This riddle is about a very special material that preserves the thoughts, memories, and imaginations of people who lived hundreds and hundreds of years ago. Yes, you guessed it—this riddle is all about parchment!

One of the fascinating things about the Bern Riddles are their interrelatedness—they love to talk about each other! They love using similar phrases and themes to express the properties of very different objects, and this generates unexpected and surprising connections. Today’s riddle continues the theme of life and death from the previous riddle about fire). Its first and fifth lines also the theme of livestock bringing wealth to all, including kings, from the sheep riddle (No. 22). And it contains the same phrase, “stripped of clothes” (vestibus exuta) as we saw with Riddle 5’s table. Fires, sheep, tables—all have something in common with parchment.

Preparing parchment was a complicated and specialist activity in early medieval Europe. The skin of goats, sheep, and calves was usually treated with a lime solution, before having as much hair removed as possible. It was then stretched on a frame and washed, scraped with a special curved knife, and stretched over several days, before the parchment was thin enough and smooth enough for use.

There are other medieval riddles about parchment, and they all describe the process of its manufacture. The parchment of Tatwine’s Riddle 5 complains that its killer “stripped me of clothing” (exuviis me… spoliavit), before scraping, ruling, and then writing upon it. Exeter Riddle 26 describes the process in a similar way, but it goes into more detail, explaining that feond sum (“a certain enemy”) soaked it and removed its hairs, before scraping it and cutting it to size. Bern Riddle 24, on the other hand, manages to compress this process into two lines (3-4). The hairs are removed from the skin (“stripped of clothes”), which is “stretched our by many a bond” as it hangs on the frame (“my insides hang out”). It has been gladio desecta, literally “cut away by a sword.” However, I have translated this phrase idiomatically as “mown,” under the assumption that it describes the process of scraping as if the parchment were a field being harvested.

All three riddles end with the parchment being used for writing and reading. In Tatwine 5, the words become nourishing victum… et medelam (‘food and medicine’). And Exeter 26 closes with a long series of gifts that the book gives to its reader. Unlike the others, Bern does not glorify the spiritual benefits that a book can bring. Instead, its final line describes the paradox of a book carrying many thousands of letters and words that are all effectively weightless. It recalls Riddle 7’s bladder, which carries the apparently weightless air when it is inflated. What an apt ending for a riddle that likes talking to other riddles so much!

This is the second of two riddles about writing technologies. The previous riddle told us about parchment—now it is the turn of the letters that are written on it. Writing was a popular medieval riddle topic, and this riddle employs several common tropes. So, without further ado, letters proceed to the riddle!

It begins by looking back to the parchment of the previous riddle, which here is described as the albentum locum (“white place”) upon which the letters are born as sisters. Groups of sisters are used in two other Bern riddles where the subject is plural and grammatically feminine: flowers (No. 33) and stars (No. 61). Aldhelm also uses the sister motif in his riddle on the alphabet, in which the seventeen sisters are the consonants, and the six “bastard-sisters” (nothas) are the vowels.

In the second line, we are told that three parents create the letters. This is part of a long medieval tradition of describing writing as an activity carried out using three fingers—although writers never tell us exactly which digits they have in mind (Rosenfeld, pages 24-5). Riddlers often play with this idea, sometimes combining it with ideas about parentage. In Aldhelm’s riddle on the alphabet (No. 30), the three fingers are “brothers” who create their “sisters” “with an unknown mother” (incerta matre). Similarly, Tatwine’s riddle on the pen (No. 6) mentions three creatures that “bind” (vincere) the pen; another of his riddles, on letters (No. 4) mentions an unnamed mother, which may refer to the pen, hand, or page. And Exeter Book Riddle 51, which is usually solved as pen and fingers, describes “four creatures” (wuhte feower) that “travel together” (samed siþian). We should also mention two riddles in which weapons are operated by three fingers —Aldhelm’s riddle on the slingshot (No. 74) and Eusebius’ riddle on the sword (No. 36). Erika von Erhardt-Siebold (page 74) suggested that the three finger-motif in riddles may have something to do with a line from the Book of Isaiah: “quis appendit tribus digitis molem terrae?” (“who measures the earth’s dust by three fingers?”). However, this connection might seem a bit of a stretch, especially since the motif was so popular outside of riddles (Williams, page 112).

