Riddle Ages

Symphosius Riddle 47: Tus

ALEXANDRAREIDER

Date: Fri 01 Jul 2022

Original text:

Dulcis odor nemoris flamma fumoque fatigor,

Et placet hoc superis, medios quod mittor in ignes,

Cum mihi peccandi meritum natura negavit.

Translation:

The sweet scent of the grove, I am fatigued by flame and smoke,

And it is pleasing to the gods that I am sent into the middle of the flames,

Because nature denied me the reward of sinning.

Click to show riddle solution?

Incense

Notes:

This edition is based on Raymond T. Ohl, ed. The Enigmas of Symphosius. PhD dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 1928.

If you're researching/studying this collection, you should also consult this excellent new edition: T. J. Leary, ed. Symphosius: The Aenigmata, An Introduction, Text and Commentary. London: Bloomsbury, 2014. Textual differences in that edition include:

line 3 is from a different manuscript family: Nec mihi poena datur, sed habetur gratia dandi

Tags: riddles solutions latin symphosius

Commentary for Exeter Riddle 47

MEGANCAVELL

Date: Mon 23 Nov 2015

Matching Riddle: Exeter Riddle 47

First of all: sorry this post has been so long in the making. I’ve been pretty distracted by spiders recently. That is, I was writing a lecture on early medieval spiders, which ate up all my time. Of course, creepy crawlies eating things up is pretty much the whole point of Riddle 47, so I think this excuses me. See what I did there?

At any rate, this riddle is quite explicit about which critter it most literally concerns. The obviousness of the opening half-line, Moððe word fræt (a moth ate words), has actually annoyed some scholars into claiming this isn’t a riddle at all…like any Old English text is easy to categorise, pigeonhole and explain! Pfft, I say to that.

This riddle is, in fact, so complex and layered and clever and complex (did I say that already?) that it has amassed an absolute heap of scholarship…too much for me to break down into bite-sized chunks for you. So, I’m going to stick to a few basics and suggest that, if you’re academically inclined, you hop over to Martin Foys’ webpage for the pre-publication draft of his forthcoming article on Riddle 47. It’s pretty comprehensive in the scope of its analysis and literature review, so will be much more helpful than my ramblings below.

But ramble I shall.

Let’s start with the critter that the riddle seems most interested in. Moððe (moth) in line 1a and wyrm (worm) in line 3a tell us we’re dealing with a particular sort of insect in both its adult and larval forms.



Photo of a Pine Processionary Moth (by Alvesgaspar) from the Wikimedia Commons (licence: CC BY-SA 4.0).

Given the reference to just what it is the creature is eating (words!), many people take the riddle’s solution to be “bookworm” or “bookmoth.” Others, however, want to push this further and identify an underlying metaphor. Given the popularity of the concept of ruminatio – a Latin term that literally refers to certain animals digesting their food and figuratively to the understanding of religious literature that comes with careful thought and study – Mercedes Salvador-Bello suggests Riddle 47 may point to a monk or student (pages 356-7). Likewise, Martin Foys says that we’re presumably dealing with a student here, given that it’s the larval form of the moth that’s chomping down on the words in question. I can’t wait to introduce this interpretation to my own students, by the way, since I’m sure they’ll be positively chuffed to be referred to as larvae.

Within this context of education I should also mention that Riddle 47 has a Latin source. That would be Symphosius’ Enigma 16, Tinea (bookworm), which goes a little something like this:

Littera me pauit, nec quid sit littera noui.

In libris uixi, nec sum studiosior inde.

Exedi Musas, nec adhuc tamen ipsa profeci. (Glorie, vol. 133a, page 637)

(Letters fed me, but I do not know what letters are. I lived in books, but am no more studious for that. I devoured the Muses, but still have not myself progressed.)

These two poems are pretty clearly related, but they do have some important distinctions. One is the Old English play on word. As Craig Williamson (pages 285-6), Geoffrey Russom and Nicholas Jacobs all stress, the Old English poem isn’t quite as straightforward as modern folks might think. Because word in Old English doesn’t automatically signify writing. As Riddle 47’s references to songs indicate, we’re dealing with the nexus between orality and literacy here. The early medieval folks trying to solve this riddle have to first figure out what sort of speech can be eaten – that is, they have to figure out that the words are written down. In fact, Jacobs feels that this is so important a point that we ought to be solving the riddle as “writing on vellum.” And John D. Niles reckons line 3b’s reference to wera gied sumes (a certain man’s song) in the riddle actually indicates a particular text: the psalms of King David, which we know were integral to early English religion and culture (page 121-2). He’d have us solve the riddle as maða ond sealm-boc (“maggot and psalter”).

At any rate, once we’ve figured out that this poem refers to written words, the references to a thief in the darkness that appear in the Old English riddle start to make a lot more sense. That is, thieves steal material objects, sort of like this critter. In fact, this poem may well be pointing toward the treasurely nature of written words; keep in mind that books are pretty high status at the time, especially when blinged out with decorative boards and golden illumination. That context is hit home by the reference to moths and thieves and treasures in Matthew 6.19, which in the Vulgate reads:

Nolite thesaurizare vobis thesauros in terra: ubi aerugo, et tinea demolitur: et ubi fures effodiunt, et furantur

(Lay not up to yourselves treasures on earth: where the rust, and moth consume, and where thieves break through and steal.)

So, we’re dealing with that ever-popular theme of fragility and impermanence (Russom, page 133). Creepy crawlies come up in this context a lot in Old English, partly because they’re small and therefore fundamentally fragile, and partly because they invade homes and bodies and so point to our own fragility. Human concerns about being food for worms were, after all, around well before Hamlet expressed them, as many Old English texts attest (see, for example, the middle of Soul and Body I / Soul and Body II).

I think my favourite quote on this comes from Foys, who says: “Unlike other Exeter Book riddles, this riddle redacts its humanity; the animal here is not used to make the book, but to unmake the self-proclaimed status of the human form within the proclamation. As with Aldhelm’s De Creatura, the lower form of nature paradoxically, humblingly exposes the fragility of human endeavour through the textual artifice that both professes and constitutes it. Humans: 0, dumb bug: 1” (page 21).

Of course, I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t remind you that the word wyrm, though certainly used in the sense of Modern English “worm” at the time, is also the Old English term for dragons.



Image from Public Domain Pictures.

Although there’s nothing in this poem to indicate that we should be fleeing in terror from the word-chomping wyrm of Riddle 47, let’s take a moment to think of another creature associated with treasure and thieves and darkness and maybe even swallowing up speeches (while still on the lips of their speakers!). I’m, of course, thinking of the dragon that sends Beowulf to his grave:

Æfter ðam wordum      wyrm yrre cwom,

atol inwitgæst,     oðre siðe

fyrwylmum fah     fionda niosian,

laðra manna—     ligyðum for. (2669-72)

(After those words the angry dragon came another time, terrible and malicious, stained with surging fire to seek out an enemy, the hateful men – travelled with a wave of fire.)

 So, let’s just be thankful that the wyrm of Riddle 47 doesn’t seem at all inclined to breathe fire. Because those poor early medieval folks were living in a fragile enough world as it was…

Notes:

References and Suggested Reading:

Bitterli, Dieter. Say What I am Called: The Old English Riddles of the Exeter Book and the Anglo-Latin Riddle Tradition. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009, esp. pages 191-3.

Jacobs, Nicholas. “The Old English ‘Book-moth’ Riddle Reconsidered.” Notes and Queries, new series, vol. 35 (1988), pages 290-2.

