What kind of a riddle-creature is fast and strong, bites without a mouth, raises up the weak, and is more powerful than Hercules? The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind.

The wind was a popular topic in early medieval scientific works such as Isidore of Seville’s early 7th century De natura rerum and Bede’s early 8th century De natura rerum, both of which drew on a wide range of classical and late antique learning. These texts were often accompanied by diagrams of the twelve winds, such as the one below. The wind was also a popular subject for early medieval riddlers. Aldhelm of Malmesbury wrote a wind riddle (Aldhelm Riddle 2), which begins “no one can see me” (cernere me nulli possunt), before describing how it blows all around the countryside, shattering oaks. And the Exeter Book contains three back-to-back riddles (or one, depending on your perspective) about different kinds of wind—you can read Megan’s commentary on them here.

Our riddle stresses the wind’s awesome power using several common Bern themes and motifs. Line 1 employs the birth motif to frame the idea that the wind is fast and strong. And Line 2 describes the wind’s power to push down heavy things and lift things up in terms of raising up the weak and humbling the strong. This makes the riddle creature sound rather Christ-like, just as we found with the resurrected cup and grain in Riddles 6 and 12, as well as Riddle 22’s humble sheep. Finally, Lines 4 and 5 recall the multiple mouths of the previous riddle on the mousetrap, and the mention of biting recalls several earlier riddles (see my discussion of this trope in the commentary to Bern Riddle 37).

Line 6 explains that the wind is invisible but more powerful than any human, including some of the strongest men in history, such as “the Macedonian” (i.e. Alexander the Great), Liber (the Roman god of fertility and wine, often used interchangeably with Dionysius), and Hercules. The author cited these three based on a longstanding classical and medieval tradition of attributing a series of conquests of India to them. (Alexander did invade the Indus Valley basin in 326-5 BCE, but the others are entirely mythical.) For example, Pliny the Elder wrote in the 1st century CE that:

Haec est Macedonia, terrarum imperio potita quondam…haec etiam Indiae victrix per vestigia Liberi Patris atque Herculis vagata…

Such is Macedonia, which once won a world-wide, empire… and even roamed in the tracks of Father Liber and of Hercules and conquered India…
—Pliny, Natural History. Book 4, pages 146-7.

Similar associations can be found in a wide range of sources, from classical works by Ovid (The Metamorphoses, pages 180-1) and Seneca (Oedipus, pages 54-5) to the medieval travel works, The Letter of Alexander to Aristotle (Orchard, pages 240-1) and the Liber Monstrorum (Orchard, pages 290-3), that feature in the Nowell codex alongside Beowulf.

Like many other Bern Riddles, there is a lot of stuff going on in six short lines—they go far beyond the obvious statements about the wind being powerful yet invisible. Perhaps this riddle doesn’t exactly blow me away in the same way that some of the most creative riddles do, but I’m definitely still a big fan.

I like to think that the Bern Riddles are twice as ice as other riddle collections—because they have not one, but two riddles about the frozen stuff! (That is, if Riddle 38 is actually about ice at all!)

Our riddle starts off by employing the softness/hardness trope that found in so many of the Bern Riddles, from the sexy pottery in Riddle 1 all the way to the chaste rose in Riddle 53. I am not sure exactly how to explain the “many” (multos) in line 2, but the idea of a thing that cannot be hardened and “makes many soft” sounds like a kind of sexual inuendo-in-reverse. The Early Middle Ages are often depicted in popular culture as a time of solemn religiosity and stern authority, but playful texts like these remind us that they had a lighter (and sexier) side too. I really do think that parts of these riddles are an early medieval version of “that’s what she said.”

Line 3 combines two common riddle tropes (“solving” and kissing) in a single line. The intention is to connect the act of reading riddles with the melting of ice—just as learned readers rejoice when a riddle has been “solved” (soluta), so the ice is “praised with dear kisses” when it has “dissolved” (soluta) into water. The “kisses” (oscula) are the human mouths that drink the water, presumably from Riddle 6’s cup (which also describes drinking as kissing). Line 4 then employs two more common riddling tropes, binding and touching, to describe how the ice can be unpleasantly cold to touch.

Lines 5 and 6 are very curious, and I am not entirely sure what they mean. They probably refer to the transition between states of liquidity and solidity, and the “stern creator” (rigidus auctor) could be describing the winter’s cold. However, the references to “beautiful” (pulchra) and “ugly” (turpis) forms are more cryptic. Ice can be terrifyingly ugly for travellers climbing through mountain passes or sailors steering through icebergs. It can also be beautiful in the way that it shimmers and reflects light. Likewise, water can be terrifyingly ugly during a sea storm or a flash flood, and it can be beautiful in its tranquillity. Incidentally, the beautiful/ugly motif also appears in one of my favourite riddles, No. 61, where it describes the stars in a similarly cryptic way.

For me at least, this riddle is a very cool mix of the familiar and the strange. It uses a patchwork of common tropes and motifs, but its workings are quite obscure at times. And that is exactly what you would expect from such a slippery riddle!

This is the second silkworm riddle in the Bern collection. Silk was one of the most lucrative commodities in medieval Europe, brought there along the Silk Road from China—you can read a bit more about this in my commentary for Riddle 28. Unfortunately, I also used my one and only silkworm joke for that commentary, so I don’t have any more puns or yarns to spin.

The riddle begins with the childbirth trope that we find so often in Bern. The creature that is speaking throughout the riddle is clearly the silkworm, but Lines 1 and 2 are quite obscure and there are several tricky cruxes. This obscurity could be because the riddler was not familiar with all the details of silk production—although lines 5 and 6 seem to contradict this (see below). Alternatively, it may be that they disguised the meaning very well, or it could be that the lines are corrupt in some way.

The first problem is how to understand the word concepta. The usual translation would be “born” or “conceived” (see Riddles 38 & 44), but you could also argue for something more irregular, such as “made pregnant.” However, none of these translations are particularly helpful when it comes to working out what is going on. Secondly, who are the innumeros (“various,” “countless”) creatures who are sent out from the creature’s nest (de nido), and should we translate volatus literally as “fliers,” or figuratively as “swift ones?” Thirdly, how does this all relate to the “huge body” (corpus inmensum) of line 2?

Although Lines 1 and 2 are difficult, we can assume that they refer to one of the transitions between the insect’s life stages: (1.) the silk moth laying silk eggs, (2.) the eggs hatching into larvae, (3.) the silkworm spinning itself a cocoon, or (4.) the cocooned pupa transforming into a moth. None of these explanations seems to be an exact fit, but my feeling is that stage 4. is the most likely—the “nest” and the “huge body” are the cocoon, and the “flying creatures” are the moths. But I am very open to suggestions—what do you think?

The remainder of the riddle is far more straightforward. The “shining garment” in Line 3 is the silken cocoon, which the silkworm weaves silently in line 4. The riddle then explains that the discarded woollen garment cannot easily be “cast off” (excussum). This refers to the gluey sericin of the cocoon, which glues the silk fibres together to create the cocoon, making it sticky to touch. This level of detail suggests not only that the riddler knew quite a bit about the silk-making process, but also that they expected their readers to know this too. However, modern day readers may struggle to follow their thread.