Aside from the three fingers motif, there are several very interesting parts of this riddle. In line 2, the idea that the finger-parents conceive the child with one “stroke” or “thrust” (ictus) is a great example of the sexualised double entendre that we more often associate with the Exeter Book Riddles. The idea in line 4 that no one can “detain” (detenere) the letters outside their home (sine… domo) seems to be that speech, unlike the written word, is fleeting, and that letters cannot be “held” or “stopped” outside of the page. And the final line explains that the sisters do not reply without a suitable “questioner” (or, in some manuscripts, the “father” (patre))—the idea is that the letters do not “speak” without a reader. Of course, this does not apply to us today, because we have all kinds of text-to-speech readers and audiobooks!

This riddle is a hymn to a tiny thing with a big taste—the humble mustard grain!

Mustard was a much-loved flavouring in ancient and medieval Italy. It was also used in pre-Conquest England, although the relatively small number of archaeological finds and recipes would suggest that it was not as popular in England as it would become in the High Middle Ages (Banham, p. 39). One English text mentions mustard as a food suitable for those suffering from nausea and refers to ða gelicnesse… ðe senop biþ getemprod to inwisan (“the form which mustard is mixed for flavouring,” Cockayne, page 184). The appearance of mustard in the Bern Riddles sometimes has been taken as evidence of southern European origin (Klein, page 404), but this is not certain.

The riddle’s central conceit is that the tiny mustard seed carries a powerful “hidden flavour” (occultum…saporem) in such a small body. Line 1 uses an irregular comparative phrase, multo sum parvulo parvus, which I have translated idiomatically as “teeny-weeny.” The second line puns on the word astutus (“cunning”) and acutus (“sharp”), and I wonder whether the original was ‘no one larger is sharper than me,’ since mustard is not exactly known for its cunning.

Line 3 might give you déjà vu (or should that be Dijon vu?) since, for the second riddle in a row, we are invited to guess the riddle subject’s parentage. The “lofty parent” (sublimis parens) is the mustard plant, which can grow to head height in its flowering and ripening stages.

The final two lines explain the preparation and consumption of the mustard seed. The torture of line 5 might sound violent, but it refers either to the mustard’s preparation with a mortar and pestle, or to its chewing. Line 6 leaves us with an idea that is very much in keeping with the spirit of medieval riddling—a hidden thing, which requires hard work to uncover, but which leaves you with a pleasant taste. Much like a riddle, actually!

This riddle about the papyrus plant begins with a charming story of a riverside childhood—all soft grasses and happy streams! This is quite different to some of the violent and bizarre birth stories that we have heard. That is, at least until the apparently macabre twist at the end!

Papyrus was used since ancient times as a source of paper, but it was best known in early medieval Europe as a wick for lamps and candles. For example, Aldhelm of Malmesbury, writing in the seventh century, mentions papyrus wicks being used in an oil lamp (De virginitate, page 92). Its associations with fire were such that, in his early seventh century Etymologies, Isidore of Seville incorrectly explained the etymology of papyrus as derived from the Greek πυρ (“fire”) (Isidore, page 355).

As with many other plant riddles, it describes the riddle subject both in terms of its botany and its use to humans. The first three lines describe the fast-growing papyrus stem, which shoots up in the summer months. The long, spidery leaves are the “clothing” (vestes), which produce such shade that the rest of the plant cannot “see the sun” (cernere solem).

The twist in Line 4 and 5 is that the plant, which cannot see the light, also “gives out a light” (producere lumen) when covered by something else. The papyrus pith used for wick-making (and paper-making too) was sliced from the shady bottom of the plant. Once prepared as a wick, it “gives out a light” when covered in wax or enclosed in an oil lamp (see Riddles 2 and 14). Thus, it can be called both a filius profundi (“son of the depths”) and a lucis amicus (“friend of light”).

