Riddle Ages

Aldhelm Riddle 89: Arca libraria

ALEXANDRAREIDER

Date: Thu 14 Apr 2022

Original text:

Nunc mea divinis complentur viscera verbis

Totaque sacratos gestant praecordia biblos;

At tamen ex isdem nequeo cognoscere quicquam:

Infelix fato fraudabor munere tali,

Dum tollunt dirae librorum lumina Parcae.

Translation:

Now my entrails are filled with divine words 

And all my organs carry sacred books;

And yet from them I cannot learn anything:

Unhappy, I am deprived by fate of such a gift,

Because the dreadful Parcae remove the books’ illumination.

Click to show riddle solution?

Library Chest

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 89: Balneum

ALEXANDRAREIDER

Date: Sat 10 Sep 2022

Original text:

Per totas aedes innoxius introit ignis;

Est calor in medio magnus quem nemo veretur.

Non est nuda domus, sed nudus convenit hospes.

Translation:

Through the whole house a harmless fire enters;

There is a great heat in the middle which no one fears.

The house is not bare, but a nude guest is appropriate.

Click to show riddle solution?

Bath-house

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 89

MEGANCAVELL

Date: Wed 24 Feb 2021

Matching Riddle: Exeter Riddle 89

This is easily the trickiest riddle I’ve had to write a commentary for! How do I analyse and solve such a fragmentary little, burned up scrap? So scrappy is this riddle that many of the early editors of the Exeter Book didn’t bother to include it, let alone solve it. 

But I suppose I can start by telling you that those folks who did grapple with Riddle 89 went in for the solutions: Bellows and Leather Bottle. Frederick Tupper, Jr. is responsible for proposing these, basing his tentative suggestions on the words wombe (belly) and leþre (leather) in lines 2-3 (page 229). Bellies come up in A LOT other riddles. In fact, apart from describing the birdy’s colourful belly in The Phoenix (line 307a), the word womb really only appears in poetic riddles and an assortment of prose texts. No. Other. Poetry. Interesting! 



Photo (by Daderot) of water-powered bellows in a reconstructed forge, Saugus Iron Works, Massachusetts, from Wikimedia Commons (licence: CC BY-SA 3.0).

The most intriguing and relevant references to bellies in other riddles appear in Riddles 37 and 87 (lines 1b and 1b), which have both been solved as Bellows, and Riddle 18 (line 3), which has been solved as Jug, Leather Bottle, etc. Nip over and read those now because Riddle 37 especially has a lot to offer us here, with its reference to a wiht (creature) that has a womb (belly) on hindan (in the back/behind; line 1), much like the one in Riddle 89. Bellows is looking like a solid bet. 



Here’s a leather water bottle used during the Crimean War, from
Wikimedia Commons (public domain).

The Leather Bottle solution draws on that reference to leþre (leather) in line 3. This word is wonderfully concrete and specific for a riddle full of holes! Except…sigh…Craig Williamson casts doubt on whether we should be translating leþre as “leather” at all. He notes that this word might actually be a form of ly‏þre, which means “evil” or “wicked” (page 383). So that just leaves us with a lot more questions. 

But let’s focus on the words that we can translate with certainty. We know that we have a wiht (creature; line 1b) of some sort – this refers to the riddle-subject and could be pretty much anything. This creature has a wombe/belly (line 2a) – so, perhaps a place to store something, literally or metaphorically. Something is located or happening on hindan (at the back of/behind; line 4b) the creature. That’s the opening riddle gambit. 

Then we get into the closest this riddle comes to action! Someone – either the creature or another character in this confusing little vignette – grette (line 5a), which is translated here as “approached,” but could also mean “visited,” “touched,” “attacked,” “greeted,” “welcomed,” etc. etc. Line 6b tells us that someone (again, the creature? someone else?) listum worhte/artfully made something. And then in the final three lines we have receiving (þygan) and thanking (þoncade) and food (swæsendum).

From this scanty textual evidence, we can – just about – piece together a reading of the riddle that focuses on a skillfully-made object, which a person handles and fills with something life-sustaining (liquid into a bottle, air into bellows?). So, yeah, I can see how the two tentative solutions come together here. 



Photo (by Wolfgang Sauber) of a 1st-century forge bellows in an archeological museum in Aquileia, from Wikimedia Commons (licence: CC BY-SA 3.0).