Since today’s riddle is about diamonds and pearls, I’m going to begin my commentary with this classic song by Prince.

Our riddle continues the theme of valuable natural commodities from the previous riddle on silk. Although the named solution is “pearl” (margarita), the mollusc shell has a voice too. The Latin for pearl and oyster (ostrea) are both feminine, fitting the gender of the speaker, and the riddle often seems to treat the mollusc and its pearl as the same creature. Examples of dual speakers can be found in a few other riddles, such as Riddle 28, where the silkworm and silk take it in turns to speak.

Since the mid-20th century, humans have farmed pearls on an industrial scale, but before this, the considerable effort required to find a single pearl meant that they were far rarer and more valuable. During the Middle Ages, various myths were used to explain how they were produced, usually involving the collection of “celestial dew,” just as we saw with bees and honey. Pliny the Elder, writing in the 1st century, wrote in his influential Natural History that:

Origo atque genitura conchae sunt haut multum ostrearum conchis differentes. Has ubi genitalis anni stimulavit hora,pandentes se quadam oscitatione impleri roscido conceptu tradunt, gravidas postea eniti, partumque concharum esse margaritas, pro qualitate roris accepti…

[The source and breeding-ground of pearls are not much differing from oyster-shells. These, we are told, when stimulated by the generative season of the year gape open as it were and are filled with dewy pregnancy, and subsequently when heavy are delivered, and the offspring of the shells are pearls that correspond to the quality of the dew received…]
Pliny, Natural History, pages 234-5.

Facts such as these were commonplace in all kinds of encyclopaedias and bestiaries. However, our riddle does not mention these unusual origins–which might seem surprising, given how interested the Bern riddler is with extraordinary birth-stories and encyclopaedic knowledge.

The riddle begins with two very straightforward lines. The predominant speaker is the pearl, although the oyster manages to get in a single word at the start of line 2, telling us that it is “hollow” (cava). Interestingly, hollowness crops up in several other riddles, including another aquatic subject, Riddle 32’s sponge. The next line combines two well-loved Bern tropes—birth and secret places—to invert our expectations of both. Unlike in human society, where procreation is typically private, the pearl is conceived in public, yet it is born in secret.

The oyster speaks throughout line 4, playing upon the similarity between lucem (“light”) and lucrem (“wealth, profit”) to describe the shell when “full” (referta) and “empty” (vacua). It is easy to understand why a “full” oyster brings wealth. But why would an empty shell give light (lux)? The most obvious answer is that this refers to the oyster shell’s highly reflective inner palate, which we often refer to as “mother of pearl” today.

The final two lines explain that this creature, unlike others, is not damaged by cold waters or the changing seasons, although it can be “worn down” (fatigari) by a gentle warmth. They are spoken by the oyster, who is telling us how she it can be opened by boiling. Similar themes of warmth and cold also crop up in the final lines of another aquatic riddle, No. 30, which describes the life of a fish.

There are two things that I really like about this riddle. The first is the sense of symbiosis between the pearl and the oyster—the riddle considers them to be part of the same creature. The second is that the riddle is all about the everyday, rather than the mythical, aspects of the pearl, but it manages to disguise these pearls of wisdom in the most extraordinary ways.

“Body and earth” might sound like the name of a yoga retreat or a shower-gel brand, but it is also the theme of this excellently bizarre riddle!

The opening two lines of the riddle depict common agricultural processes as violent and disgusting acts. Line one provides the image of an os… patens (“open mouth”) that is often tunditur ictu (“beaten, stabbed”)—this alludes to the furrow of a field, which is frequently cut up by the plough. This is, in a sense, the “other side” of Exeter Riddle 21, which describes the plough as an orþoncpil (“a skilful spear”). Line 2 then shifts abruptly to the main theme of the riddle—food! The idea of “returning” food that one has already eaten has been chosen to suggest vomiting or defecating. Moreover, the earth tells us sumpsero lambens (literally “I have licked up”) the food, which adds to the somewhat icky feeling of these two lines. However, this all refers to the crops that the earth “returns” from the seeds that it was “fed.”

Lines 3 and 4 set up the apparent paradox of a creature that is and is not hungry and thirsty at the same time. On the one hand, the riddle creature literally feels “neither hunger nor thirst” (nulla…fames… sitimque… nullam), nor indeed any other emotion. On the other, its praecordia (“belly, heart”) always remains ieiuna, an adjective that can mean “barren” or “dry,” as well as “hungry” or “thirsty.”

The riddle then shifts the focus from the earth’s hunger to ours. Keen gardeners will know that different soil types can give different tastes to crops. The riddler knew this too, and they tell us that the creature adds miros sapores (“amazing tastes”) to food. The riddle then closes with another apparent paradox that plays on two senses of “cold body” (gelidum… corpus)—a dead body that lives forever. Perhaps the writer also wants us to compare the human body, which the earth decomposes, to the earth’s enduring body. As we so often find with the Bern riddles, this also looks back to the previous riddle, No. 44, which describes an oyster that endures the cold waters of winter.

In my opinion, Riddle 45 is a very clever little riddle. It takes a loose and vague association between the soil and the human body, and then it runs off with it to all kinds of fantastic places. It certainly manages to cover a lot of ground in six lines!

This banging riddle uses all kinds of fantastic disguises to describe a very common tool. Several manuscripts mistakenly describe it as a riddle about a pestle (De pistillo), probably because of its similarity to two riddles by Symphosius (Nos. 86 and 87), an unknown writer who wrote 100 influential riddles at some point between the third and fifth centuries. The Bern Riddler was very familiar with them; here he cleverly combines motifs from Symphosius’ riddles on the hammer and the pestle to create an entirely new one. Fellow riddle-lovers, it’s Hammer Time!

The riddle begins by depicting the hammer as if it were a kind of monster, telling us that “My whole body is one neck.” This description borrows heavily from Symphosius’ riddle on the pestle, which tells us that una mihi cervix, capitum sed forma duorum (“I have one head but the appearance of two”). Line 2 goes on to reveal that this giant-necked creature also has two heads—my mental image is of some kind of Pokemon!

Lines 3 and 4 are difficult. They borrow the idea of head becoming feet from Symphosius’ pestle riddle, which explains that pro pedibus caput est (“there is a head instead of feet”). However, it took me a long time to work out what was going on, and even longer to figure out how to translate it into idiomatic Modern English. Then it hit me that riddle was not referring to hitting at all, but to splitting, gouging or chiselling. Just like today, hand tools in early medieval Europe came in all kinds of shapes designed for all kinds of specialised tasks and trades. Presumably, one of the two heads of our hammer is an adze, chisel, or claw, which is used “upside down” or “the other way around” (vice versa) to create lenes vias (“smooth roads”) in wood, stone, or metal. In this respect, the riddle also has something in common with other riddles that describe tools that create “paths,” such as ploughs (for example, Exeter Riddle 21) and pens (for example, Bern Riddle 51).