The final line introduces a further twist—the riddle-creature’s mother, who was responsible for his idyllic childhood, now “takes away the light” (lumina tollit), which sounds very much like she kills him. But, of course, the mother is water, which gives life to the plant and extinguishes the lighted wick. So, happily, it is not quite as sad an ending as it sounds!

This riddle is one of two silk-themed Bern Riddles (the other is Riddle 43). This gives me the perfect opportunity to tell you about the time when two silkworms had a race.

It ended in a tie.

Silk was among the most valuable and lucrative commodities of the Middle Ages, and silk garments were signifiers of prestige and wealth in medieval Europe. Chinese silks travelled across the Silk Road, a vast trade route stretching from the Pacific coast of China, through the Himalayas and Pamirs, central Asia, India, and Persia, all the way to Ethiopia, Egypt, Mediterranean Europe and beyond. Arabia and Byzantine Constantinople were other early medieval centres of silk-production, and the industry eventually spread to North Africa, Spain, and Southern Italy from the eleventh century onwards.

It was also a popular subject for medieval riddles. It features in two of Aldhelm’s riddles (Nos. 12 on the silkworm and 33 on the breastplate) and two Old English adaptations of Aldhelm’s second riddle. Although our riddle is usually entitled De serico (“About silk”), really there are two speaking riddle subjects: the silkworm (lines 1-4) and the silk (lines 5-6). Thus, I have given it the additional title De bombyce (“About the silkworm”). However, lines 2, 3, 4 and 5 describe the silkworm using neuter adjectives, which can only fit with sericum (“silk”), since the alternatives bombyx (“silkworm”) and verme (“worm”) are grammatically feminine and masculine.

The riddle opens with mention of a “single tree” (arbor una), which is the mulberry tree, the only tree that the silkworm eats. The “wretched food” (vilem… escam) is its leaves. The second line then introduces the apparent paradox that a creature eating a humble food can create a great wealth—you may remember a similar description of the sheep in Riddle 22.

Lines 3 and 4 shift their focus to the silk cocoon, which are described as exiguos foetos (“small children”), born after the worm has “produced wings,” that is, as it metamorphosises into a moth. Sadly, the silk cocoon is usually removed by boiling, which makes the silk easier to process but causes the death of the silkworm. Thus, the silkworm’s death is described as an example of parental self-sacrifice, in a similar way to Riddle 12’s cereal grain.

The final two lines shift their focus to the silk’s “noble form” (nobilis forma) once it has been spun and woven into clothing. In a sense, this riddle is all about upwards mobility, in the vein of Riddle 22’s sheep—the creature that once ate “wretched food” is now carried by emperors and marvelled by kings. But this tale of rags to riches has a dark side too—the process has cost the silkworm-parent its life. The riddler seems to be reminding us that human wealth does not come without a cost.

Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the best riddle-creature of them all?

The riddle is centred around the idea of a mirror as simultaneously a liar and a truth-teller. Its images are a pale, dead reflection of reality—vanas figuras (“empty forms”) and exiguos foetos (“poor children”). The idea that a mirror image is a deficient copy of reality is reminiscent of a whole host of Neo-Platonic and Christian ideas about the world. I immediately think of St Paul’s famous remarks in 1 Corinthians 13:12 that Videmus nunc per speculum et in aenigmate, tunc autem facie ad faciem (“We now see through a mirror darkly [literally “in a riddle”], but then [we will see] face-to-face”). Largely due to Paul’s words, several important Christian philosophers and theologians talked about mirrors in their work. For example, Augustine of Hippo, writing at the end of the 4th and beginning of the 5th century, frequently makes use of Paul’s allegory, particularly in On the Trinity, to explain how humans can only see the image of God imperfectly and indirectly, as if through a mirror (Augustine, pages 27, 47, 54, 134, 144 et al.).