Foys, Martin. “The Undoing of Exeter Book Riddle 47: ‘Bookmoth’.” In Transitional States: Cultural Change, Tradition and Memory in Medieval England. Edited by Graham Caie and Michael D. C. Drout. Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2018. Pre-publication draft available online: https://hcommons.org/deposits/item/hc:10515/ (if you’re citing this for an essay, keep in mind that the page numbers will change when the book is published)

Glorie, F., ed. Variae Collectiones Aenigmatum Merovingicae Aetatis. Corpus Christianorum Series Latina, vol. 133-133A. Turnhout: Brepols, 1968.

Niles, John D. Old English Enigmatic Poems and the Play of the Texts. Studies in the Early Middle Ages, vol. 13. Turnhout: Brepols, 2006.

Robinson, Fred C. “Artful Ambiguities in the Old English ‘Book-Moth’ Riddle.” In Anglo-Saxon Poetry: Essays in Appreciation, for John. C. McGalliard. Edited by Lewis E. Nicholson and Dolores Warwick Frese. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1975, pages 355-62.

Russom, Geoffrey. “Exeter Riddle 47: A Moth Laid Waste to Fame.” Philological Quarterly, vol. 56 (1977), pages 129-36.

Salvador-Bello, Mercedes. Isidorean Perceptions of Order: The Exeter Book Riddles and Medieval Latin Enigmata. Morgantown: West Virginia University Press, 2015, esp. pages 355-9.

Williamson, Craig, ed. The Old English Riddles of The Exeter Book. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1977.

Tags: anglo saxon exeter book riddles old english solutions riddle 47

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Exeter Riddle 48

MEGANCAVELL

Date: Tue 08 Dec 2015

Matching Commentaries: Commentary for Exeter Riddle 48

Original text:

Ic gefrægn for hæleþum      hring gyddian, (1)

torhtne butan tungan,      tila þeah he hlude

stefne ne cirmde,      strongum wordum.

Sinc for secgum      swigende cwæð:

5     “Gehæle mec,      helpend gæsta.”

Ryne ongietan      readan goldes

guman galdorcwide,      gleawe beþencan

hyra hælo to gode,      swa se hring gecwæð.

Translation:

I heard a ring sing before men,

bright, without a tongue, rightly with strong words,

although it did not yell in a loud voice.

The treasure, silent before men, spoke:

5     “Heal me, helper of souls.”

May men interpret the mystery of the red gold,

the incantation, may they wisely entrust

their salvation to God, as the ring said.

Click to show riddle solution?

Paten, Chalice, Sacramental vessel

Notes:

This riddle appears on folio 113r 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 205-6.

Note that this edition numbers the text Riddle 46: Craig Williamson, ed., The Old English Riddles of the Exeter Book (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1977), pages 97-8.

Textual Note:

(1) I have followed Williamson’s emendation here. The manuscript reads hringende an, which Krapp and Dobbie interpret as hring endean. Williamson makes a good case for more drastically revising this difficult part of the text on pages 288-9.

Tags: anglo saxon exeter book riddles old english solutions riddle 48

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Eusebius Riddle 48: De die et nocte

ALEXANDRAREIDER

Date: Mon 27 Dec 2021

Original text:

Non sumus aequales, quamvis ambaeque sorores.

Tetrica nam facie est una stans, altera pulchra.

Horrida sed requiem confert, et grata laborem.

Non simul et semper sumus at secernimur ipsi.

Translation:

We are not equals, although we are both sisters.

For one stands gloomy of face, the other, beautiful.

But the dreadful one brings rest, and the pleasant one, labour.

Always are we not together but are separated.

Click to show riddle solution?

On day and night

Tags: riddles latin Eusebius

Aldhelm Riddle 48: Vertico poli

ALEXANDRAREIDER

Date: Tue 15 Mar 2022

Original text:

Sic me formavit naturae conditor almus:

Lustro teres tota spatiosis saecula ciclis;

Latas in gremio portans cum pondere terras

Sic maris undantes cumulos et caerula cludo.

Nam nihil in rerum natura tam celer esset,

Quod pedibus pergat, quod pennis aethera tranet,

Accola neu ponti volitans per caerula squamis

Nec rota, per girum quam trudit machina limphae,

Currere sic posset, ni septem sidera tricent.

Translation:

Thus did the holy creator of nature form me: 

Round, I roam all of space in long cycles;

Carrying the wide world with its weight on my lap,

Thus do I enclose the swelling masses and waves of the sea.

For there is nothing in the nature of things that would be as quick—

Nothing which goes on foot, which goes through the airs on wing, 

Or which, scaly resident of the sea, flies through the ocean blue,

Nor the wheel which a water-mill pushes in its turning—

Nothing could run thus if the seven planets did not slow me.

Click to show riddle solution?

Revolution of the Heavens

Notes:

This edition is based on Rudolf Ehwald, ed. Aldhelmi Opera Omnia. Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctores Antiquissimi, 15. Berlin: Weidmann, 1919, pages 59-150. Available online here.

Tags: riddles latin Aldhelm

Symphosius Riddle 48: Murra

ALEXANDRAREIDER

Date: Fri 01 Jul 2022

Original text:

De lacrimis et pro lacrimis mea coepit origo.

Ex oculis fluxi, sed nunc ex arbore nascor,

Laetus honor frondis, tristis sed imago doloris.

Translation:

From tears and for tears my beginning began.

I flowed from the eyes, but now I am born from a tree,

A happy honour to a leaf, but a sad image of sorrow.

Click to show riddle solution?

Myrrh

Notes:

This edition is based on Raymond T. Ohl, ed. The Enigmas of Symphosius. PhD dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 1928.

If you're researching/studying this collection, you should also consult this excellent new edition: T. J. Leary, ed. Symphosius: The Aenigmata, An Introduction, Text and Commentary. London: Bloomsbury, 2014. Textual differences in that edition include:

line 3: frondis > frondi

Tags: riddles solutions latin symphosius

Commentary for Exeter Riddle 48

MEGANCAVELL

Date: Mon 25 Jan 2016

Matching Riddle: Exeter Riddle 48

Who doesn’t like gold, right? It’s shiny, malleable-but-also-hard (because metal), you can use it to add a touch of class to all sorts of things (clothing! tapestries! books!), and you can eat it. Seriously, you can. (can you tell I haven’t had my afternoon cup of tea and biscuit yet?)

Gold nuggets! Photo from the Wikimedia Commons.
But enough about my interest in gold, let’s talk about the early English. They were pretty keen on gold too. In fact, when you look up the word in the Dictionary of Old English database, it lists 725 occurrences – and then there are all the compound words like goldbeorht (bright with gold), goldfæt (gold vessel), goldfinger (ring finger…not that Bond character who looks a bit like ex-Toronto mayor, Rob Ford), and MANY more. So gold things, rather than diamonds, are an early medieval person’s best friend. And whatever is described in Riddle 48 is made of gold. Is this important? Possibly, but I’ll get to that in a moment. Hold your horses!
What else is going on in Riddle 48? Well, in addition to being golden and round – i.e. ring-shaped – we have the classic paradox of a something that is silently speaking (this one doesn’t even have a tongue, so we know it’s an object). Mercedes Salvador-Bello’s hot-off-the-presses-new book points out that this feature is shared across the riddles immediately leading up to and following this one (page 365). She also notes that there’s no end punctuation immediately following Riddle 47, which may suggest a thematic link between the two poems (page 360). As you may remember, Riddle 47 describes a little critter (possibly subbing in for a dim-witted monk or young student) devouring a religious book without understanding it, while Riddle 48 describes a loud-but-silent treasure that will lead to salvation for humans.
It’s this salvation that Mary Hayes talks about in an article focusing on voices and the soul. She argues that “the reader’s voice represents his or her own soul, offered to God as the prayer written on the sacred vessel is spoken aloud” (page 124).
So, what treasure or sacred vessel is this riddle talking about? Most people reckon it’s some sort of sacramental vessel – a chalice or paten (dish that holds the Eucharist) – used in Christian worship. This solution seems most likely, although which object in particular has been the subject of some debate. Before I elaborate on that, let me also outline the other proposed solutions.
Elisabeth Okasha gives quite a few possibilities, including: paten, chalice, coin, bell, brooch and finger-ring. She goes through each and weighs them up on the basis of whether not we have surviving evidence – both in the form of archaeological finds and in written references from the time – that points to them being
1) gold
2) inscribed (because this riddle appears to bear writing) and
3) in a large quantity.
Based on her findings, she concludes that because there are quite a few gold, inscribed finger-rings floating around this is the most likely solution. (coincidentally, the Old English word for finger-ring is hring, which might seem quite obvious given its use in the opening line…then again, Riddle 47 seems to begin with its solution too)


6th/7th-century engraved ring from north-west Essex. Image from the Portable Antiquities Scheme (licence: CC BY 2.0).

