Frederick Tupper had rejected any type of unsavoury interpretation and overruled the category “obscene riddles,” George Phillip Krapp and Elliott van Kirk Dobbie later made allowances for euphemistic wording and images, and acknowledged that obscene content had to be taken into account.

Riddle 54 perfectly fits into this category because its imagery is certainly problematic and far from ambiguous. Krapp and Dobbie solve the riddle as “churn” (page 188), relying on the earlier suggestion of Moritz Trautmann. The backdrop of the obscene riddles tends to be mundane, as is the case with the start of Riddle 54: readers follow the progress of a young man travelling toward a woman, only to hear that, when he arrives in the corner where the woman stands, he thrusts stiþes nathwæt (line 5b) (something stiff) under her girdle.

 

Megan: Okay, so pretty obviously euphemistic then. While we can translate nathwæt as just “something,” the nat part of the compound is actually from the contracted verb, nytan, that is: ne + witan (to know not). In other words, it means something like “a stiff know-not-what.” This is a pretty obvious attempt to avoid saying what it is the poet means, which just screams euphemism! Nathwæt also appears in Riddle 45 and Riddle 61, both of which are interested in sex in their own right.

So, the word is a dead giveaway that we’re definitely looking at a rude riddle.

 

Andrea: What else are we readers supposed to think? It’s pretty clear that the anonymous riddle-composer is showing us a short scene of sexual intercourse (suspicion is only aroused further by the use of wagedan in line 6, which means “shake” or “shag,” and by the tillic esne (capable servant) hastening in lines 7-8a). This idea is emphasised by Murphy (pages 184-195) and Evans (page 28), whose interpretations of the text are based upon these sequences of obscene and potentially aggressive images: the hyse (young man) of line 1a worhte his willan (line 6a) (worked his will), while the female figure stands there.

 

Megan: So, is this a disturbing example of sex where the woman is simply the object of the man’s desire, or could there be something more going on here? Well, Murphy actually provides an alternative interpretation to the two-people-having-sex-in-a-corner reading. He reminds us that we shouldn’t confuse the grammatical and natural gender of pronouns – that is, the poet never actually describes the female character (while other rude riddles, like Riddle 25 and Riddle 45, do include more elaborate descriptions), and so she might not be a woman at all.

The female pronouns (hio/hie/hire, i.e. she/her) could also be applied to objects that are grammatically feminine…which, coincidentally, Old English cyrn is. So, if we read every reference to “she/her” as “it” instead and swap the translation “belt” for “girdle,” then maybe we’re actually witnessing a young man working his will on his “capable servant” all by himself. This certainly makes the joke a lot less aggressive and so, I’d say, funnier. And it just gets more amusing when we read this potential masturbation scene alongside the more wholesome butter churn interpretation.

 

Andrea: Yes! We should always expect some sort of a twist in the Old English riddles. And the turning point takes place in the last line, where our sexual assumptions are quashed and we’re brought back to a reality that both encourages and rejects the double entendre. In lines 11-12 we hear that under the woman’s girdle (or man’s belt) grows what men mid feo bicgað (buy with money). Surely, there’s no euphemistic way to read this financial transaction?! With these lines, the sexual reading of Riddle 54 is dispelled and we find that the author was simply referring to the making of butter in a churn.

Lots of butter churns

Here are some Icelandic butter churns on display at a museum Megan once visited. Sadly, she has no idea where she saw these bad boys. Possibly in the south of Iceland?

 

Megan: If we accept that we’re hearing about a cyrn or churn, then the riddle also provides a useful corrective to any food prep-based gender assumptions we might want to make. It’s tempting to assume that all food production was a female task in early medieval England, and certainly much of women’s work did involve preparing food. We do, for example, have a reference to a female cheese-maker whose duties also involved making butter from the eleventh-century law-text known as the Rectitudines Singularum Personarum (Rights of Different People).