At the same time, the mirror is always faithful to reality—it produces proprios vultus ("the very images”) and formas… de vero (“images based on the truth”). Thus, the riddle manages to capture simultaneously the observed reality about mirrors and the philosophical-theological discourse that is associated with them. It contains several other apparent paradoxes too. The person who stands before the mirror is a praelucens…umbra (“shadow shining”) since they both produce a mirror image and cast a shadow. And the mirror is a mother who bears no living children, since the images that she produces are “unreal” or “dead.” The father is not mentioned. Perhaps he is intended to be the person who “desires” (petens) and “wishes” (volens) the mirror to “give birth to” their own image. Certainly, framing the relationship between viewer and mirror as one of male desire and female passivity is an interesting one, and very different to some conventional association of mirrors with vain, usually female, viewers.

I feel that there is a lot more to be said about this riddle, but it will have to wait until another day. So, I will end by saying something that I say a lot—the Bern Riddles often surprise us with their depth and complexity. This short riddle manages to reflect on some big topics—the nature of reality and self-desire.

Fish are not only a favourite food of grizzly bears and ravenous crocodiles, but a favourite “food” of cunning riddlers too.

Long-time followers of The Riddle Ages will know all about Exeter Riddle 81 (“Fish and River”), which is based on a similar riddle, Symphosius’ Riddle 12.’ Another English writer, Alcuin of York also borrowed Symphosius’ fish riddle for his eclectic “wisdom” work, Peppin’s Disputation, at the turn of the 9th century. Fish also feature in Aldhelm’s Riddle 81 and Eusebius’ Riddle 40, as well as several ancient Greek riddles. It is not exactly relevant to today’s riddle, but I feel obliged to share my all-time favourite fish-riddle, an ancient Greek one attributed to Clearchus of Soli. It asks, “Which fish or variety of fish is the most delicious or the most precisely in season, and then which one is particularly good eating after Arcturus rises, or the Pleiades, or the Dog-Star?” There is no answer, except perhaps laughter. The joke is that the catching of fish, unlike crops, are not linked to the seasons, but the wealthy, urbane riddler does not understand this. Anyway, as we will see, the Bern fish riddle is a very intertextual one—it contains a lot of tropes and references to other Bern riddles. See how many you can find!

The opening line takes the ‘creature who likes firm places’ trope from Riddle 4’s horse-bench and Riddle 10’s ladder. In this case, the fish subject cannot live in a ‘firm place’ (firmo loco). I have translated manens consistere simply as “dwell” for simplicity’s sake, but the sense is perhaps closer to the more prolix “remaining in firm places, I cannot endure.”

Many of the Bern riddles are about life or death, and several of them describe situations those where water can be a source of life. For example, water is the mother of salt (Riddle 4), papyrus (Riddle 27), sponge (Riddle 32) and ice (Riddle 38). ‘In Riddle 27, water is also the destroyer of fire. And in Riddle 23, water is both “life for all” (vitam cunctis) and death for fire. Here, the idea is rearranged, so that air is life and water is death for everyone except our aquatic friends.

The part of this riddle I struggle to make sense of are the references to the “warm bed” (lectus tepens) and “life bed within the cold” (vitalis torus sub frigora). After all, fish do not lie on beds or couches! Are these lines meant literally or figuratively, or both? Perhaps the “life bed” refers to the sea itself, or maybe the sandy floor where bottom-dwelling fish dwell. Or perhaps the idea is to depict the fish as if it were a long-suffering seafarer, who has rejected the comforts of warm beds on land? Answers on a postcard please!

The title of this riddle (De nympha) can mean several things. It can mean a young woman. It can mean one of the Nymphae, or sea nymphs, of classical mythology. It can mean the pupa of an insect. And it can mean water of some kind, for example, a body of water or a spring. I think you would agree that only the last of these can apply to this riddle!

