Exeter Riddle 17
MEGANCAVELL
Date: Tue 24 Dec 2013Matching Commentaries: Commentary for Exeter Riddle 17
This week’s translation is a guest post from Wendy Hennequin. Wendy is an Associate Professor at Tennessee State University where she is currently researching the connection between Grendel’s mother and Beowulf’s kings, as well as the comitatus bond in contemporary literature. We’re posting her translation and commentary back-to-back because the commentary discusses issues of translation and so is best read alongside the poem.
Ic eom mundbora minre heorde,
eodorwirum fæst, innan gefylled
dryhtgestreona. Dægtidum oft
spæte sperebrogan; sped biþ þy mare
5 fylle minre. Frea þæt bihealdeð,
hu me of hrife fleogað hyldepilas.
Hwilum ic sweartum swelgan onginne
brunum beadowæpnum, bitrum ordum,
eglum attorsperum. Is min innað til,
10 wombhord wlitig, wloncum deore;
men gemunan þæt me þurh muþ fareð.
I am herd-protector, hand-ruler of the flock,
fast in wire-fences, and filled inside
with army-treasures. Often, in daytime,
I spit spear-terror. My success is greater,
5 luck-might, with fullness. The lord sees how
battle-arrows from my belly fly.
Sometimes, I begin to swallow dark
brown battle-arms, bitter spear-points,
painful poison-spears. Precious to the proud
10 is my bright womb-hoard, wonderful stomach.
People remember what passes through my mouth.
Notes:
Here are some notes on my translation.
- Line 1. I have rendered mundbora twice in this line, though it appears only once in the original text. Clark Hall glosses mundbora as “protector” (242), though it literally breaks down to “hand-ruler.” I have used the second half-line, translated literally as “of my flock,” to make a kenning in the first half-line and preserve the line’s alliteration.
- Line 5a: This half-line translates literally as “with my fullness,” which doesn’t have enough stresses to complete a half-line. I have added, “luck-might,” as a variation of sped in the previous half-line, to fill out 5a.
- Line 9a: “Painful poison-spears” is a literal translation; as a poet, I would have preferred the stronger meter of “Poison pain-spears.”
- Lines 9b-10b: I have rearranged these three half-lines for grammatical sense and alliteration. I have taken a slight liberty with the meaning of the word til, “good, apt, suitable, useful, profitable: excellent: brave: astounding,” by rendering it “wonderful” (Clark Hall 341).
This riddle appears on folio 105r of The Exeter Book.
The above Old English text is based on this edition: Elliott van Kirk Dobbie and George Philip Krapp, eds, The Exeter Book, Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records 3 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1936), page 189.
Note that this edition numbers the text Riddle 15: Craig Williamson, ed., The Old English Riddles of the Exeter Book (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1977), pages 77-8.
Tags: anglo saxon exeter book riddles old english solutions riddle 17
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