I personally don’t think an absence of evidence should be used as evidence of absence (in fact Okasha points out that survival rates don’t match up with the number of objects likely in existence at the time), so I’m not terribly inclined to agree with this solution. And anyway, it makes total sense for there to be fewer sacramental vessels than finger-rings, because church equipment is on display to and symbolically shared by the entire congregation in a way that a finger-ring is not.
The fact is we do have very specific written evidence for sacramental vessels made of gold that comes from early medieval England. For example, Ælfric’s Pastoral Epistle states: And witað þæt beo ælc calic geworht of myldendum antimbre . gilden oððe seolfren . glæren oððe tinen . ne beo he na hyrnen ne huru treowen (Thorpe, page 384, section 45) (And see to it that each chalice is made of molten material, gold or silver, amber or tin; let it not be of horn nor indeed wood).


In lieu of an early English chalice, check out the early Irish Ardagh Chalice (made of silver, with some decorations in gold and other metals). Photo (by Kglavin) from the Wikimedia Commons.

Craig Williamson argues that the gold in Riddle 48 points to “chalice” (OE calic or husel-fæt) as the more likely solution, since the ecclesiastical laws mention using gold for chalices, rather than patens (page 287). And, for example, Aldhelm’s Carmina Ecclesiastica describes a gold chalice and a silver paten:
Aureus atque calix gemmis fulgescit opertus,

Ut caelum rutilat stellis ardentibus aptum,

Ac lata argento constat fabricata patena:

Quae divina gerunt nostrae medicamina vitae.

(song 3, lines 72-5; Ehwald, page 18)

(and the gold chalice covered with gems glitters, just as heaven set with burning stars glows, and the broad paten fashioned from silver matches: those which carry the divine remedies of our life.)


The early medieval Irish Derrynaflan Paten. Photo (by Kglavin) from the Wikimedia Commons.

What Williamson doesn’t quote, though, is this reference from the Canons of Ælfric, which makes a fairly explicit link between both objects: Beo his calic eac of clænum antimbre geworht . unforrotigendlic . 7 eallswa se disc (Thorpe, page 349, section 22) (Let his chalice also be made of pure material, incorruptible, and likewise the dish). With no surviving chalices and patens in the archaeological record, it becomes difficult to say for certain whether gold points clearly to chalice over paten.
I have more thoughts on this, but I think I’m going to save them for a future update because I need to do some more digging. So, stay tuned for now and feel free to chime in with your own thoughts in the comments section below.
[UPDATE]
My further thoughts on this riddle are now published in an online first/open access academic article, available here. I’ll update this post with a slightly more accessible version of my findings at some point, I swears!

Notes:

References and Suggested Reading:

Cavell, Megan. “Powerful Patens in the Anglo-Saxon Medical Tradition and Exeter Book Riddle 48.” Neophilologus, vol. 101 (2017), pages 129-38. Available open access here.

Dictionary of Old English: A-G Online. Ed. by Antonette diPaolo Healey, Dorothy Haines, Joan Holland, David McDougall, and Ian McDougall, with Pauline Thompson and Nancy Speirs. Web interface by Peter Mielke and Xin Xiang. Toronto: Dictionary of Old English Project, 2007.

Ehwald, Rudolf, ed. Aldhelmi Opera. Berlin: Weidmann, 1919.

Hayes, Mary. “The Talking Dead: Resounding Voices in Old English Riddles.” Exemplaria, vol. 20, issue 2 (Summer 2008), pages 123-42.

Okasha, Elisabeth. “Old English hring in Riddles 48 and 59.” Medium Ævum, vol. 62 (1993), pages 61-9.

Salvador-Bello, Mercedes. Isidorean Perceptions of Order: the Exeter Book Riddles and Medieval Latin Enigmata. Morgantown: West Virginia University Press, 2015, esp. pages 359-60.

Thorpe, Benjamin. Ancient Laws and Institutes of England. Vol. 2. London: G. Eyre and A. Spottiswoode, 1840.

Williamson, Craig, ed. The Old English Riddles of The Exeter Book. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1977.

Tags: anglo saxon exeter book riddles old english solutions riddle 48

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Commentary for Exeter Riddle 47

Exeter Riddle 49

MEGANCAVELL

Date: Tue 02 Feb 2016

Matching Commentaries: Commentary for Exeter Riddle 49

Original text:

Ic wat eardfæstne      anne standan,

deafne, dumban,      se oft dæges swilgeð

þurh gopes hond      gifrum lacum.

Hwilum on þam wicum      se wonna þegn,

5     sweart ond saloneb,      sendeð oþre

under goman him      golde dyrran,

þa æþelingas      oft wilniað,

cyningas ond cwene.      Ic þæt cyn nu gen

nemnan ne wille,      þe him to nytte swa

10     ond to dugþum doþ      þæt se dumba her,

eorp unwita,      ær forswilgeð.

Translation:

I know a lone thing standing earth-fast,

deaf, dumb, which often by day swallows

from a slave’s hand useful gifts.

Sometimes in those dwellings the swarthy servant,

5     dark and sallow-nosed, sends others

from his mouth, dearer than gold,

which nobles often desire,

kings and queens. I will not yet

name that race/kind, who thus renders for their use

10     and advantage what the dumb one here,

the dusky fool, swallows before.

Click to show riddle solution?

Oven, Beehive, Falcon Cage, (Book)case, Pen and ink, Barrow, Sacrificial altar, Millpond and sluice

Notes:

This riddle appears on folio 113r 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 206.

Note that this edition numbers the text Riddle 47: Craig Williamson, ed., The Old English Riddles of the Exeter Book (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1977), page 98.

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Eusebius Riddle 49: De amphisbaena serpente

ALEXANDRAREIDER

Date: Mon 27 Dec 2021

Original text:

Flexosis geminum contractibus in caput errans

Curro, caput nam trux aliud mea cauda retentat.

Flammigeros gestans animos ex more lucernae,

Viperei generis solam, me confero brumae.

Translation:

Toing and froing in sinuous contractions, on a double head

I move, for my tail contains another fierce head.

Bearing spirits fiery like a lamp,

I bring myself, alone among viper-kind, into the cold.

Click to show riddle solution?

On the two-headed snake

Tags: riddles latin Eusebius

Aldhelm Riddle 49: Lebes

ALEXANDRAREIDER

Date: Tue 15 Mar 2022

Original text:

Horrida, curva, capax, patulis fabricata metallis

Pendeo nec caelum tangens terramve profundam,

Ignibus ardescens necnon et gurgite fervens;

Sic geminas vario patior discrimine pugnas,

Dum latices limphae tolero flammasque feroces.