Mercedes Salvador-Bello has argued that this riddle is probably about a kind of water container (Salvador-Bello, page 262, 466). I think that the solution of “siphon,” as favoured by several editors (see Glorie, page 577), is the most likely one. There is a problem, however—whereas the word nympha is grammatically feminine, the subject of the riddle is grammatically masculine. However, the word sipho (“siphon”) is masculine—lending credence to the idea that the title was changed at some point.

Siphons work using “physics magic” (actually a combination of atmospheric pressure and electrostatic force) to draw a liquid from a lower point to a higher one. The ancient Romans applied this on a massive scale with aqueducts, but the riddle is describing something much smaller—perhaps a water fountain or tap of some kind, or maybe a device for transporting wine from one container to another.

The first line plays upon the idea that the siphon has an insatiable thirst, and yet its lips never touch a cup. This leads into the image of a drunk who refuses to pay his way, playing upon the word ebrius (line 2), which can mean both “drunk” and “full.” This is contrasted with those occasions (lines 3-4) when its “belly” (venter) is “empty” (vacuus), during which it has “the ability to drink” (bibendi facultas). The idea seems to be that the empty vessel into which the liquid is decanted will siphon or “drink” it, whereas the full vessel will not.

The final two lines explain that the riddle-creature “refuses” or “rejects” (denegare) liquids when a thumb is lowered, but that its raising brings “rain-showers” (diffusos… nimbos). This could conceivably refer to the act of drinking from a cup or pouring out an amphora, but it seems more likely that this refers to the regulating of the siphon system using a thumb. Perhaps this also suggests a medieval version of the pollice verso, the thumbs up or down signal used by spectators of ancient Roman gladiators.

The general theme to this riddle is giving and receiving drinks. I don’t think that it is a bad riddle, but I wonder whether it has as much depth as many other Bern Riddles do. On the other hand, it might be that I haven’t managed to tap into its true meaning.

How do you solve a problem like a bird who sings through her foot? That, my friends, is the question on my mind.

Riddle 31 is a riddle (obv) about an object living her best life. What, precisely, she is…well, that’s up for debate. Most editors of the Old English riddles solve Riddle 31 as Bagpipes. They reckon that the multiple references to a creature singing and showing off mad skillz in the hall means this is a musical instrument. And they reckon that the fantastic form of the object – with her downward beak and musical foot – suggests the chanter and drones of the bagpipes. The guarding of treasure in line 21 becomes the breath of the performer, which the instrument takes in, controls and releases to musical effect. It’s quite common for birds to be associated with musicality in the riddles – I’m thinking here of Riddle 7’s swan and Riddle 57’s crows or swifts – but bagpipe tunes are perhaps less bird-like in their song than many other types of music.

Here are some very un-bird-like bagpipes in all their epic glory:

Other musical instruments have also been mooted (I love the word mooted, btw…we should all use this word way more often) as the solution, partly because evidence for the use of bagpipes in early medieval England is, shall we say, lacking. But, as Jonathan Wilcox reassures us, this instrument was widespread in agricultural societies and there are plenty of later medieval references and drawings to suggest that early medieval bagpipes were probably a thing (pages 138-40).

In fact, even though there isn’t much evidence for their use in early medieval England, it is very possible that the protruding drones and bird-like feet in the early 11th-century image below could depict the instrument (Wilcox, page 144, note 41):

Image from the famous Junius Manuscript (p. 57) Photo: © Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford (licence: CC-BY-NC 4.0).

So, we could have a case of the ol’ bagpipes here in Riddle 31.

The other, non-musical instrument option is a Quill Pen and Fingers. Yes, Donald K. Fry grappled with the birdy imagery in this riddle and its references to songs, treasure and flying-not-flying, and decided this is clearly another riddle about the scriptorium. Unfortunately, I can’t get a hold of this article right now (#pandemic), but I’ve written myself a note to follow up on this later.*

Still, I imagine that to read the riddle as a quill pen, we’d assume the riddle’s birdy imagery stems from the feather used to create the quill, with the downward beak as its pointed tip. The references to the bird’s foot could perhaps point toward a feathery wing and line 8-9’s description of the object’s eagerness to perform despite being unable to fly or walk should make us think of feather pens furiously scribbling across a page. All those songs – well those are the words that the pen delivers, a veritable treasure-hoard of ideas.