It reads: cyswyrhtan gebyreð hundred cyse, & þæt heo of wringhwæge buteran macige to hlafordes beode (a hundred cheeses are allotted to the cheese-maker, and that she makes butter from the whey pressed out of cheese for the lord’s table (Liebermann, vol. 1, page 451, no. 16). The feminine ending attached to the cheese-maker here tells us that she’s female. But the method of preparation – of cheese first and then butter – also tells us that the raw material is likely sheep’s milk (Banham and Faith, pages 111-12). Could this be important?

Because, after all, the person doing the churning here in Riddle 54 is definitely male. And he’s not the only man to own up to doing a bit of churning on the side. In fact, he reminds me of the shepherd in Ælfric’s Colloquy (a dialogue-style, bilingual text aimed at teaching Latin to youngsters in early medieval England). After the teacher asks the pupil assigned the role of shepherd what work he does, the pupil replies that he watches over the sheep in their pastures, milks them, etc., and finishes with the statement: ge cyse ge buteran ic do, ond ic eom getrywe hlaforde minum (I make both butter and cheese, and I am faithful to my lord) (Ælfric, page 22). So, perhaps it makes sense to think of farming as the task of a household rather than dividing specific bits and pieces of it down gender lines.

Someone had better tell the be-skirted churners at the Durham Medieval Family Fun Weekend I attended last year to get their male collaborators to help out a bit more!

Reconstructed butter churn

The butter churn on show at the Medieval Family Fun Weekend, Durham Cathedral, August 2015.

 

So, we’ve heard about the various ways of reading this riddle’s sexual encounter, and we’ve heard a bit about churning butter (which is really tiring, hard work, by the way!). But what’s the take-home point of this riddle, then?

 

Andrea: I think it’s important to note that the riddles capitalise on double entendre and dubiety, because it’s in their nature to intellectually challenge and defy readers. “No sex, please, we’re Anglo-Saxons,” as Hugh Magennis famously wrote some time ago! I’d argue that sexual imagery or sexually laden content in the riddles conveys a more domestic and less remote picture of the past, while also challenging commonplaces about sexual life in medieval Europe.

In the end, mystifying or nonplussing the audience is the main target of the riddle-composer and this one perfectly manages to play his/her cards right: the poet tricks us into believing we’re viewing sexual intercourse in the opening lines, only to undercut our assumptions at the end by making it clear that it wasn’t sex at all, but the making of something that can be bought and sold (butter, of course!). And, after all, this is the nature of riddles, to engage participants in a mental and intellectual process that’s supposed to enrich their knowledge, as Krapp and Dobbie maintain. Or, in this case, to baffle them!

Notes:

References and Suggested Reading:

Ælfric of Eynsham. Ælfric’s Colloquy. Edited by G.N. Garmonsway. London: Methuen, 1939.

Banham, Debby, and Rosamond Faith. Anglo-Saxon Farms and Farming. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.

Davis, Glenn. “The Exeter Book Riddles and the Place of Sexual Idiom in Old English Literature.” In Medieval Obscenities. Edited by Nicola McDonald. York: York Medieval Press, 2006, pages 39-54.

Evans, Ruth, ed. A Cultural History of Sexuality in the Middle Ages. London: Bloomsbury, 2014.

Krapp, George Philip, and Elliott Van Kirk Dobbie, eds. The Exeter Book, Anglo-Saxon Poetic Record, vol. 3. New York: Columbia University Press, 1936.

Liebermann, F., ed. Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen. 3 vols. Halle: Max Niemeyer, 1903-16.

Magennis, Hugh. “‘No Sex Please, We’re Anglo-Saxons’? Attitudes to Sexuality in Old English Prose and Poetry.” Leeds Studies in English, vol. 26 (1995), pages 1-27.

Murphy, Patrick J. Unriddling the Exeter Riddles. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2011.