Translation:

Horrid, curved, capacious, made from beaten metals

I hang, touching neither the sky nor the vast earth,

Heated by fire and also boiling with swirling water;

Thus I endure twin battles with their various risks,

For as long as I tolerate the water’s liquid and the fierce flames.

Click to show riddle solution?

Cauldron

Notes:

This edition is based on Rudolf Ehwald, ed. Aldhelmi Opera Omnia. Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctores Antiquissimi, 15. Berlin: Weidmann, 1919, pages 59-150. Available online here.

Tags: riddles latin Aldhelm

Symphosius Riddle 49: Ebur

ALEXANDRAREIDER

Date: Fri 01 Jul 2022

Original text:

Dens ego sum magnus populis cognatus Eois;

Nunc ego per partes in corpora multa recessi;

Nec remanent vires, sed formae gratia mansit.

Translation:

I am a great tooth, related to the people of the East;

Now I have receded into many bodies throughout the regions;

Strength does not remain, but the grace of the form abides.

Click to show riddle solution?

Ivory

Notes:

This edition is based on Raymond T. Ohl, ed. The Enigmas of Symphosius. PhD dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 1928.

If you're researching/studying this collection, you should also consult this excellent new edition: T. J. Leary, ed. Symphosius: The Aenigmata, An Introduction, Text and Commentary. London: Bloomsbury, 2014. Textual differences in that edition include:

line 1: cognatus > prognatus

Tags: riddles solutions latin symphosius

Commentary for Exeter Riddle 49

MEGANCAVELL

Date: Fri 12 Feb 2016

Matching Riddle: Exeter Riddle 49

What do we do with Riddle 49, eh? It’s, like, so complex. And I don’t mean that in a sarky way…it really is very difficult to solve.
Some of this difficulty stems from debates about what particular words mean. The main one is gop in line 3a, which most editors and translators reckon might mean a servant or slave of some kind. It’s not clear whether the term is related to Old English geap (crafty) or geopan (to take in/swallow), or perhaps to Old Icelandic hergopa (bondwoman) (see DOE and Bosworth/Toller). Andrew Breeze has suggested that the word derives from Old Irish gop (snout), which has a fairly pejorative sense to it. Since Old English riddles are often quite nasty to slaves and those perceived as lower class, this sense still seems like the best we can do.
There are other phrases in Riddle 49 that’ve been foiling riddlers for many a year because we can’t pin down which particular words they’re using. The key one is gifrum lacum in line 3b, where the first term could be gifre (useful) or gifre with a long “i” (greedy), and the second could be lac (gift) or lacu (stream/pool). This half-line could be read as “with useful gifts” or “with useful streams/pools” or “with greedy gifts” or “with greedy streams/pools.” TOO MANY OPTIONS! Many of Riddle 49’s proposed solutions hinge on how we read this phrase.
But what are the proposed solutions?, I hear you asking.
And so, I list:

Oven
Beehive
Falcon cage
(Book)case
Pen and ink
Barrow
Sacrificial altar
Millpond and sluice

I’m not going to address “falcon cage,” “barrow” or “sacrificial altar” because these were suggested without elaboration (the first in 1859 by Franz E. Dietrich, the second two in 1976 by Gregory K. Jember). Dietrich later suggested “bookcase” (page 236), which Laurence K. Shook expands upon when solving the riddle as “pen and ink” (pages 224-5) and Craig Williamson gives some credit to when discussing “book” as a possible solution (pages 289-90). Everyone who writes on this sort of solution notes Aldhelm’s Enigma 89, De arca libraria (On a book-chest):
Nunc mea diuinis complentur uiscera uerbis

Totaque sacratos gestant praecordia biblos;

At tamen ex isdem nequeo cognoscere quicquam:

Infelix fato fraudabor munere tali,

Dum tollunt dirae librorum lumina Parcae.

(Glorie, vol. 133, pages 508-9)
(Now my insides are filled up with divine words and all my insides bear sacred volumes; and yet I am unable to learn anything from those: unlucky, I shall be cheated of such tribute by destiny, while the cruel Fates steal the illuminations of books.)
 
There’s defo a similarity, and all of Riddle 49’s talk about silence and lack of voice would make a scriptorium solution pretty ironically appropriate. But as Williamson notes, whether a book or bookcase, it would be weird for such a repository of knowledge to be marked by references to servants, slaves and dirtiness. Knowledge and literacy are nothing to be sneered at in early medieval contexts.
Shook’s “pen and ink” solution stems from his reading of gifrum lacum as “useful pools,” gop as “craftsman” and the dirty-nosed servant as a pen at work (pages 224-5).


A reconstruction of an early modern reed pen. Photo from the University of Cambridge’s (no longer live) Scriptorium: Medieval and Early Modern Manuscripts Online project.

While this may get around some of the potential class issues (i.e. dirtiness), if the item in question is a pen swallowing ink then it doesn’t entirely make sense for it to be standing eardfæstne (earth-fast), as Williamson comments (page 290). All this makes the various scriptorium solutions a bit suspect.
Good thing there are millions of other solutions to consider…
Let’s move on to “oven” or OE ofen. This solution, proposed in 1905 by Moritz Trautmann (page 183), seems to be the most widely accepted option today. In fact, most scholars arguing for alternative solutions simply brush past “oven” with little comment. For example, A. N. Doane suggests that “oven” may be right, but it “does not bring the details into sharp focus as a proper solution usually does” (page 250). That seems to me sort of like saying “sure, it could be an oven, but I don’t want it to be.”


Here’s a bread oven under construction at Edcott, the Anglo-Saxon village project in Escot Park, Devon.

Maybe the scholars who’ve written on this riddle before just don’t love bread as much as I do. But let’s give this solution its proper credit. The thinking behind “oven” is that such an object would most certainly be earth-fast, involve darkness/dirtiness (i.e. smoke), and require the labour of servants. An oven also creates something dear to all (especially if covered with garlic…but that’s just my opinion). You may remember from Riddle 45’s commentary that the words hlaford (lord) and hlafdige (lady) are rooted in loafiness…that is the first stems from a term meaning “loaf-protector” and the second from “loaf-kneader.” However, these aren’t the words used here in Riddle 49’s description of noble folk desiring the riddle’s solution (lines 6-7a). Instead, we have æþeling (noble), cyning (king) and cwen (queen)…surely if this is an oven riddle than the riddler has missed a trick.
But there are other aspects to the riddle that seem to imply we’re dealing with something people might want to consume: there are repeated references to swallowing (lines 2b and 11b) and the object in question is depicted as having a mouth (line 6a). Certainly bread is a useful and necessary thing that brings joy, and its use in religious rituals makes it a good candidate for an object that’s golde dyrran (dearer than gold). So “oven” is a contender.
Another option proposed by A. N. Doane is “millpond and sluice” (i.e. water channel with gate). A decent case is made for water being universally needed (page 251), and for it working no matter how we translate gifrum lacum (greedy/useful gifts/streams/pools) (page 252). This solution also works nicely given all the references to swallowing and to its earth-fast-ed-ness. Class issues are similarly put to rest, since Doane imagines the operator of the gate to be a servant (page 253).
But what, oh what, do we do with þæt cyn in line 8a? There, the riddler refuses to name þæt cyn (race/kind), which is rendering for the use of people whatever is shoved into the object’s mouth. Some people translate this term as “kind of thing,” which I suppose works. But really cynn carries connotations of race or nation or generations of a family or species (see DOE). And this, I think, is part of what makes Jennifer Neville’s alternative solution “beehive” so strong.