Image from Wikimedia Commons (public domain).

While we might imagine the hall setting with its music and feasting as a literal location for the use of the bagpipes, in order to solve the riddle as quill pen, the hall is probably best interpreted as a metaphor for the scriptorium. Songs are still appropriate in this setting if they’re words read out from the page. But the feasting? I don’t really know what to do with that, unless we imagine a scene change that moves us back into a literal hall where a written document is read out to frolickers. Hmm…not sure about that. Give me a shout if you have better ideas.

All in all, I prefer the bagpipes reading myself, in part because Jonathan Wilcox has made such a good case for interpreting the incongruity of this riddle as humorous. The monstrosity of this object with all the wrong sorts of body-parts could be priming us for humour, while the bagpipes attract humour because of the instrument’s “lack of subtlety as an object built on a literal windbag. Bagpipes can encode the windiness of unrestrained speech or the flatulent pouring forth of an unrestrained body” (page 140). The fact that the instrument is compared to bird-like song is all the funnier if you imagine a real bird letting out the sound of a bagpipe.

As a final gift to you, I’d also like to note that Wilcox’s essay led me to a range of truly brilliant medieval images including this fabulous late 11th-century Spanish musical duo:

Illustration in Beatus of Liebena’s Commentary on the Apocalypse from London, British Library Add MS 11695, folio 86r (Photo: © British Library).

A work of genius. Truly, my life is now complete.

*Editorial Note (22 February 2021): I have now tracked down Fry’s article and it chimes with what I said above. Fry notes lots of examples of riddles in both Old English and Anglo-Latin that play with the following motifs: “banquet, bird, inability to speak, and words as treasure” (page 236). He points to a few instances where the tasting of wisdom or words might explain what the feast hall is doing in this riddle. I don’t personally think that any of the examples given are close enough to Riddle 31 to fully explain its scene of feasting, but feel free to read the article and judge for yourselves!

It is time to absorb the wisdom of this great riddle, which is all about a talking sponge and her strange, strange existence. The riddle continues the theme of watery things from the previous riddles on the fish and the siphon. It owes much to an earlier riddle by Symphosius (No. 63), an unknown writer who wrote 100 influential riddles, probably at some point between the third and fifth centuries, and likely in Roman North Africa—but it also adds a typically unconventional Bern riddle take on family relations (see Klein, page 406-7).

The first line immediately draws our interest: who is the mother whose face is so unlike her daughter? A few lines later, the mother is swallowed and then born by her child. In case you didn’t get it already, the mother is the grammatically feminine aqua (“water”), who is soaked up and then squeezed out. Water is also described as a mother in several other riddles, which means that the sponge is the sister of salt (Riddle 4), papyrus (Riddle 27), and ice (Riddle 38). Don’t you just love the strange family relations of the Bern Riddles!

Line 2 describes the sponge’s fleshless viscera (“insides,” “entrails”). Riddles are often interested in the hidden interior world of things. Usually when this word is used in the Bern Riddles, it refers to a hidden thing of some kind, for example, a ship’s cargo (Riddle 11), or a fire-striker’s potential for fire (Riddle 23). Here, rather than describing a thing, it describes a nothing, i.e. the pores, or “hollow insides” (cava viscera), that the sponge uses to circulate water through its body when living. Symphosius includes a similar idea in his riddle—the sponge is patulis diffusa cavernis (“spread out with gaping caverns”) and intus lympha latet (“water hides within”).

