Exeter Riddle 41
MEGANCAVELL
Date: Wed 15 Jul 2015Matching Commentaries: Commentary for Exeter Riddle 41
Riddle 41 is brought to you by the very clever and talented Helen Price. Helen recently finished her PhD at the University of Leeds, and she’s currently working on ecocritical approaches to water in medieval and modern Icelandic literature. Didn’t I say she was clever? I’m positively green with envy.
Take it away, Helen!
…. edniwu;
þæt is moddor monigra cynna,
þæs selestan, þæs sweartestan,
þæs deorestan þæs þe dryhta bearn
5 ofer foldan sceat to gefean agen.
Ne magon we her in eorþan owiht lifgan,
nymðe we brucen þæs þa bearn doð.
Þæt is to geþencanne þeoda gehwylcum,
wisfæstum werum, hwæt seo wiht sy.
…. renewed;
that is mother of many kins,
of the best, of the darkest,
the dearest that the children of the multitudes
5 over the surface of the earth rejoice to own.
We cannot, by any means, live here on earth
unless we enjoy what those children do.
That is something to think about for every nation,
for men who are wise of mind, what that creature may be.
Notes:
This riddle appears on folio 112r 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 203.
Note that this edition numbers the text Riddle 39: Craig Williamson, ed., The Old English Riddles of the Exeter Book (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1977), page 95.
Tags: anglo saxon exeter book riddles old english solutions riddle 41
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