Here’s a much later bee skep from the Historical Society of Montgomery County. But you get the picture…

Now, Jennifer hasn’t published this solution yet (it’s going to appear in her book on riddles), so I can’t give you many details. But, she did give a brilliant conference paper on this topic at the International Medieval Congress in Leeds in 2015. While you’re waiting to read more about this solution when it comes to print, I’ll leave you with one final question: what’s dearer than gold, precious to royalty, and has every early medieval person in the poetic record a’hankering to swallow it? HONEY? MEAD? BOTH ARE DELICIOUS! Nuff said.

Notes:

References and Suggested Reading:

Bosworth, Joseph, and T. Northcote Toller. An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1898; Digital edition. Prague: Faculty of Arts, Charles University, 2010.

Breeze, Andrew. “Old English Gop ‘Servant’ in Riddle 49: Old Irish Gop ‘Snout’.” Neophilologus, vol. 79 (1995), pages 671-3.

Dietrich, Franz E. “Die Räthsel des Exeterbuchs: Verfasser, weitere Lösungen.” Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und deutsche Literatur, vol. 12 (1865), pages 232-52.

Dietrich, Franz E. “Die Räthsel des Exeterbuchs: Würdigung, Lösung und Herstellung.” Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und deutsche Literatur, vol. 11 (1859), pages 448-90.

Doane, A. N. “Three Old English Implement Riddles: Reconsiderations of Numbers 4, 49, and 73.” Modern Philology, vol. 84, issue 3 (Feb. 1987), pages 243-57.

Dictionary of Old English: A-G Online. Ed. by Antonette diPaolo Healey, Dorothy Haines, Joan Holland, David McDougall, and Ian McDougall, with Pauline Thompson and Nancy Speirs. Web interface by Peter Mielke and Xin Xiang. Toronto: Dictionary of Old English Project, 2007.

Glorie, F., ed. Variae Collectiones Aenigmatum Merovingicae Aetatis. Corpus Christianorum Series Latina, vol. 133-133A. Turnhout: Brepols, 1968.

Jember, Gregory K., trans. The Old English Riddles: A New Translation. Denver: Society for New Language Study, 1976.

Shook, Laurence K. “Riddles Relating to the Anglo-Saxon Scriptorium.” In Essays in Honour of Anton Charles Pegis. Edited by J. Reginald O’Donnell. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1974, pages 215-36.

Trautmann, Moritz. “Alte und newe Antworten auf altenglische Rätsel.” Bonner Beiträge zur Anglistik, vol. 19 (1905), pages 167-215.

Williamson, Craig, ed. The Old English Riddles of The Exeter Book. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1977.

Tags: anglo saxon exeter book riddles old english solutions riddle 49

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Exeter Riddle 50

MEGANCAVELL

Date: Fri 19 Feb 2016

Matching Commentaries: Commentary for Exeter Riddle 50

Original text:

Wiga is on eorþan      wundrum acenned

dryhtum to nytte,      of dumbum twam

torht atyhted,      þone on teon wigeð

feond his feonde.      Forstrangne oft

5     wif hine wrið;      he him wel hereð,

þeowaþ him geþwære,      gif him þegniað

mægeð ond mæcgas      mid gemete ryhte,

fedað hine fægre;      he him fremum stepeð

life on lissum.      Leanað grimme

10     þam þe hine wloncne      weorþan læteð.

Translation:

A warrior is wondrously brought forth on earth

for the profit of people, a bright thing produced

from two speechless ones, which one marshals in anger

foe against his foe. A woman often binds him,

5     the very strong one; he obeys them well,

peaceably serves them, if women and men

minister to him in a fitting manner,

feed him fairly; he furnishes them with benefits,

with the delights of life. Grimly he repays

10     those who let him become proud.

Click to show riddle solution?

Fire, Anger, Dog

Notes:

This riddle appears on folio 113r 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 206.

Note that this edition numbers the text Riddle 48: Craig Williamson, ed., The Old English Riddles of the Exeter Book (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1977), page 98.

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Eusebius Riddle 50: De saura lacerto

ALEXANDRAREIDER

Date: Mon 27 Dec 2021

Original text:

Porro, senectutis fugiens discrimina ferre,

Lumina fuscantur mihi, sicque foramina tecti

Illa parte domus quae solis spectat in ortum

Intro, ac Titanis radiis inluminor ipsis.

Translation:

Furthermore, fleeing tolerance of old age’s ravages, 

My eyes are deprived of light, and thus into openings in the roof

On that side of the house which looks toward the sunrise

I enter, and I am illuminated by the rays of Titan themselves.

Click to show riddle solution?

On the lizard

Tags: riddles latin Eusebius

Aldhelm Riddle 50: Myrifyllon

ALEXANDRAREIDER

Date: Tue 15 Mar 2022

Original text:

Prorsus Achivorum lingua pariterque Latina

Mille vocor viridi folium de cespite natum.

Idcirco decies centenum nomen habebo,

Cauliculis florens quoniam sic nulla frutescit

Herba per innumeros telluris limite sulcos.

Translation:

In the language of the Greeks and likewise in Latin 

I am straightforwardly called “thousand-leaf,” born from the green field. 

For this reason I shall have my hundred-fold name ten times,

Since, blooming on its stalk, no plant shoots up on a path thus

Among the innumerable furrows of the earth.

Click to show riddle solution?

Milfoil

Notes:

This edition is based on Rudolf Ehwald, ed. Aldhelmi Opera Omnia. Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctores Antiquissimi, 15. Berlin: Weidmann, 1919, pages 59-150. Available online here.

Tags: riddles latin Aldhelm

Symphosius Riddle 50: Fenum

ALEXANDRAREIDER

Date: Fri 01 Jul 2022

Original text:

Herba fui quondam viridi de gramine terrae;

Sed chalybis duro mollis praecisa metallo

Mole premor propria, tecto conclusa sub alto.

Translation:

I was once grass, from the herb of the green earth;

But, tender when I was cut short by the steel’s hard metal,

I am pressed down by my own mass, enclosed under a high roof.

Click to show riddle solution?

Hay

Notes:

This edition is based on Raymond T. Ohl, ed. The Enigmas of Symphosius. PhD dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 1928.

If you're researching/studying this collection, you should also consult this excellent new edition: T. J. Leary, ed. Symphosius: The Aenigmata, An Introduction, Text and Commentary. London: Bloomsbury, 2014. Textual differences in that edition include:

Title: Fenum > faenum

Tags: riddles solutions latin symphosius

Commentary for Exeter Riddle 50

MEGANCAVELL

Date: Thu 10 Mar 2016

Matching Riddle: Exeter Riddle 50

When I was little, bonfires were all the rage. My siblings and I used to run around our backyard gathering up heaps of fallen twigs and then we’d BURN THEM ALL! I am not an arsonist. Proper permits were observed. But there was still something exciting about huddling around a warm outdoor fire on a chilly Canadian evening and slowly feeding the flames until they ate everything up. That’s why Riddle 50 is one of my favourites (I know…I say this about every riddle).

A massive bonfire! Photo (by Fir0002) from the Wikimedia Commons (license: CC BY-SA 3.0).
 