The final two lines depart from Symphosius to give us the rather brilliant description of the hammer face as a bald man who has no use for haircuts or combs. The hammer-blows that his “shining top” (vertex nitens) gives out are depicted as kisses, which are pleasing to those craftspeople who use it. This metaphor strikes me as an extremely playful one, which draws upon other Bern riddles involving kisses (5, 6, 35, and 42) and hair (15, 18, 20, 34), and which makes this riddle very memorable. In my humble opinion, the riddler really hit the nail on the head with this one!

Although this riddle appears in manuscripts with the title De castanea (“About the chestnut”), it is probably more of a chestnot. In his 1968 edition of the riddles, Glorie amends it to De cochlea (“About the snail”), with some justification. For what it is worth, I agree with him—I think that it has been confused with Riddle 48, which really is about a chestnut (well, probably, anyway!). However, there are issues with both solutions. Don’t think that the Exeter Book Riddles are the only medieval riddles that need solving!

Line 1 tells us that the riddle creature is “born with hard skin” (aspera produci, Line 1), which can be applied to both snails and chestnuts, at least to a certain degree. But the reference to a “soft cloak” (lenis amictus) is a bit more problematic. The body of a snail is soft, but the noun amictus, which can mean cloak or clothing more generally, suggests an outer layer. At a push, the spiky, protective cupule of a chestnut could also be called soft. However, neither solution seems to fit particularly well.

The sonitus magnus (“great noise”) produced “from the belly” (de ventre) in Lines 3 and 4 is jokingly intended to sound like a rumbling tummy or flatulence, but it also provides the most evidence for the snail solution. Snails themselves do not make any great noise. (Although gastropods can produce tiny squeaks, grunts, and munching sounds, these are barely audible to the human ear.) The more likely explanation is that the author was referring to the shell of a marine snail, also known as a conch. Various kinds of shell can be modified to create a conch trumpet. When intacta (“intact”), the shell can be blown just like a horn; when corrupta (“damaged”), it cannot be played. This reminds me somewhat of the horn of Exeter Riddle 14, which calls warriors to hilde (“to battle”) and to wine (“to their wine”). Alternatively, the “great noise” could refer to the resonance of the shell when placed against the ear, which gives rise to the myth that one can hear the sea when doing so. I should also point out that Thomas Klein has taken Riddle 47 as evidence of southern European origin (Klein, page 404). There are plenty of marine gastropods in British waters, and whelk shells can grow to a moderate size. I don’t know if they are large enough for conch-blowing, but if you listen, you just might be able to hear the sea in them.

The final two lines could apply to either the chestnut or the snail—the idea seems to be that the riddle creature is enjoyed by humans when its outer layer is removed, presumably to be eaten. They also have sexual connotations—you cannot really call it innuendo, since innuendo is usually oblique, whereas the riddle is very explicit that this creature cannot truly be loved unless it is naked (nuda) and unclothed. In doing so, it recalls the table of Riddle 5 and the parchment of Riddle 24, both of which are also stripped of clothing.

If this riddle is about snails, as I believe it is, then it certainly manages to avoid all the clichés—it compares favourably with the 5th century riddle-writer, Symphosius’ riddle on the same subject, which begins with the hackneyed lines, Porto domum mecum (I carry my own home…”). You could say that Bern Riddle 47 is pretty spe-shell!

Unlike the previous riddle, this one really is an old chestnut—because it is about one! It has a vibe and an organisation that strikes me as unusual for the Bern Riddles: it begins with a framed, metatextual opening (lines 1-2), then describes four pairs of contrary attributes across four half-lines (lines 3-4), before summarising this again in a different way (lines 5-6).

The Exeter Book Riddles often talk about themselves as riddles, and they frequently challenge the reader to saga hwæt ic hatte (“say what I am called”). Other collections do this too, albeit less often. For example, Tatwine’s riddle on the rays of the sun (No. 40) ask: plausu, quid sum, pandite sophi (“unfold with applause wise ones, what I am”). The Bern Riddles rarely do this, but Riddle 48 is an exception—it tells us that “logic” (ratio) requires the riddle’s solution to be revealed “in a few words” (paucis… verbis).

Lines 3 and 4 are comprised of four binary pairs, all of which are solved in the same way. They ask us what is wet and dry, fat and slim, bitter and sweet, and soft and hard. The solution for all four is that the first word refers to the soft inner flesh of the nut, and the second to its hard skin, which the riddle describes as a gestamen (“outfit,” “burden,” “vehicle”).

The final lines revisit two of the ideas already discussed: sweetness and bitterness, and hardness. They then add two new themes, growth and imprisonment, using these to play gently upon the meanings of dulcis (“sweet,” “pleasant”), durus (“hard,” “stern”) and amarus (“bitter-tasting,” “harsh,” “awful”), asking how something so delightful can grow in a severe and terrible prison.

At this point, I should get it off my chest that this is nut one of my favourite riddles—although perhaps you might disagree. It manages to pack a lot of ideas within a very tight structure, but it also lacks the eclectic creativity that makes the Bern riddles so unique. However, it does raise some interesting questions about authorship. Is it so different that it must have been written by a different author? I am not really convinced that it is different in every respect, since it shares quite a bit of core vocabulary with others in the collection (conclusa, figuras, humida, sicca, mollis, dulcis, crescere, nascor). But a lot more work needs to be done on the authorship of the Bern Riddles before we can arrive at a proper answer!

Like many people living in the U.K., I have a complex emotional relationship with the rain. When the weather is wet and dreary, I moan about how miserable it is; when the plants in the garden are scorched and hosepipes are banned, I pray for rain. This riddle is all about our contradictory human feelings about rain.

Medieval writers had a reasonably good understanding of the water cycle, although they often mistook the process of rainfall (i.e., the sun warms the air, the water vapour rises and cools, and thus condenses into rain) with the cause (i.e., the sun’s heat). For example, Isidore of Seville, writing at the beginning of the seventh century, told his readers that:

…aquae maris per tenuissimos vapores in aere suspensae paulatim concrescunt ibique igne solis decoctae in dulcem pluviarum saporem vertuntur.

[…the waters of the sea, hanging in the air as the thinnest mists, gradually condense; boiled there by the sun’s fire, they are turned into the sweet nectar of the rains.]
–Isidore, De natura rerum (ed. Becker), chapter 33, page 59.

The rain cycle was also the topic of a riddle (No. 9) by the late antique riddler, Symphosius, which explains: De caelo cecidi… sed sinus excepit qui me simul ipse remittit (“From the heavens I plunge… but the same bosom receives me which sends me back at the same time”). Today’s riddle, Bern 49, is rather different. It does touch upon some of the natural features of rain, but its primary focus is on how it makes humans feel.

It begins by asking us to consider how a natural process that is so inherently wonderous and spectacular can also be a source of unhappiness, explaining that the rain “forces complaints” (infligit querelas) from the very same people who are "marvelling” (mirans) at it. Clearly, we should spend less time grumbling and more time singing in the rain!