Salvador-Bello, Mercedes. “The Key to the Body: Unlocking Riddles 42-46.” In Naked Before God: Uncovering Body in Anglo-Saxon England. Edited by Benjamin C. Withers and Jonathan Wilcox. Morgantown: West Virginia University Press, 2003, pages 60-96.

Trautmann, Moritz. “Alte und Neue Antworten auf altenglische Rätsel.” Bonner Beiträge zur Anglistik, vol. 19 (1905), pages 167-215.

Tupper, Frederick, Jr., ed. The Riddles of the Exeter Book, Boston: Ginn, 1910.



Tags: anglo saxon  exeter book  riddles  old english  solutions  riddle 54  andrea di carlo 

Related Posts:
Commentary for Exeter Riddle 25
Commentary for Exeter Riddle 45
Commentary for Exeter Riddle 61

Exeter Riddle 74

MEGANCAVELL

Date: Mon 12 Feb 2018
Matching Commentaries: Commentary for Exeter Riddle 74

Riddle 74’s translation is by returning guest contributor James Paz, lecturer in early medieval literature at the University of Manchester. Welcome back, James!



Original text:

Ic wæs fæmne geong,      feaxhar cwene,
ond ænlic rinc      on ane tid;
fleah mid fuglum      ond on flode swom,
deaf under yþe      dead mid fiscum,
ond on foldan stop,      hæfde ferþ cwicu.

Translation:

I was a young girl, a grey-haired woman,
and a singular warrior at the same time;
I soared with the birds and swam in the water,
dove under the waves, dead among the fish,
and stepped on land. I held a living spirit.

Click to show riddle solution?
Cuttlefish, Boat and oak, Quill pen, Ship’s figurehead, Siren, Water


Notes:

This riddle appears on folio 126v 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 234.

Note that this edition numbers the text Riddle 72: Craig Williamson, ed., The Old English Riddles of the Exeter Book (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1977), page 109.



Tags: anglo saxon  exeter book  riddles  old english  solutions  riddle 74  james paz 

Related Posts:
Commentary for Exeter Riddles 1-3
Commentary for Exeter Riddle 74
Exeter Riddle 9

Commentary for Exeter Riddle 83

MEGANCAVELL

Date: Thu 01 Mar 2018
Matching Riddle: Exeter Riddle 83

Hi all! Sorry it has been so long since our last post, but LIFE has been happening. And it has an irritating tendency to get in the way of writing. Still, I’m here now…let’s do this thing.

Riddle 83 has Alanis Morissette levels of irony in its opening lines (too dated a cultural reference? pish tosh!). That good ol’ burn mark that we’ve seen wreaking havoc upon the riddles toward the end of the Exeter Book extends down into this poem…just far enough to mess with its description of fire. Good joke, universe. Good joke.

And fire is essential to this riddle, which speaks of the production process involved in turning molten metal into coins.

640px-Pouring_gold
Photo of molten gold (by Allen Drebert) from Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Ore does it? (see what I did there?)

Yes, yes it does. The riddle is generally solved as Ore (Old English ora), though some read it as referring more specifically to gold or to currency. It has been read alongside the late antique, North African riddler Symphosius’ take on the topic. His Enigma 91, Pecunia (Money) reads:

terra fui primo, latebris abscondita terrae.
nunc aliud pretium flammae nomenque dederunt,
nec iam terra vocor, licet ex me terra paretur.
(Leary, page 50)

(At first I was earth, hidden in the secret places of the earth. Now flames and a name have granted me a different worth, no longer am I called earth, although earth is obtained with me.)

Lots of similar ideas, yes? We can see a real focus on the earth and concealment here before the ore is mined, purified and enters into circulation. Then it comes to have aliud pretium (a different worth). This is certainly something we see in the Old English riddle as well, but with a lot more drama. Whichever metal Riddle 83 describes, its relationship with humans is clearly a contentious one: the ore tells us that entering the domain of humans brings it to grief and cuts it off from its family and history.