So, obviously, “fire” is the solution I’m going for, and it’s the one that most scholars accept. I’ll give a brief nod to an alternative that was suggested in the early days of riddle scholarship: dog. The problem with the “dog” reading is that dogs aren’t typically torht (“bright”…as in light, not intelligence), and they’re no more wundrum acenned (wondrously brought forth/born) than humans or other animals (Williamson, page 292). Because of this, “dog” has fallen out of fashion and most people go with “fire.”
Why is “fire” a good solution? All sorts of reasons. First of all, we have the clue that the solution is something that’s bright and potentially violent, and also a treasure for people (smithy connotations here?). Think of life in a dark, wooden hut in rainy ol’ England with no heating and that treasure part will make perfect sense. In fact, I’m now having flashbacks to my days of student accommodation (turn on the heat, you sadists!).
Anywho, the fire in this riddle is also the result of a miraculous birth from dumbum twam (two speechless ones). The speechlessness implies inanimate (or at least non-human) parents, which most scholars read as flint and metal. As for that miraculous birth, well Riddle 50 isn’t the only early medieval riddle to associate this sort of thing with fire. There are a whole slew of Latin riddles by Aldhelm and Tatwine (as well as in an anonymous collection from the continent) that deal with fire or sparks in this way. I won’t include them all here, but in case you want to follow up, here’s a list:

Aldhelm: Enigmata 44, De Igne (On fire) and 93, De scintilla (On a spark)
Tatwine: Enigma 31, De scintilla (On a spark)
Bern collection: Enigma 23, De scintilla (On a spark)

These riddles also all deal with the immense power of a small thing that grows up quickly, which kind of goes with the Old English riddle’s reference to feeding and to the fire as a wiga (warrior).

Here’s some more fire. Photo (by Awesomoman) from the Wikimedia Commons.
 
There’s also another riddle by Tatwine, which focuses on the varying gifts fire can give. Enigma 33, De Igne (On fire) reads:
Testatur simplex triplicem natura figuram

Esse meam, haut mortales qua sine uiuere possunt;

Multiplici quibus en bona munere grata ministro,

Tristia non numquam; tamen haut sum exorsus ab illis.

(Glorie, vol. 133, page 200)
(My single nature gives evidence of my existing triple form, without which mortals can by no means live; I supply to them pleasing profits through variable tribute, sometimes sorrowful ones too; but I am not derived from them.)
 
I can think of a number of sorrowful gifts that fire can give, but let’s focus on the pleasant ones, since Riddle 50 talks about this too. The most obvious gift is cooking (yum! I love food!), which Riddle 50’s description of a woman binding fire seems to referring to. The Old English verb form is wrið, which has been read in a number of ways. It’s usually assumed that this form comes from the verb wriðan (to bind, tie, wrap around), but it could also be a form of wreon (to cover) (Williamson, page 292). Both of these interpretations work just fine: a fire is covered by cooking pots, but it’s also imprisoned or bound by any good cook who wants to ensure she (in the highly gendered early medieval world) doesn’t burn the village down.
I like the idea of a woman binding a warrior, since this would be massively subversive in an early medieval context. This is precisely the sort of topsy-turvy hierarchical play that Jennifer Neville talks about when she reads this riddle as a safely contained discussion of the dangers of a ruling class becoming too proud (see the riddle’s final line). She says, “Just as a fire raging out of control can destroy all in its path, so a warrior-class can destroy society if it is not restrained by the prosaic requirements of daily life and obligations to those whom they rule” (page 519). Neville is, of course, careful to note that this riddle is not a call to arms for the labourer class, since the poem accepts its hierarchies without question. But it’s still the role of riddles to subvert power relationships in all sorts of ways.
These power relationships are emphasized in the second half of the riddle when we have all those references to obeying and ministering to and feeding the flames. The feeding imagery also links this riddle to the one that comes before it (Salvador-Bello, page 365). Remember all that swallowing and servitude in Riddle 49? And, of course, both Riddles 48 and 49 depict speechless creatures, so these riddles do seem to be a thematic bundle (Salvador-Bello, page 365).
Speaking of bundles, the last shout out I want to give is to the suggestion that this riddle could be solved with a double solution. Marie Nelson reads the poem on two levels, arguing that it’s about both fire and anger. According to Nelson, “Anger is good if it helps you stay alive, but, uncontrolled, anger becomes a destroyer” (page 448). I quite like this association, especially since so much of early English psychology is focused on the idea that powerful emotions swell up and boil over inside your body. Ever feel all hot and bothered when someone insults you? Well, the mental and bodily worlds haven’t always been considered as separately as they often are today, and the physical heat of anger was once linked to a hydraulic model of the mind (which, coincidentally, was thought to be located in the chest). If you’re interested in this idea, then I can’t recommend highly enough Leslie Lockett’s phenomenal Anglo-Saxon Psychologies in the Vernacular and Latin Traditions. It’s terribly clever. Go read it now.
But, anyway, the link between fire and anger is clearly there in early English psychology, and it may well be this link that the poet’s gesturing toward with that final reference to fire grimly repaying those who let it become proud. A kind of disturbing image to end on…so, here, have some Pixar-related comic relief:

Notes:

References and Suggested Reading:

Glorie, F., ed. Variae Collectiones Aenigmatum Merovingicae Aetatis. Corpus Christianorum Series Latina, vol. 133-133A. Turnhout: Brepols, 1968.

Lockett, Leslie. Anglo-Saxon Psychologies in the Vernacular and Latin Traditions. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011.

Nelson, Marie. “Four Social Functions of the Exeter Book Riddles.” Neophilologus, vol. 75 (1991), pages 445-50.

Neville, Jennifer. “The Unexpected Treasure of the ‘Implement Trope’: Hierarchical Relationships in the Old English Riddles.” Review of English Studies, vol. 62, issue 256 (2011), pages 505-19.

Salvador-Bello, Mercedes. Isidorean Perceptions of Order: the Exeter Book Riddles and Medieval Latin Enigmata. Morgantown: West Virginia University Press, 2015, esp. pages 359-60.

Williamson, Craig, ed. The Old English Riddles of The Exeter Book. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1977.

Tags: anglo saxon exeter book riddles old english solutions riddle 50

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Exeter Riddle 51

MEGANCAVELL

Date: Thu 31 Mar 2016

Matching Commentaries: Commentary for Exeter Riddle 51

Riddle 51’s translation is once again by Britt Mize (who translated and provided commentary for Riddle 33). Britt is Associate Professor and Interim Associate Head of English at Texas A&M University where he works on Old and Middle English language and literature, with special interests in linguistics, poetics and drama.

Original text:

Ic seah wrætlice      wuhte feower

samed siþian;     swearte wæran lastas,

swaþu swiþe blacu.      Swift wæs on fore,

fuglum framra      fleag on lyfte;

5     deaf under yþe.     Dreag unstille

winnende wiga,      se him wegas tæcneþ

ofer fæted gold      feower eallum.

Translation:

I saw four wondrous creatures

travel together. Dark were the tracks,

very black the footprints. It was swift in its going:

faster than birds it flew through the sky;

5     it dove under wave. Vigorously he labored,

that striving warrior who showed it—all four—

the paths across ornamental gold.

Click to show riddle solution?

Pen and fingers

Notes:

This riddle appears on folios 113r-113v 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 206.

Note that this edition numbers the text Riddle 49: Craig Williamson, ed., The Old English Riddles of the Exeter Book (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1977), page 99.

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Eusebius Riddle 51: De scorpione

ALEXANDRAREIDER

Date: Mon 27 Dec 2021

Original text:

Vermibus ascriptus nec non serpentibus atris,

Quislibet utrorum sociatus, ab ore solesco

Armari bino; quod vulnere corpore caudae

Inficiens, virum diffundo. (1) Hinc Grece vocabor,

Et, reliquos mordens artus, non vulnero palmas.

Translation:

Ascribed the status of worms and also of deadly serpents,

Allied with either of them, I am typically armed

With a second mouth; because, poisoning the body with a wound

From my tail, I pour out into the man. From this I get my name in Greek,

And, biting other limbs, I do not wound the palms.

Click to show riddle solution?

On the scorpion

Notes:

(1) Other editions read virus (poison), but virum (man) is the reading in both manuscripts and makes a kind of sense.