The Bern Riddles often challenge us to explain a riddle-creature’s parentage. In line 2, we are told that the creature is maior (“greater, older”) than her father as soon as she is born. The parent cannot be the feminine nubes (“cloud”) or the neuter nouns mare (“sea”) and caelum (“sky”). Possible candidates include aether (“sky”) and sol (“sun”), but I prefer vapor (“mist, vapour”)—this allows us to explain the “greater form” as the physical difference between water as gas and as liquid.

Lines 3 and 4 continue the theme of contrasting human emotions, comparing those unhappy occasions when the rain is “level with the earth” (coaequatur terra) with those happy ones when the rain takes “high roads” (superas vias). The obvious explanation is that the former refers to lowland flooding and the latter to rainfall on higher ground, where flooding is less likely. The riddle then closes with the depiction of rainfall as an inproba* (“violent, wicked, immoral”) force that pours “bitter cups” (amara pocula) over everyone, but who is nevertheless welcomed by many. I would not suggest that you try this trick in your local pub or café!

I have to say that I really like the message of this clever little riddle. Next time the raindrops start falling on my head, I will try to remember that rain might bring the blues, but it also keeps us alive. I hope that you enjoyed this riddle, weather you like the rain or not!

*Most manuscript copies of this riddle give the masculine form of this adjective (inprobus), but this does not agree with the grammatical gender of the riddle subject (pluvia).

Wine was a popular subject for early medieval Latin riddlers. You could say that grape minds think alike! There are two other Bern Riddles on grapes (13) and wine (63), and Symphosius wrote two wine riddles (Nos. 82 and 83), Aldhelm wrote riddles on a wine cask (78) and wine goblet (80), and the Lorsch riddler wrote a riddle about a cup of wine (5). If we believe what we read, wine was also a popular drink with at least one riddler. Symphosius, writing at some point between the third and fifth centuries, tells us that he told riddles during a Saturnalian party cum streperet late madidae facundia linguae (“whilst the eloquence of a tipsy tongue rambles extensively” (Symphosius, page 39)).

Lines 1, 2, and 3 combine the motifs of the unconventional birth and parental self-sacrifice that we have seen in previous riddles. They look back to Riddle 13, which described grapes as the children of the vine, who are then killed to produce wine. Here, the grapes are presented as the “countless mothers” (innumerae matres), who are killed after receiving “many wounds” (multa vulnera) during the crushing stage of the winemaking process. Only through the “death” of many grapes can the wine be born.

Lines 4, 5, and 6 shift the focus to the power that the wine has over those who drink it. This is a common trope in riddles about alcohol. Riddles are frequently interested in temporarily overthrowing and subverting the status quo. Because wine has the power to temporarily overcome the faculties of the humans who chose to consume it, this makes it the perfect riddle subject. For example, in Riddle 13, excessive drunkenness becomes a form of revenge for the dead grapes– in my commentary, I punningly called it “the wrath of grapes.” Riddle 50 continues to play on this theme, explaining that the wine can only “harm” (iniqua reddere) those who love it, but that it has no power over everyone else. Thus, the story of revenge from the previous riddle is itself turned on its head. I have said in a previous commentary that the Bern Riddles love to talk to each other. We often think of riddles as monologues—a single speaker gives us clues about its identity—but Riddle 50 shows that they are frequently at their best when read as a dialogue. Anyway, what a corking riddle!

I had a pun saved up for this commentary, but unfortunately it was too tearable to use. Feel free to groan!

With that fantastic pun out of the way, I can introduce the second riddle on papyrus in the collection. The first, Riddle 27, focused on the plant and its use as a lamp wick, whereas this one is all about the use of papyrus as a writing material. It only appears in one copy, a 9th century Italian manuscript that also contains riddles by Symphosius and Aldhelm (Berlin, Staatsbibliothek, Philipps 1825).

As I explained in my commentary to Riddle 24, parchment was the preeminent writing material during the early European Middle Ages. Paper made from wood was used prolifically in China from the 4th century CE, and it had spread to the Islamic Middle East and North Africa by the 8th century, but it was not produced in Europe until the first paper mills were built in Spain in the 12th century. Papyrus was used extensively by the ancient Romans and Greeks, but it was gradually replaced by parchment. Pliny, writing in the 1st century CE, gave a detailed explanation of papyrus production. He summarises it thus:

Texitur omnis madente tabula Nili aqua: turbidus liquor vim glutinis praebet. in rectum primo supina tabulae schida adlinitur longitudine papyri quae potuit esse resegminibus utrimque amputatis, traversa postea crates peragit. premitur ergo prelis, et siccantur sole plagulae atque inter se iunguntur, proximarum semper bonitatis deminutione ad deterrimas.

Paper of all kinds is ‘woven’ on a board moistened with water from the Nile, muddy liquid supplying the effect of glue. First an upright layer is smeared on to the table, using the full length of papyrus available after the trimmings have been cut off at both ends, and afterwards cross strips complete the latticework. The next step is to press it in presses, and the sheets are dried in the sun and then joined together, the next strip used always diminishing in quality down to the worst of all.
Pliny the Elder, Natural History, Book 13, pages 143-4.

Isidore of Seville, writing in the early seventh century, also included a much shorter description of papyrus sheets in his Etymologies (Isidore, page 141). As we will see, it is possible that the riddle-writer drew on Isidore or Pliny when constructing this riddle.

The first two lines of the riddle describe the processing of the papyrus as an extremely violent act of destruction, which nevertheless results in the creation of something new. First, the speaker is “torn apart” (divelli) from the limbs of her mother (note that papyrus can be a masculine or feminine noun), just as the pith is stripped from the papyrus plant. Then she is “mutilated” (truncata), as the pith is cut lengthwise into strips. Finally, she is reassembled into something “larger” (maior); this alludes to the gluing together of the strips to create a papyrus sheet.

Lines 3 and 4 juxtapose the two states of the papyrus, as a plant and as a sheet, which they link together with the idea of virginity. The plant-mother is intacta (“whole, intact, virgin”) when she has not yet been stripped of its pith; the sheet is virgo (“virgin”) when she has not yet been written on. Line 5 continues this theme, framing the stripping of the papyrus pith as a transition from wholeness to division, and the gluing of the cut papyrus sheets as a movement back to wholeness again.

The final line, which mentions a “liquid” (liquida) that the papyrus sheet keeps “secure” (secura) in its “limbs” (membra), refers to papyrus’ absorbent properties, and particularly in respect of the ink that it holds on its surface. It may be a reference to Isidore’s note that papyrus sheets “drink liquid” (Etymologies, page 141). Or it may have in mind a remark by Pliny that “on account of the sponginess of the papyrus, it [i.e., the papyrus strip] sucks up the ink” (glutinamentis taenea fungo papyri bibula (Pliny, pages 146-7)).