Line 5 takes the idea of theft or capture and turns it on its head, as the sponge is “light” (levis) when it is “seized” (manu capta), but it is “heavy” (gravis) when “released” (manu dismissa). Again, this owes something to Symphosius’ riddle, which reads Ipsa gravis non sum, sed aquae mihi pondus inhaeret (“I am not heavy myself, but the weight of water sticks inside me.”). But the addition of the upturned capture/theft element is the Bern riddler’s own invention. The final line then subverts this second time, when the poor sponge is compelled to return its takings. What a brilliant twist to end the riddle on!

Sometimes, riddles can tell the story of an entire lifetime in just a few lines—I call them tiny epics in several of my commentaries (for Riddles 12, 13, 24). Well, this riddle on the violet is another example of a tiny epic. It is also the first of four riddles on flowers.

The opening line explains that the plant grows smaller as it grows old. This seems to be referring to the wilting of the flower, although it may also reflect some other botanical detail, such as their low-growing nature. Sadly, it does not have anything to do with the phrase “shrinking violet,” which was not coined until the turn of the 20th century.

Line 2 explains that the violet comes before “all the better-dressed sisters” (cunctas… maiori veste sorores), and this theme is continued into lines 3 and 4. On the one hand, the riddle reflects botanical reality— violets typically flower in late winter and early spring, which is much earlier than most plants. On the other, it also borrows from an established literary tradition that presents the growth and flowering of the humble violet as a story of modest, and often chaste, beauty. Perhaps the best example, roughly contemporary with the Bern Riddles, is from a poem about violets written by the sixth century Frankish poet, Venantius Fortunatus, in one of his letters to Radegund, a former Frankish queen who became abbess of Sainte-Croix in Poitiers. In the poem, the violet arises early in spring, and its beauty is not as great as the larger rose or lily, but its nobility and regal purple sets it apart from the others.

If the season bore me the customary white lilies, or the rose were brilliant with dazzling scarlet, I would… send them gladly as a humble gift to the great…
Dyed with regal purple, they exhale a regal scent, and with their leaves pervade all with their scent and with their beauty. May you both have equally both of the things which they bear…
—Venantius Fortunatus, “Poem 8.6” (translated by Judith George)

Similarly, our riddle emphasises the violet’s smallness twice (lines 1 and 5), the conventional beauty of its sister-flowers (line 2), and its early flowering (line 3). It seems likely that the two texts are drawing on the same tradition, even if they are not directly linked.

The reference in Line 5-6 to the flower’s “soul” or “energy” (“spiritus”) fits nicely with the idea of modest beauty. However, it also recalls a line from an earlier riddle written by Symphosius, an enigmatic riddler who wrote 100 influential riddles, probably at some point between the third and fifth centuries: Spiritus et magnus, quamvis sim corpore parvo (“My soul is great, although I might have a small body”). Spiritus, which can mean soul, can also mean air or breath too—thus referring to the violet’s fragrance. And this can “show the way” to those who seek the plant, despite being “seen by no one.”

One of the things that I like about this riddle is how carefully the metaphors and double-meanings are crafted—botanical reality is carefully intertwined with ideas about aging, modesty, and the body and soul. It is the kind of riddle that really grows on you!

The second of four riddles on flowers, this one tackles several thorny issues. Roses were grown extensively as garden ornaments and for commercial cultivation in ancient Rome, and they became a common plant in medieval monastic gardens. The Plan of St Gall, an architectural drawing of an ideal monastery from the early ninth century, included several gardens, including a physic garden for roses, as well as lilies and various herbs.

As we usually find with other Bern Riddles that use the mother-and-childbirth trope, we are asked to guess the identity of the parent. The mother who bears the beautiful flower in angusto alvo (“in a narrow womb”) is the rose plant, who carries her “child” in the bud. Line two plays upon the meanings of barba, which can mean both “(beard) hair” and the hair on plants. The five embracing arms are the five sepals, i.e. the outer parts of the bud that open, star-shaped, to reveal the flower. The final two lines continue the theme of unconventional childbirth by noting that the rose-child spares her mother “the pain of childbirth” (parturienti dolor).