Tags: riddles latin Eusebius

Aldhelm Riddle 51: Eliotropus

ALEXANDRAREIDER

Date: Tue 15 Mar 2022

Original text:

Sponte mea nascor fecundo cespite vernans;

Fulgida de croceo flavescunt culmina flore.

Occiduo claudor, sic orto sole patesco:

Unde prudentes posuerunt nomina Graeci.

Translation:

I am born in a fertile field, flourishing of my own accord;

The shining peaks grow yellow with golden blossom.

When the sun is in the west I am closed, and by the same token I open at sunrise:

Whence the wise Greeks set my name.

Click to show riddle solution?

Heliotrope

Notes:

This edition is based on Rudolf Ehwald, ed. Aldhelmi Opera Omnia. Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctores Antiquissimi, 15. Berlin: Weidmann, 1919, pages 59-150. Available online here.

Tags: riddles latin Aldhelm

Symphosius Riddle 51: Mola

ALEXANDRAREIDER

Date: Fri 09 Sep 2022

Original text:

Ambo sumus lapides, una sumus, ambo iacemus.

Quam piger est unus, tantum non est piger alter:

Hic manet inmotus, non desinit ille moveri.

Translation:

We are both rocks, we are one, we both lie together.

One is as lazy as the other is not lazy:

This one stays unmoving, that one does not stop being moved.

Click to show riddle solution?

Millstone

Notes:

This edition is based on Raymond T. Ohl, ed. The Enigmas of Symphosius. PhD dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 1928.

Tags: riddles solutions latin symphosius

Commentary for Exeter Riddle 51

MEGANCAVELL

Date: Thu 05 Jan 2017

Matching Riddle: Exeter Riddle 51

This post is once again by Britt Mize from Texas A&M University. Take it away, Britt!
 
Riddles, as a type of wisdom poetry, ask us to learn something by viewing ordinary things in extraordinary ways. When I teach about the Exeter Book riddles, sometimes I turn a chair upside-down on the floor. Then I ask the students to write one sentence describing its “chair-ness” in some way that is made possible only by looking at it from an unusual point of view.
Like this classroom exercise, Old English riddles are a game of perspective manipulation, and this manipulation of viewpoint is often a source of their obscurity. Readers must reverse-engineer the text, using the details that are provided and trying different ways of fitting them together, until they finally catch sight of what the writer has described in a defamiliarizing manner.
Riddle 51 is usually a stumper for people now when they first encounter it. This may have something to do with changes in writing technology (I am typing this on a laptop, not handwriting it with a pen, and even if I were, I wouldn’t be dipping mine in an inkwell). But I think it is mainly because this riddle’s manipulation of perspective involves the additional trick of violating scale. We’ve all seen the photographers’ gimmick of zooming in on something normal, and further and further in, until it becomes bizarre and unrecognizable. This riddle starts out “zoomed in” in exactly that way, and in order to solve it, we must “zoom out” with our mind’s eye and realize that the thing described is connected to the rest of a human body.
After my students make a few guesses, I ask them—the dwindling number of them who are taking notes on paper!—to look down at what they’re doing themselves, right at that very moment. At that point, someone always blurts out the solution: a pen and the three fingers guiding it. The creator of this riddle gives us an extreme close-up of a hand moving a quill tip across the writing surface, and back and forth from inkwell to page, as a scribe (the winnende wiga, “striving warrior”) writes out the text of what is probably imagined to be an expensively decorated or bound gospel manuscript, because such adornments would be most typically given to that kind of book.

Photo (by Urban) of some rather creepy, quill-wielding monk mannequins in the Museum of Bayeux from Wikimedia Commons (license CC BY-SA 3.0)

There are two metaphors I’d like to focus on in this riddle.
The more minor one is the “striving warrior” description near the end. This phrase usually provokes a few chuckles in a classroom setting because it seems overblown, if not self-aggrandizing, when used by a monkish writer to describe a person like himself. Similar remarks could be made about many language choices in the Exeter Book riddles, and maybe people a thousand years ago thought it was funny too. But the representation of writing as a kind of combat might also tell us something about how difficult the activity of manual text-copying is, not only in its bodily labor (which does become grueling after as little as a couple of hours: try it and see), but also in the concentration and perseverance that must be maintained to carry out the task with accuracy. Or it may be that a monk writing a holy text could quite seriously see himself as engaged in spiritual warfare against the powers of darkness and not find the martial language high-falutin at all.
The other, more interesting metaphorical pattern in this riddle imagines the act of writing as a journey or expedition—the verb siþian means to go on one of these—by something that leaves tracks behind. The way the fingers and pen are spoken of here defamiliarizes the writer’s hand by making it seem zoological, and the repeated insistence that the object described is somehow both singular and fourfold will probably encourage a reader to think of some sort of quadruped. The animal associations are continued, and the solution further estranged from ordinary viewpoints on a person’s hand, by the comparison with birds, and then by the surprise in the next line that this/these “wondrous creatures” can move deftly in liquid as well as upon the earth and through the air.
I have always loved the image of dark ink on a pale page as tracks across the ground (lastas and swaþu are words for the prints or trail that a person or animal leaves behind). The nuances of this metaphor say something about reading, too, not just about writing: unless somebody comes along later who can understand and follow these traces, they mean nothing. The implication is that a reader, just like a hunter or tracker, must carefully observe and interpret the signs he or she finds, endeavoring to stay with them, going where they lead in pursuit of a goal.

Photo (by David Castor) of rabbit tracks from Wikimedia Commons
The poet of Riddle 51 and I are not the only ones who have enjoyed contemplating this image, either. At least one 9th-century English prose writer liked it too, because the same metaphor lies behind a famous statement found in the preface to the Old English Pastoral Care. The preface is attributed to King Alfred of Wessex (r. 871–899), and here he, or whoever wrote on his behalf, contemplates the monastic libraries in his kingdom, full of Latin books that he says no one can read anymore. The writer grieves the present, illiterate generation’s terrible loss of earlier generations’ learning and intellectual labor:
Ure ieldran . . . lufodon wisdom, ond ðurh ðone hie begeaton welan ond us læfdon. Her mon mæg giet gesion hiora swæð, ac we him ne cunnon æfterspyrigean. Ond forðæm we habbað nu ægðer forlæten ge ðone welan ge ðone wisdom, forðæmðe we noldon to ðæm spore mid ure mode onlutan. (Sweet, vol. 1, page 5)
(Our predecessors . . . loved wisdom, and through it they gained prosperity and left it to us. One can still see their track here, but we do not know how to follow after them. And for that reason we have now lost both the prosperity and the wisdom: because we would not bend down to the track with our mind.)

King Alfred’s West Saxon Version of Gregory the Great’s Pastoral Care in MS Hatton 20 (fol. 001r) from the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford 
A modern poet, the Welsh priest R. S. Thomas (1913–2000), also returned more than once to the image of writing on a page as a track or path that something left behind its movement. In his 1961 poem “The Maker,” Thomas describes a poet preparing to create. After taking “blank paper,” the poet
drilled his thoughts to the slow beat

Of the blood’s drum; and there it formed

On the white surface and went marching

Onward through time, while the spent cities

And dry hearts smoked in its wake.

(Thomas, page 42)
The path here is one of military destruction, and it’s all too legible. In a later poem, “The Word” (1975), Thomas comes back again to the metaphor of writing as a track, this time in a way somewhat more similar to Riddle 51:
A pen appeared, and the god said:

“Write what it is to be

man.” And my hand hovered

long over the bare page,
until there, like footprints

of the lost traveller, letters

took shape on the page’s

blankness, and I spelled out
the word “lonely.” And my hand moved

to erase it; but the voices

of all those waiting at life’s

window cried out loud: “It is true.”