I think it is fair to say that this riddle is rather sedate and transparent when compared to many other Bern Riddles. It focuses on the process of constructing the papyrus sheet, which it describes in terms of violent birth, separateness, and wholeness. Since it only appears in one manuscript, we are entitled to ask whether it truly belongs to the collection. Given that it uses the same vocabulary and themes found in other riddles, I think that it probably does. For example, the verb reddere (“to return”) in line 2 looks back to the final line from the previous riddle. Likewise, the phrase firmis plantis (“with firm shoots or feet”) is also used in Riddle 10 to describe a ladder, and this also prefigures the reference to plantae in the next riddle. However, although it probably does belong in the collection, we should not paper over the differences either!

How to sum up this riddle in a song? After a lot of thought, the best that I could come up with was: “It’s getting hot in here / So take off all your cloves…” Yes, I know. I’m a punning genius...

Although this riddle doesn’t have a title in its manuscripts, the solution is almost certainly garlic. Garlic was a common foodstuff and medicinal ingredient in the Mediterranean world from classical times. Famously, the poet Horace was not a fan—he wrote a verse that compared the plant to hemlock and other deadly poisons (“Epode 3,” pages 278-9)! During the European Middle Ages, garlic was used in a wide variety of sauces, and monks often grew it in their medicinal gardens. Cultivated garlic was also known in England, where it was referred to as garleac, which is a compound of gar (“spear”) and leac (“leek”).

Garlic features in two other riddles: Symphosius’ Riddle 95 and Exeter Riddle 86. Both describe a one-eyed garlic seller as a creature with thousands of heads—you can read Megan’s commentary on these extraordinary riddles here. As we will see, the Bern riddler was probably familiar with Symphosius’ riddle.

The riddle begins with three wonderful sub-riddles, each of which relates to a different part of the plant. We are asked to name the mother and the “complex garment” (multiplex vestis), and we are also expected to explain the cryptic reference to its body in line 2. The mother is the garlic plant. Although the Latin word for garlic, alium, is neuter, herba (“plant, herb”) is a feminine noun and plants are described as mothers in several other riddles. The garment is the clove, which holds the individual bulbs together—thus, the garlic can be said to lose its “body” when it is without its clothing.

As with so many of the Bern riddles, Riddle 51 subverts the image of childbirth in an unexpected way, which it challenges us to explain. In line 3, the child is said to carry its parents in its belly. This refers to the bulbs, which will themselves grow into new parent-plants when buried in line 4. The image of something buried that will later come back to life also hints at the Resurrection of Christ, just as we found in Riddles 6, 12, 13 and 20.

You may remember how “heads became feet” for the hammer of Riddle 46. Something similar happens here: in lines 5 and 6, the garlic is prevented from “growing high” (superis crescere) because its “head” (caput) is placed under its “feet” (plantae). This plays on the fact that the low growing “shoots” (plantae) of the garlic are above ground, whereas the clove grows below it. It may also have Symphosius’ garlicy reference to “many thousands of heads” (capitum… milia multa) in mind.

In my opinion, you would have to be a vampire to dislike this riddle! The great thing about it, and about the Bern collection generally, is that a very ordinary thing can be depicted in such creative, unusual, and subversive ways. After reading this riddle, you can never look at garlic in the same way again!

This riddle is the second in the Bern collection on the rose plant (the first is Riddle 34). The Bern Riddles are highly metaphorical, and they frequently combine two images—a human and a non-human one—to show how extraordinary behaviour in the human world can be considered normal in the non-human one. Riddle 52 does this exceptionally well, by presenting the germination of roses as a far from rosy mother-son relationship.

There is a lot going on in this riddle, so you may wish to have a copy of it open alongside my commentary—I’ll try not to go too fast! The opening line plays on the possible meanings of durus (“hard”) and mollis (“soft”). The human mother is “pretty” (mollis), but she produces children de corde duro (“from a hard heart”), a phrase that could also be understood as an unwilling or a difficult birth—the riddle returns to this theme in the next line. At the same time, the “soft” or “flexible” (mollis) plant also produces children. In the riddle’s botanical sense, “from a hard heart” may be a reference to the rose hips or the seed itself, or perhaps a reference to the “tough-heartedness” of a very spiky plant.

Line 2 is all about two meanings of conceptus, as “conception” and “budding.” The human mother tells us that she gets no enjoyment from conceptus. This may refer to enjoyment from becoming a mother or from sexual intercourse, or it could be a play on the idea of virgin birth, which occurs in several other Bern riddles, including the rather bizarre egg riddle. At the same time, the rose is telling us that she reproduces asexually (at least, as far as the riddler knows) and without the assistance of any men.

Lines 3 and 4 are all about how we read the phrase disrumpit vulnere (“to break with a wound”). In terms of the plant, this likely refers to the seedling rupturing the seed case. At the same time, this also alludes to caesarean delivery, a topic that is described using the same verb, disrumpere (“to burst, break”), in the egg riddle. A second possibility is that vulnus means “vagina” here—if so, it would suggest vaginal tearing during childbirth.

Line 5 takes the conventional image of a mother swaddling her child and reverses it—here it is the child who covers up her broken mother. Perhaps the idea is that the child has killed the mother in the previous line, and so he covers her in a burial shroud. The botanical meaning is rather tricky to explain, but tegimen (“shell”) can also mean “husk” or “seed casing,” and so it probably refers to the sapling that is growing over the remains of the seed casing.

In line 6, the riddle swings back towards the botanical reality of the young rose, which is now growing a “spike” (acumen) that allows the delicate roses to defeat “stronger” creatures. This draws upon a similar image from an earlier riddle by Symphosius, a riddler who was working at some point between the third and sixth centuries. Symphosius’ riddle juxtaposes the rose’s fragility with its formidable defences: saeptaque, ne violer, telis defendor acutis (“and, wrapped, lest I be maltreated, I am protected by fierce spears”). In one sense, then, Riddle 52 is building on the common “strong overthrows the weak” motif. But, in the light of the events described in line 4, perhaps it has another, darker meaning—that the sons (“the weak”) have injured or killed their mother (“the strong”) by their birth.

As I mentioned in my introduction, parallel narratives are very common in the Bern riddles. However, the human and botanical narratives in Riddle 52 are particularly vivid and well-conceived. Budding riddlers could definitely take a leaf from this riddle.

Don’t think that the Exeter Book riddles are the only riddles in town with contested solutions! Like several other Bern riddles, Riddle 53 does not have a title in the manuscripts and so its solution is somewhat uncertain. In his 1886 edition of the riddles, Willhelm Meyer guessed that this riddle describes a pestle (Meyer, page 428), based on similarities to the final line of an earlier Latin riddle, Symphosius’ Riddle 87. However, as Karl Minst pointed out, a pestle does not have two limbs and it does not determine “profit” and “loss” (Glorie, page 600). P. Brandt suggested the solution “scales” in his 1883 edition (Brandt, page 129), and most subsequent scholars have agreed with him.