But ore will get its revenge.

Just as it is held against its will, it too has the power to imprison: it raises up hæftnyd (bonds of captivity). And if you aren’t sure what these bonds are, just think Gollum.

640px-Giant_Gollum_sculpture_in_Wellington_Airport
Although he looks quite cheery here! Photo of Gollum at the Wellington Airport from Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Money and treasure corrupt. This is not a new idea. And, as Craig Williamson points out (page 366), we see it in other Old English poems, like Beowulf:

                        Sinc eaðe mæg,
gold on grunde,         gumcynnes gehwone
oferhigian,         hyde se ðe wylle. (lines 2764b-6)

(Treasure, gold in the ground, easily overpowers every one of humankind, let him hide it who will.)

Clearly, Riddle 83 is riffing off these two ideas: that treasure holds a power over humans and that people like to hide it in the ground. In this case, what the earth conceals is ore in its unrefined state – so just potential treasure. When it’s converted into actual, circulating currency…shit gets real.

But what’s going on with this riddle’s focus on fromcynn (lineage) and who’s that broþor (brother) of the earth who first brought ore to gyrne (grief)? Well. WELL now. People have had many clever thoughts on this topic.

Patrick Murphy builds on earlier suggestions that the unnamed enemy of ore is Tubalcain, the biblical grandson of Cain (as in Adam and Eve’s son of the Cain-vs-Abel fame) (page 142). Tubalcain is strongly associated with metalworking and was reputed to be the first smith because of a brief reference in Genesis 4.22.  Murphy then goes on to suggest that Riddle 83 conflates Tubalcain with Cain himself: “the two figures are linked in their signature innovations: Cain invents murder, and Tubalcain invents weapons for more efficient murder” (page 146). Hence the bit about brothers. And hence all that hostility.

449px-Formella_06,_tubailkan,_andrea_pisano,_1334-1336
Here’s a nice 14th-century wood cut of Tubalcain at work. Photo (by Sailko) from Wikimedia Commons (licence: CC BY 2.5)

Tracing Riddle 83’s obsession with fromcynn (lineage) and old age (as in the word frod) back to the Old Testament creates a tidy sense of history within the riddle (Murphy, page 149). Thomas Klein argues that this riddle carries not only a sense of history, but also metaphorical echoes of a fallen angel – perhaps even Lucifer himself. There is ore’s (or specifically gold’s to Klein ) ancient lineage, its removal from his homeland, all that fire, and its ability to place people in bonds despite being captive itself (Klein, page 12).

380px-Paradise_Lost_1.jpg
The war in heaven imagined by Gustave Doré for John Milton’s Paradise Lost. Image from Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

So, gold is the devil then. And never forget: it owns you as much as you own it.

Righto, I’m going to leave you there to ponder your own relationship with treasure now. I’m not saying I agree with Riddle 83 in its gold-shaming, but then…I am a millennial, and we apparently have it in for the diamond industry. Why stop there, amirite?

Notes:

References and Suggested Reading

Dale, Corinne. The Natural World in the Exeter Book Riddles. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2017, esp. pages 123-44.

Klein, Thomas. “The Metaphorical Cloak of Exeter Riddle 83, “Ore/Gold/Metal”,” American Notes and Queries, volume 28, issue 1 (2015), pages 11-14.

Leary, T. J., ed. Symphosius: The Aenigmata: An Introduction, Text and Commentary. London: Bloomsbury, 2014.

Murphy, Patrick. Unriddling the Exeter Riddles. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2011, esp. pages 139-51.

Williamson, Craig, ed. The Old English Riddles of the Exeter Book. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1977.



Tags: anglo saxon  exeter book  riddles  old english  solutions  riddle 83 

Related Posts:
Commentary for Exeter Riddles 1-3
Commentary for Exeter Riddle 15
Commentary for Exeter Riddle 32