(Thomas, page 86)
R. S. Thomas’s “footprints of the lost traveller” resonate sympathetically with the disorientation lamented by the writer of the Pastoral Care preface. But there is still an important difference, and it’s one of perspective, which brings us back to the game that the riddles so often play.
For writers in the Old English tradition, the message of a text doesn’t just sit, as “content,” inside the block of writing that is present before the reader like a container, the way we tend to think of it. Instead, the message moves along the writing, or out in front of it (imagine a cursor on a computer screen that keeps going steadily forward), such that the inattentive or uncommitted reader is in danger of being left behind. This has to do with the fact that a thousand years ago writing was normally read aloud to listeners: receiving a text’s meaning was usually a time-bound, unidirectional event, like watching a movie is for us, that made it hard for audiences to go back and re-process the language as we can so easily do now when we privately read books or other textual media that we can freely manipulate. This condition of reception made for a different concept of “where” meaning is, in relation to its written manifestation, and what one must do to access it.
The important point here is that in an early English cultural context, writing suggests a message, a target of pursuit, that is always receding from the reader, a follower who must search for its signs and grasp at it. It must be actively kept up with.
This sense of distance and active pursuit is inherent in following an organic track along the ground. It can be seen, too, in language like that used in Beowulf, when Grendel’s severed arm, torn off at Heorot, is said to last weardian “guard his trail” (line 971b). The phrase simply indicates, in poetic language, that the limb is left behind when Grendel flees; but it does so by invoking the trail extending forward from the arm, a sort of dotted line connecting that dismembered body part with the target of pursuit, Grendel himself. Such a trail may be followed successfully, or may get lost in the faintness or unintelligibility of its signs. The realistic difficulty of tracking one’s prey or one’s fore-goer is captured well by the image, and we need to apply this sense to the metaphor of written language as a track, too.
In his poems cited above, R. S. Thomas always assumes of written tracks that observers can read them, if they wish. In “The Word,” they represent knowledge based on common experience, available to all and lost only if the many voices that affirm it are stifled; in “The Maker,” the written “wake” signals only a poem’s continuing ability to threaten its present readers like an army on a scorched-earth campaign. In both of Thomas’s poems the meaning, the “where” of the message, moves toward readers who may or may not wish to know it.
In contrast, the written traces that interested Old English writers are signs left behind by a message, by wisdom, that elusively moves away from readers and must be followed with great effort. The writer of the Pastoral Care’s preface worries that the trail is cold, that the learned predecessors are too far out of range to follow anymore.
It seems likely to me that the same implicit danger underlies Riddle 51’s controlling metaphor. The holy book whose copying this little Old English poem describes is a materially precious object, adorned with gold leaf. But in order for its value to transcend its material splendor, it must be read—and reading isn’t easy, least of all in Latin in 9th- or 10th-century Britain. Does Riddle 51’s (mock-)heroic tone, its sense of the monk-copyist’s triumphant skill, constitute a challenge to its readers or hearers not to let the wisdom of books get away? That challenging posture would certainly be appropriate to the genre of the riddle. So would a hint that the wisdom of books, like the solutions to riddles, must be sought with diligence, alertness to all possibilities, and readiness to see things from a new, unfamiliar perspective.

Notes:

References:

Fulk, R. D., Robert E. Bjork, and John D. Niles, eds. Klaeber’s Beowulf and The Fight at Finnsburh. 4th edition. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008.

Sweet, Henry, ed. King Alfred’s West-Saxon Version of Gregory’s Pastoral Care. 2 vols, Early English Text Society, old series 45 and 50. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1871; reprint, Millwood, NY: Kraus, 1978.

Thomas, R. S. The Poems of R. S. Thomas. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1985.

Tags: anglo saxon exeter book riddles old english solutions riddle 51 britt mize

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Exeter Riddle 52

MEGANCAVELL

Date: Thu 19 May 2016

Matching Commentaries: Commentary for Exeter Riddle 52

Riddle 52’s translation is by Lindy Brady, formerly of the University of Mississippi (when she wrote this post), now from University College Dublin. Lindy works on all manner of medieval languages (Old and Middle English, medieval Irish and Welsh, Old Norse, Anglo-Latin!), and is especially interested multilingualism, landscape and identity.

Original text:

Ic seah ræpingas      in ræced fergan

under hrof sales      hearde twegen,

þa wæron genumne,(1)       nearwum bendum

gefeterade      fæste togædre;

5     þara oþrum wæs      an getenge

wonfah Wale,      seo weold hyra

bega siþe      bendum fæstra.

Translation:

I saw captives brought into the house

under the roof of the hall – a hard pair –

who were seized, fettered fast together

by narrow bonds.

5     Near to one was

a dark-coloured Welsh woman, she controlled them

both on their journey, fixed by bonds.

Click to show riddle solution?

Buckets, Broom, Flail, Yoked oxen

Notes:

This riddle appears on folio 113v 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 207.

Note that this edition numbers the text Riddle 50: Craig Williamson, ed., The Old English Riddles of the Exeter Book (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1977), page 99.

Textual Note:

(1) This emendation is from Williamson, pages 99 and 296. Note that the manuscript reads genamnan, which Krapp and Dobbie's edition emends to genamne.

Tags: anglo saxon exeter book riddles old english solutions riddle 52

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Eusebius Riddle 52: De cymera

ALEXANDRAREIDER

Date: Mon 27 Dec 2021

Original text:

Porro, triforme ferum vel monstrum fingor inorme.

Setiger aptavit leo rictibus ora nefandis;

Postremas partes draco diras indidit atrox;

Cetera formae membra dedit fera caprea velox,

Cum filologi me dicunt considere montem

Nunc Cilicum, capreasque leones atque chelidros

Gignentem. Studio virtuteque Bellerofontis

Sic velut occisus dicor, cum nunc habitari

Illius ingenio possum fortique labore.

Translation:

Next, I am represented as a tri-form or an enormous monster. 

A hairy lion fitted out my face with wicked jaws;

A fierce dragon equipped me with my fearful posterior parts;

A swift wild doe gave the other parts of my figure,

Though scholars now say that I am considered a Cilician

Mountain, begetting goats and lions

And snakes. By the zeal and bravery of Bellerephon

I am thus said to have been slain, so to speak, for now I can be

Inhabited through his skill and great labour.

Click to show riddle solution?

On the chimera

Tags: riddles latin Eusebius

Aldhelm Riddle 52: Candela

ALEXANDRAREIDER

Date: Tue 15 Mar 2022

Original text:

Materia duplici palmis plasmabar apertis.

Interiora mihi candescunt: viscera lino

Seu certe gracili iunco spoliata nitescunt;

Sed nunc exterius flavescunt corpora flore,

Quae flammasque focosque laremque vomentia fundunt,

Et crebro lacrimae stillant de frontibus udae.

Sic tamen horrendas noctis repello latebras;

Reliquias cinerum mox viscera tosta relinquunt.

Translation:

I was molded from two-fold material by open hands.

My interior gleams: my innards, stripped

From flax or indeed the slender rush, shine;

But now my body shines golden, like a flower, on the outside,

Which—giving off fire and flames and light—melts down,

And wet teardrops drip frequently from my brow.

Nevertheless, thus do I repel night’s horrible refuges;

My toasted innards soon leave the remains of ash.

Click to show riddle solution?

Candle

Notes:

This edition is based on Rudolf Ehwald, ed. Aldhelmi Opera Omnia. Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctores Antiquissimi, 15. Berlin: Weidmann, 1919, pages 59-150. Available online here.

Tags: riddles latin Aldhelm