Lots of Bern riddles use the human body to describe their non-human subjects—it is one of the many ways that they imagine ordinary objects in fantastic ways. Our enigmatic riddle creature begins by telling us that she has no “belly” (venter) or “guts” (praecordia). This reminds me of Riddle 32’s hollow sponge, as well as the many other Bern riddles that describe the bellies and insides of things. Riddle 11’s ship, for example, carried its cargo as its viscera (“guts”). If Riddle 53’s solution is “scales,” then the absent “belly” and “guts” are, presumably, the weights and measures that it balances. The creature is either carried “when dry, in a thin body” or carried “in a thin body when dry” (tenui… in corpore sicca), depending on how one prefers to interpret the syntax. “Dry” seems to refer to the scales’ state when unloaded, and the “thin body” is their long beam.

Line 3 explains that the creature stores all kinds of food, yet she is never hungry. Line 4 then goes on to provide perhaps the most helpful clues of all: she grants both “profit” (lucrum) and “loss” (damnum) whilst “running in one place” (loco currens uno). Not only do scales have a critical role in many kinds of economic transactions, but they work by moving up and down “in the same place.” The final two lines seem to confirm this solution—scales have two weighing pans, or “limbs” (membra), hanging from them, and both sides of the beam (the “head” and “feet”) must be of a similar length and weight to achieve equilibrium.

So, there we have it! On the balance of things, having measured up all the options, I think that “scales” is the most likely solution. But that does not mean that the riddle has been definitively solved. I will leave you to weigh up the possibilities and decide for yourself.

Last night, I saw a couple weaving all over the road. I told them to get a loom!

Now that I have got that terrible joke off my chest, I can tell you that although the manuscripts do not give a solution for Riddle 54, just like the previous riddle, it has been suggested that the solution is a weaving loom. Glorie’s and Minst’s 1968 edition of the Bern Riddles attaches the title De insubulo (“weaving beam” or “loom”), and modern scholars generally follow this lead. I agree that it is likely to be a weaving riddle, but I think that the plural “loom beams” (De insubulis) is the most likely solution. Weaving and needlework feature in several other riddles from the 7th and 8th centuries, including Aldhelm’s riddle on the spindle (No. 45), Tatwine’s riddles on needles (Nos. 11 and 13), and possibly Exeter Riddle 56. However, we are still free to consider alternatives—it is certainly not an open and shut case! Like Bern Riddle 53, the riddle is interested in ideas of equilibrium and equality, and so any solution must take this into account.

The looms used in the early European Middle Ages were typically of two kinds: the warp-weighted loom and the vertical two-beam loom. The warp-weighted loom suspended the threads from a wooden “cloth beam” and held them taut by attaching loom-weights to the threads. The beam rotated, allowing the finished cloth to be wound up onto it. The two-beam loom did away with the weights completely. It placed the cloth beam at the bottom of the loom and added a “warp beam” at the top. These two beams were rotated together, so that the upper beam warp let out the warp thread and the lower beam rolled up the woven cloth. On both types of loom, the threads ran through heddles looped around moveable heddle rods, which separated the threads for the warp.

The first thing to notice about this riddle is that it is narrated in the third person. This is unusual for the Bern Riddles, which are almost always written in the first person singular or (occasionally) plural, with only two other exceptions (in Riddle 62 and in lines 4-6 of Riddle 7). It begins by telling us the subjects of the riddle are two brothers, who are born multo sub numero (“under a great number”) and nomine… sub uno divisus (“distinguished under one name”). If we assume that the riddle is about weaving, then these brothers are probably the warp and cloth beams of a two-beam loom. These are both known under one name (insubulum) and they are “born” under a multitude of threads. An alternative explanation is that the brothers are heddle rods (Hyer, page 456).

Lines 3 and 4 are built on a metaphor that inverts the inequalities found in human society. The rich (dives) and poor (pauper) brothers are “pressed” (premuntur) by an “equal effort” (pari labore), or perhaps “oppressed” by an equal labour.” Whereas the poor brother “always has” (semper habet), the rich one “often needs” (saepe requiret). This sounds very much like the weighing scales of Riddle 53. If the brothers are the two beams, then pari labore could allude to them working together to maintain the correct tension in the warp threads, particularly when being turned. The cloth beam is the rich brother, who collects the valuable, completed weave and is still always “asking for more.” The warp beam is the poor brother, who can be said to always “have something to give.”

Who loves the sun? Riddlers do, of course! Riddle 55 is the first of eight astronomical riddles, and the first of three riddles about the sun.

Except that it might not be about the sun at all. Sol (“sun”) is grammatically masculine, whereas the subject of this riddle is described using unmistakably feminine participles. One alternative possibility is nubes (“cloud”), a feminine noun that fits the description almost as well as sun (Gavilán, page 403). However, the riddle does appear as De sole (“About the sun”) in manuscripts. See what you think!

The riddle begins with the idea of rebirth—we have seen this motif before in Riddles 6, 12, 13, 20, and 51, and on these occasions I have suggested that this was done with the Resurrection of Christ in mind. The author may also have been thinking of the Virgin Birth, since the creature was not produced semine nex ullo patris (“from a father’s seed”). If the solution is sun, then this is an apt description for the diurnal cycle, in which the sun is “born again” each morning. If the solution is “cloud,” then it describes the way that water is “reborn” in the water cycle.

Line 2 tells us that the creature was not sucked on a “mother’s teat” (ubera matris). Although the literal meaning could imply a wetnurse, the phrase has been chosen because it links nicely with the punning repetition on ubera in the next line. The creature tells us that it feeds many with “my breasts” (uberibus… meis), a phrase that alludes not to literal breasts but to figurative nutrients. Clearly, this could apply to either the sun or the cloud—if the latter is the case, then the implication is that the creature’s breastmilk is the rainwater, which nourishes all kinds of earthly life.

Lines 4-6 play with the idea that the riddle creature has no solid body and leaves no traces. The “I leave no footprints” trope in line 4 is also used to describe a ship in Riddle 11 and the moon’s traceless path in Riddle 59. Despite its non-corporeality, the creature still manages to “give shadows wings,” or perhaps “make shadows fly” (aligeras reddere umbras). If the solution is “cloud” then the adverbial temporibus (“at times”) can be understood as referring to those occasions when a cloud covers up the sun. However, if the solution is “sun” then the shadows could be those cast on sundials, and so temporibus (“at [certain] times”) might have a more definite sense.

Although I have retained the riddle’s original title in my translation, I do wonder whether “About a cloud” might be a better name for it. One thing is for sure: whatever the solution might be, it is way, way over our heads.

Remember how the last riddle was possibly about the sun, but maybe about a cloud instead. Well, although Riddle 56 is entitled “About the word” (De verbo) in several manuscripts, it is actually about the complex relationship between the sun and the moon. It seems that you can’t always trust scribes…

We don’t think about the relationship between the sun and the moon very much today, but it was a topic of great interest for many of the most learned people in early medieval Europe. This was all because of one thing: the importance of the luni-solar calendar in calculating repeatable dates for Easter. This method of calendrical calculation became known as computus, from the Latin word computare (“to count or calculate”). Computus can be a very complex subject, but the fundamental rudiments are not too hard to understand—bear with me on this!

