Exeter Riddle 91

MEGANCAVELL

Date: Mon 02 Nov 2020
Matching Commentaries: Commentary for Exeter Riddle 91
Original text:
Min heafod is           homere geþuren,
searopila wund,           sworfen feole.
Oft ic begine           þæt me ongean sticað,
þonne ic hnitan sceal,           hringum gyrded,
5    hearde wið heardum,           hindan þyrel,
forð ascufan           þæt mines frean
mod · áš¹ · freoþað           middelnihtum.
Hwilum ic under bæc           bregde nebbe,
hyrde þæs hordes,           þonne min hlaford wile
10    lafe þicgan           þara þe he of life het
wælcræfte awrecan           willum sinum.
Translation:
My head is beaten by a hammer,
wounded by crafty points, polished by a file.
Often I swallow what sticks against me,
when I must thrust, encircled with rings,
5     hard against a hard thing, a hole from behind,
push forward what preserves my lord’s
mind-JOY in the middle of the night.
Sometimes I pull back with my nose
the hoard’s guardian, when my lord wants
10     to consume the remains of those whom he commanded
be driven from life through slaughter-skill, for his own desire.
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Key, Keyhole


Notes:

This riddle appears on folios 129v-130r 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), pages 240-1.

Note that this edition numbers the text Riddle 87: Craig Williamson, ed., The Old English Riddles of the Exeter Book (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1977), page 118.



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