Riddle Ages

Commentary for Exeter Riddle 70

MEGANCAVELL

Date: Mon 04 Dec 2017

Matching Riddle: Exeter Riddle 70

Well hello there, folks! I am in a pretty gosh darn grumpy mood as I type this post…for the second time…since I somehow managed to DELETE IT ALL last week. Srsly can’t wait for the hols.
As for Riddle 70, perhaps it makes sense to have to write up the commentary twice, since what we have here isn’t one riddle, but two (this is me desperately trying to rationalise my mistake…is it working?). Once again, we have a problem with the numbering attributed to the Exeter Book riddles in Krapp and Dobbie’s edition of the manuscript. This time, though, the problem has nothing to do with the big holes in the manuscript caused by some fool with a hot poker. On the contrary, what we have here is a problem with pages. You see, lines 1-4 of Riddle 70 appear at the bottom of folio 125v, while lines 5-6 appear at the top of the next page – folio 126r. And they don’t seem to flow. At. All. Not only does line 4 trail off unfinished (forcing some editors to add in words after gesceapo), but the first part of the riddle also has lots of third-person verbs like singeð (it sings), which jar with line 5’s first-person verb stonde (I stand).
Back in 1974, John C. Pope explained the lack of flow (in his rather marvellously-titled article, “An Unexpected Lacuna in the Exeter Book: Divorce Proceedings for an Ill-matched Couple in the Old English Riddles”) by arguing that we’re missing a page here in the Exeter Book. The quire – a sort of booklet that would be stitched together with others to form the manuscript – which folio 125 belongs to is short, you see, with only 7 pieces of parchment instead of 8. Something has definitely gone awry.
So, Pope reckons we have a Riddle 70a and a Riddle 70b, which the ASPR edition hasn’t recognised as separate texts. Other editors re-number them accordingly. The main thing to keep in mind, is that we seem to have parts of two different riddles here, which means we need to come up with two different solutions. Thanks for doubling my workload, Exeter Book compiler!
Let’s start with lines 1-4. Most of the solutions proposed for this part of the riddle are musical instruments of some sort. So, we have Shepherd’s Pipe, Bell, Harp, etc. There’s also Shuttle and Nose, which take the concept of something “singing through its sides” rather metaphorically, but I’m not convinced, since the explanations of what the “shoulders” (mentioned in the riddle) are seems a bit forced. The best solutions, in my own humble opinion, are a bell in some sort of bell-tower or a development of one of the first solutions proposed of this riddle: Shepherd’s Pipe or Shawm (a double-reed woodwind instrument). If you haven’t seen one of these, they’re all over the place in manuscripts and stone carvings/sculptures of the medieval period. Here’s one in action:


Now a shawm or shepherd’s pipe would certainly account for the references to the object’s interesting form of singing and its skilful creation, but what do we do about those two shoulders? Well, Luisa Maria Moser (I know you read this blog, Luisa; everyone wave, please!) has recently given this question quite a lot of thought. She argues that the instrument depicted here isn’t your bog-standard pipe, but a double shawm. The double shawm consists of two pipes with curved mouthpieces which themselves would have double reeds protruding from them (page 3). The curved neck of the riddle creature could refer to the joining of these mouthpieces (page 3). Although examples of such a shawm don’t survive from tenth-century England (i.e. the time of the Exeter Book’s compilation), we do have an early medieval stone carving depicting a triple flute in Clonmacnoise, Co. Offaly, Ireland. There are also later double-flute images in manuscripts and carvings from England, including in the 14^th-century Luttrell Psalter (fol. 58r – side-ways in the middle!), and at Beverley Minster in Yorkshire (15^th-century).
So, perhaps we have an instrument like this one wondrously singing through the opening lines of Riddle 70.
What about lines 5-6, then? Do these have anything to do with musical instruments? Well, the short answer to that question is: no. The second riddle is much more interested in depicting an object that’s tall and rather charmingly hleortorht (cheek-bright). Most people solve this one as Lighthouse because of the reference to the object towering be wege, which could mean either “by the water” or “by the way/path.” There’s an Anglo-Latin riddle about a lighthouse in the collection by Aldhelm, who lived in the seventh/eighth centuries: Enigma 92, Faros Editissima. And Isidore of Seville, whose Etymologies were famed throughout the Middle Ages, also described the lighthouses of the ancient world, including the Lighthouse or Pharos of Alexandria:
Photo (by Ginolerhino) of the Lighthouse or Pharos of Alexandria on coins minted there in the second century from Wikimedia Commons (license CC BY-SA 3.0)
Apparently, the Romans built lighthouses on either side of the English Channel, so the early medieval riddlers may have been familiar with these too (Pope, page 619). Lighthouse is a possibility then.
Photo (by Chris McKenna/Thryduulf) of the Roman lighthouse at Dover from Wikimedia Commons (license: CC BY-SA 4.0)
Another option is Candle, which John D. Niles has recently made a case for. According to Niles, we ought to be reading be wege metaphorically: the path is actually the inky trail of writing on a page (page 93). There are, after all, other riddles that refer to tracks when they really mean ink, like Riddle 51. Niles goes on to say that “From his (or its) own perspective, the personified candle does indeed stand ‘tall’ and ‘bright-cheeked’ beside the ‘path’ that it illumines. The wit of this riddle resides largely in its subversion of the anthropocentric expectation that something that is ‘tall’ should be taller than a human being, when in fact that size of the item to be guessed must be reckoned in relation to its own surroundings” (page 94). Since candles were more commonplace than lighthouses, this – he says – is the better solution.
Personally, I can’t justify going to such lengths to definitively solve a riddle that is clearly missing an unidentifiable amount of text and information! For all we know, this riddle may well be playing with both objects/structures. Be wege is obviously a contentious phrase, and it could be intentional wordplay on the part of the poet. But we simply can’t know because we don’t have the rest of the riddle. No need to get all in a tizzy, then. Let’s have our cake and eat it too.
There are a surprising amount of lighthouse-themed candle-holders available for sale online…

Notes:

References and Suggested Reading

Moser, Luisa Maria. “A New Solution for the Exeter Book Riddle Number 70 – A Double Flute.” Notes and Queries, vol. 63 (2016), pages 2-4.

Niles, John D. Old English Enigmatic Poems and the Play of the Texts. Turnhout: Brepols, 2006., esp. pages 92-6.

Pope, John C. “An Unexpected Lacuna in the Exeter Book: Divorce Proceedings for an Ill-matched Couple in the Old English Riddles.” Speculum, vol. 49 (1974), pages 615-22.

Salvador-Bello, Mercedes. Isidorean Perceptions of Order: The Exeter Book Riddles and Medieval Latin Enigmata. Morgantown: West Virginia University Press, 2015, esp. pages 393-7.

Stévanovitch, Colette. “Exeter Book Riddle 70A: Nose?,” Notes and Queries, vol. 42, (1995), pages 8-10.

von Erhardt-Siebold, Erika. “The Old English Loom Riddles.” In Philologica: The Malone Anniversary Studies. Edited by Thomas A. Kirby and Henry Bosley Woolf (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1949), pages 9-17.

Tags: anglo saxon exeter book riddles old english solutions riddle 70

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