In the first few decades after the death of Christ, a tradition had developed in Rome, Jerusalem, and Alexandria where Easter would be celebrated on the Sunday after the Jews celebrated the Passover. In 325, at the First Council of Nicaea, the various churches decided to prohibit its celebration on the Passover and to calculate a date themselves. Everyone agreed that Easter should be on the first Sunday after the 14th day from the first new moon after the spring equinox. Unfortunately, they didn’t agree the nitty-gritty of the calculations, such as what date to calculate the equinox from, at what time each day should end and the next begin, and most importantly of all, what system should be used to integrate the lunar and solar calendars. This led to centuries of acrimonious disputes on the dating of Easter.

Any method to date Easter had to be repeatable and predictable in advance. This meant integrating three elements in a perpetual calendar: the synodic lunar month (an average of approximately 29.5306 days) the tropical solar year (an average of approximately 365.2422 days), and the cycle of weekdays. The most challenging aspect of this was integrating the first two. 8, 30, 84, 95, and 112-year calendar cycles all achieved varying degrees of popularity at one time or another. However, the most accurate practical sequence was a 19-year cycle, and by the 9th century, this had become the dominant calendrical method in Western Europe.

Although the 19-year cycle was the most accurate way of integrating the lunar and solar calendars, it was not perfect, because the orbit of the moon around the earth and the earth around the sun have no direct link to one another. The calculation of the moon’s age on paper would often be several days out from the age of the moon in the real, observable world. Even after tinkering with some intercalations, the moon would still be 2.16 hours out of sync after 19 years. Many computists—including Bede—were very aware of this problem.

I hope that this all made sense. Now, we can get back to the riddle! It describes the sun and moon as brother and sister, who are also “husband” (maritus) and “wife” (coniunx). This incestuous relationship is further complicated by the fact that they are always apart from one another (line 3), and yet the sun manages to impregnate his sister (line 4) and then act as her midwife (lines 5-6). This is all rather bizarre and risqué, even for the Bern Riddles.

The genders of sun and moon are easy to explain—sol is a masculine noun and luna is feminine. In fact, Aldhelm, writing riddles in the seventh century, also calls them siblings. However, it is harder to explain why the relationship is a deviant one. Not only is it incestuous, but the idea of hiding children “behind a robe” suggests that they are covering this up. In an article that I wrote in 2020, I suggested that this was because the relationship between the sun and moon in computus was also rather complicated and problematic (Mogford, pages 232-3).

Since the sun and moon are said to always be apart in this riddle, the riddler is probably thinking of the time of the new moon—the only lunar phase when the moon is always nocturnal. In classical and medieval Latin literature, it was common to describe the full moon as metaphorically pregnant (nata). However, the riddler has cleverly extended this image to describe how the sun’s light illuminates the moon from a distance—and this gives us the curious idea of impregnation “from afar” (de longe).

But who are the “children” (nepotes) whom the moon births and the sun delivers? Minst argues that they are the night, whom the sun transforms into the day, but I don’t find this particularly convincing. I suspect that the riddler is thinking of the calendar here: the children are the months, who are born by the moon, but who are “covered together” (cunctos… textos) by the “single robe” (uno… peplo) of the solar year.

So, there we have it. Only in the wonderful Bern Riddles could the sun and moon become a brother and sister, who conduct an illicit relationship from a distance, with lots of babies! Next time you look up at the full moon shining in the night sky, remember the eccentric and slightly loony Bern Riddle 56!

This riddle is all about what happens when there ain’t no sunshine!

The riddle begins with the idea that, unlike all other creatures, the sun never sees “the night’s shadows” (noctis… tenebras), but instead it speeds around the globe. Notice that I said “around” and not “under”—contrary to popular myth, lots of people in the Middle Ages knew that the world was a sphere. Interestingly, the sun tells us that it does not move under its own power, but rather is “led” or “pulled” (duci). This may refer to the idea that the sun moves at God’s command. Alternatively, the riddler may have a non-Christian concept in mind: solar chariots appear in the mythology of many different cultures around the world, and the pantheon of Greek and Roman gods included several sun-gods who were pulled on a chariot, including the Greek Helios and Apollo, and the Roman Sol.

Lines 3 and 4 are quite straightforward. The riddle creature tells us that it flies but is not a bird. It also claims that birds do not fly when the sun disappears, which is true for many birds, although by no means all. It also seems to play on the orthographical similarity between via (“road,” “path”), avia (“wilderness,” literally “without path”) and avis (“bird”). The riddler may have been thinking of a remark in Isidore of Seville’s early seventh century encyclopedia, The Etymologies. Isidore writes that “They are called birds (avis) because they do not have set paths (via), but travel by means of pathless (avia) ways” ((Etymologies, page 264)). In turn, Isidore’s source was a line from a much earlier work, Lucretius’ 1st century BC poem, On the Nature of Things, which describes how the apparently random, pathless flight of “various birds, flying across trackless woods” (variae volucres nemora avia pervolitantes) that can be seen with the rising sun (On the Nature of Things, page 145).

The final two lines play with the idea that robbers only operate at night, and perhaps also allude to Isidore’s etymological myth (which he borrows from the ancient Roman scholar, Marcus Terentius) that nox (“night”) was derived from nocere (“to strike, harm”) (Etymologies, page 127).The final line cleverly extends this etymology into the more complex metaphor of the publica compita (“public crossroads”), alluding to the thief’s fate upon the crossroad gallows, but also the regularity of the sun’s daily movement across the “crossroads” of the celestial meridian.

Unlike many other Bern Riddles, Riddle 57 does not use any particularly elaborate or unexpected metaphors. However, it does employ some rather clever wordplay on nox/nicere and via/avia/avis. These etymological puns probably derive from the Etymologies of Isidore of Seville, and presumably the reader was expected to know and sol-ve them all.

Now we come to the first of two moon riddles—clearly, the riddler was going through a lunar phase. The description of the moon as a rapidly aging traveller is quite straightforward, and the riddle doesn’t use the bizarre imagery and extraordinary paradoxes that we often associate with the Bern collection.

The moon played a critical role in one of the most important and contentious debates in early medieval Europe—the dating of Easter. As I explained in my commentary for Riddle 56, if you want to produce repeatable and perpetual dates for Easter, you need to calculate the age of the moon on the spring equinox. Thus, some of the best minds in medieval Europe dedicated lots of thinking and lots of ink to the age of the moon. To make their calculations, they had to ask all sorts of tricky questions, such as when did one day ended and another began, and at what point an old moon become new.

The path of the moon across the sky varies each day, relative to the horizon, the stars, and the time of year. The riddle presents this variability in terms of an unwilling but frequent traveller. The riddle creature tells us that it is always “running many roads” (multas vias... currens) in line 1. In lines 3 and 4, it goes on to describe its rising and setting in terms very similar to Riddle 57’s description of the sun’s movements—rather than moving of its own volition, it is “forced” (conpellari) to set, and it is “dragged back up” (trahi sursum). It makes me feel rather sorry for the poor moon!