The riddle continues the theme of noble humility from the violet riddle, explaining that the rose family is both lowly and honoured everywhere. The latter probably refers to its use as a decoration, both in monastic gardens and as a cut flower. It may also allude to the rose’s association with the Virgin Mary, although this is not an overt one.

I mentioned thorns in the introduction, but, unusually for a riddle on roses, it doesn’t actually mention thorns at all. In fact, it is really about the rose flower, rather than the whole plant, which it depicts using themes of humility, beauty, and unconventional childbirth. The saying goes “every rose has its thorn,” but that’s not the case for this riddle!”

The third of four flower riddles, this riddle invites us to consider the lilies. It is a rare example of a plural speaker, along with found in Riddle 25 (letters) and Riddle 61 (stars). As with roses , lilies were often grown for ornamental, culinary, and medical purposes in monastic gardens.

The riddle begins with a combination of an unusual birth and a juxtaposition of opposites—we are challenged to identify the pater occultus (“secret father”) and patula mater (“open mother”). In another context, the idea of a secret father might hint at some kind of illicit relationship or affair, or perhaps an abandoned child of unknown parentage. The “open mother” might also suggest promiscuity. But, in the case of the lily flower, the father is presumably the bulb and roots hidden in the soil and the mother is the foliage from which the spear-like stem emerges.

Lines three and four put the lily’s finite flowering period and its wilting into a tragic context—the plant’s flower-children cannot ever live for a long time. I wonder whether the poet expects us to empathise with the lily here, or if they intended our sympathies to vanish with the realisation that the subject is non-human. The question is unanswerable, but it worth considering this whenever non-human riddle-creatures are given voice.

The final lines describe the lily as an object of human desire—a fitting way to describe a flower valued for its beauty. In Riddle 33, humans sought out the violet for its fragrance. Here, they “kiss” the violet “for the sake of love” (causa amoris) when they put their faces close to smell its scent. In return, the lily gives yellow pollen to the lips. Should we ask what is in it for the lily, or is it silly to apply this to plants? Again, this is a very difficult question. Several scholars have remarked how interested the Bern Riddles are with the utility of objects and plants for human beings (Salvador-Bello, page 257-263; Roosli, page 101). By presenting these uses in atypical, anthropomorphic ways, the riddles re-lily make us think about the ethics of the relationship between humans and non-humans.

This riddle brings our flowery quartet of riddles to an end. It also completes the cycle of the seasons—the flower series began with the early-flowering violet of Riddle 33, and now they end with the late-flowering crocus.

Like other medieval riddles, the Bern Riddles are interested in secrets and hidden things— which is very appropriate, since riddles themselves are forms of concealment to be revealed by the careful reader. In this case, our riddle subject tells us “I lurk hidden in the shadows” (latens abscondor in umbras), with its limbs buried underground throughout the summer and autumn, before bursting into flower with the beginning of winter. Similarly, the meanings of riddles lie dormant until solved, when they offer up their own “wonderous flowers.” Thus, the riddle also dramatises the process of solving riddles. We often think of self-referentiality as a very postmodern artistic idea—in the way that, for example, a Quentin Tarantino film might refer very self-consciously to the conventions of a particular genre. But riddles have always been a very “meta” form of literature, long before postmodernity existed.

Lines 5 and 6 describe how the crocus can be harvested for saffron, which is “tiny” (modicus) and “sealed away” (clausus) until the petals open to reveal the saffron-bearing stigmas. Note that the speaker changes from the plant to its product at this point—we saw something similar with Riddle 28’s silk(worm). Saffron was popular across the Mediterranean world, where it was used as a food flavouring and a dye. This suggests a southern European origin for the riddles (Klein, p. 404), although it is certainly not conclusive. Although there is no evidence for it being grown in pre-Conquest England, it was probably imported for dying textiles, since there are references to this in several Anglo-Latin texts (Biggam, pp.19-22).

Sadly, it’s time to say goodbye to the flower riddles once and flor-all. But there is still some continuity—if you turn to the next riddle, you will find that it is just as spicy as this one!