The phrases of the moon are described in terms of youth and old age. In line 2, the moon tells us corpore defecta… conprendo senectam (“I count old age on a declining body”), which would suggest that it is in its final two phases, as it wanes from full to new. Despite its age and its weakening, the moon remains “swift” (velox)—a reference to the moon’s “swift,” 29 ½-day, month as opposed to the sun’s “slow” 365.24-day year. In line 5, the moon ruminates on the “short time” (parvum tempus) of her life, just as we humans are wont to. However, the riddle does not use the typical resurrection trope that we have seen in other riddles. Instead, it explains that the oldest moon is also the youngest. This alludes to the fact that the new moon, before its waxing crescent has appeared, can be said to be both the end of the old lunar month and the beginning of the new one.

So, although it is not the most exciting riddle, it does use the image of the aging traveller to depict two aspects of the moon that can be quite complex—its daily path across the sky and its monthly phases.

Unfortunately, by the time that I came to write this commentary, I had used up all my moon puns. Clearly, I didn’t planet very well!

The second moon riddle in the Bern collection, Riddle 59 continues to use the traveller motif found in Riddle 58, but it is all about visibility and invisibility, recurring cycles, and the difference between artificial light and natural moonlight. In my last commentary, I suggested that the last riddle was about the waning and the new moon. This one is more interested in the full moon. Let’s take a look!

The riddle opens with the apparent paradox that something can move and yet not be seen moving. This might refer to the monthly new moon or the daily change in the moon’s path, both of which were mentioned in the previous riddle. However, I think it is more likely to be saying that “nobody notices” the moon’s movement because this cannot be discerned with one glance, or even over the space of a few minutes.

The theme of invisibility and imperceptability continues into the second line. The statement that no one can cernere nec vultus per diem signa (“make out the marks of my face during the day”) is not usually true, since the moon is frequently visible during the daytime. The only time that this is never the case is during a full moon because the sun and moon must be on the opposite sides of the earth for the full lunar hemisphere to be illuminated.

Line 3 repeats an idea from the previous riddle—the moon is a wanderer who takes many paths. But Line 4 is more cryptic, telling us that it travels them all bis iterato per annum, which could mean either “twice per year” or “in two repetitions through the year”. I don’t have a convincing explanation for the first interpretation, but the second could refer to the method that the medieval calendar measured the lunar month on paper. Since a lunar month is just over 29 ½ days in length on average, it was divided into two, alternating “lunations”: the full (30 day) and hollow (29 day) lunations.

The final two lines look back to Riddle 2’s description of the lantern, which told us that nolo me contingat imber nec flamina venti (“I do not wish to meet with the rain nor a blast of wind”). Here, however, the moon’s light cannot be put out by “rain, snow, frost, ice, and lightening (imber, nix, pruina, glacies nec fulgora). It also across to an earlier riddle, Symphosius’s Riddle 67, which describes a lantern as cornibus apta cavis (“ready with curved horns”). The idea is that the lamp is made of protective horn, and the crescent moon is itself “horned.” You can read more about this extended riddle theme in my commentary for Riddle 2.

This riddle goes way over my head—because it is all about the sky, and specifically the sky during the daytime. It is the sixth of eight astronomical riddles in the collection.

Line 1 tells us that the sky is, like most of us humans, “clothed” or “dressed” (amictus) during the day. This might conceivably refer to the sunlight, the clouds, or its characteristic blue colour. It also has a “public face” (promiscuus vultus), which is the opposite of the previous riddle, which discussed the moon in terms of invisibility. Although I have translated it idiomatically as “I have a public face,” the verb reddor ensures that it literally means “I am returned to a public face,” alluding to the endlessly cyclical nature of the dawn. Line 2 then imagines the daylight as beautifying the “ugly” (turpus) night, which is depicted as a dangerous and rather unpleasant time in Riddle 57.

Several Bern riddles describe things that carry a burden without any effort—Riddle 24’s parchment carried thousands of words and Riddle 7’s bladder held a great deal of air, both without any difficulty at all. Something similar occurs in line 4, which explains how the sky can be “laden” (onustus) by the clouds, sun, moon, planets, and stars, without being bothered at all by the “heavy weight of things” (pondere sub magno rerum). Oh, what a happy sky! Despite its burden, it does not have a “back” (dorsum) upon which it can carry anything, but only a “face” (vultus). The idea expressed here is that the “dome” of the heavens never appears convex, but only ever concave—we do not see the heavens “from the other side,” as it were.

The final line explains that absolutely everyone—good and bad—can be found under the “roof” (tectum) of the heavens during the daytime. In previous commentaries, I have mentioned that the Bern riddles love to play intertextual games with each other, and this is a great example. It seems to have in mind Riddle 57’s description of the day as a time when criminals cannot plunder. It may also be thinking of the depiction of the heavens as a giant celestial nunnery in Riddle 62. Since religious houses offered sanctuary and shelter to all people, no matter what their crimes, they can also be said to receive “the good with the bad” (cum bonis malos) under their roof.

When I read this riddle, I instantly hear Whitesnake’s 80s metal classic, Still of the Night. Make of this what you will!

The solution to this riddle is best thought of as “night” or perhaps “the night’s shadow.” However, it is entitled De umbra (“On the shadow” or “On darkness”) in one manuscript, in a similar way to how Riddle 57’s sun is referred to as De igne (“On fire”) in several copies.

Line 1 begins with the idea that the night likes to stand in “humid or damp places” (humidis… locis). This is followed by a nice piece of misdirection in line 2, which imagines the night as an enormous series of branches that have no connecting trunk. Trees are, of course, very happy to stand in damp places. But why does night like to do this? In my commentaries for Riddle 20 and 44, I explained the concept of celestial dew. Today, we know that dew is formed as temperatures drop during the night, so that water vapour condenses on cooling surfaces. However, early medieval science thought that the dew fell from the moon and stars. This extract from the anonymous De mundi constitutione, a scientific text written at some point between the 9th and 11th centuries and falsely attributed to the Venerable Bede, summarises the concept quite nicely:

 …quod Lune attribuitur eo quod illa sit cribum celestium; alii attribuunt Veneri. Caditque et vespere et mane. Qui, si frigore prevenitur, pruina effictur… Aliud quoque in autumnali volitat tempore quod pueri vocant estatem; unde aranee telas faciunt; quod est fex aeris Sole desiccati. Preterea, ventis imminentibus, inferior iste aer superiori colliditur; unde scintille prosiliunt, que stellarum casum imitantur… et in agris invente flefmatis similitudinem exprimunt; sunt autem res venenose.

  [This is attributed to the Moon in that the Moon is the sieve of the heavenly bodies; others attribute this to Venus. It falls in both the morning and the evening. But if it is overtaken by cold, hoarfrost is produced… Another sort floats around in autumn time, which boys call aestas; from this, spiders make their webs, and it is the residue of air dried up by the sun. Furthermore, when winds are threatening, the lower air strikes the air above; as a result, there spring out sparks, which imitate the falling of the stars… and when found in fields exhibit a similarity to phlegm. These, however, are poisonous things.]
–Pseudo-Bede, De mundi celestris terrestrisque constitutione, pages 30-1.

As you can see, there were several different kinds of celestial dew, all of which were thought to fall from the heavens—and this makes night a very damp time!