Gregory K. Jember, who likes to solve riddles as “Phallus” willy-nilly (harhar, but seriously, he proposes this solution to no fewer than 23 riddles!), also suggests that sexuality is the main motif of Riddle 89 (page 56). It’s true that those other bellies I mentioned above tend to appear in sexual contexts, which is certainly the case of Riddles 37 and 87. In fact, Riddle 37 is pretty obviously fixated on reproduction when it mentions the bellows making sons and fathering himself. It’s a shame to think that we may well have had another hilariously rude riddle to play with if the Exeter Book hadn’t been so badly damaged by the infamous hot poker (not a euphemism).

Okay, so we’ve covered textual evidence, possible solutions and a bit of hanky-panky. What more could you want from a riddle commentary? Well, you might not have known that you want this, but I give you Miller Wolf Oberman’s musings on how he translates fragmentary poems into modern English: “While many translators attempt to smooth over missing language, I am fascinated by the ways in which Old English poetry allows me to walk through its bones, and part of my translation instinct is about paying respect to gaps in these poetic remains, rather than attempting to force a seeming wholeness onto them” (page 278). Oberman’s discussion of his poetic process is fascinating and beautifully expressed – as we might expect from a poet! – and I encourage you to read it as soon as you possibly can. He discusses Riddle 89 in some detail and provides a series of translations that show how he grappled with this riddle and turned it into something new.

I’d like to leave you with a final thought from Oberman: “In some sense, though, all riddles are fragmentary. They operate through withholding crucial and obvious information; they aim to cleverly trick, revealing themselves, and their ‘meaning’ through unusual description, through misdirection, through removal of the ordinary means of communication” (page 278). So, we can read Riddle 89, the fragmentary little scrap that it is, as simply a more difficult puzzle than the riddles that survive intact, with additional layers of obfuscation caused by the manuscript’s fire damage. How profound!

Notes:

References and Suggested Reading:

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

Oberman, Miller Wolf. “Dyre Cræft: New Translations of Exeter Riddle Fragments Modor Monigra (R.84), Se Wiht Wombe Hæfde (R.89), and Brunra Beot (R.92), Accompanied by Notes on Process.” In Riddles at Work in the Early Medieval Tradition: Words, Ideas, Interactions. Edited by Megan Cavell and Jennifer Neville. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2020, pages 277-87.

Tupper, Frederick Jr, ed. The Riddles of the Exeter Book. Boston: Ginn, 1910.

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

Tags: anglo saxon exeter book riddles old english solutions Riddle 89

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Exeter Riddle 90

MEGANCAVELL

Date: Fri 30 Oct 2020

Matching Commentaries: Commentary for Exeter Riddle 90

This is the famous Latin Riddle – the only non-Old English poem in the Exeter Book!

Original text:

Mirum videtur mihi –           lupus ab agno tenetur; 

obcu[..]it agnus *  *  *(1)           et capit viscera lupi. 

Dum starem et mirarem,           vidi gloriam magnam: 

duo lupi stantes           et tertium tribulantes – 

quattuor pedes habebant;           cum septem oculis videbant.

Translation:

It seems wondrous to me – a wolf is held by a lamb; 

the lamb lay down and grasps the wolf’s innards. 

While I stood and marveled, I saw a great wonder: 

two wolves standing and afflicting a third – 

they had four feet; they saw with seven eyes.

Click to show riddle solution?

Lamb of God, Web and Loom, Candelabra

Notes:

This riddle appears on folio 129v of The Exeter Book.

The above Latin text is based on this edition, where it is numbered Riddle 86: Craig Williamson, ed., The Old English Riddles of the Exeter Book (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1977), pages 117-18.

The Exeter Book, Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records 3 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1936), page 240.

Textual Note:

(1) Something seems to be missing here in terms of sense, but there is no damage to the manuscript at this point (only obcu[..]it is damaged by a burnt spot right above the word). Editors frequently sub in a suggested missing word – most commonly rupi (on a stone) because of the rhyme with lupi.

Tags: anglo saxon exeter book riddles solutions latin riddle 90

Aldhelm Riddle 90: Puerpera geminas enixa

ALEXANDRAREIDER

Date: Thu 14 Apr 2022

Original text:

Sunt mihi sex oculi, totidem simul auribus hausi,

Sed digitos decies senos in corpore gesto;

Ex quibus ecce quater denis de carne revulsis

Quinquies at tantum video remanere quaternos.

Translation:

I have six eyes, at the same time as I perceive sound with exactly that many ears,

But I carry sixty fingers and toes on my person;

And yet behold, with forty of them torn from my flesh,

I see that only twenty remain.

Click to show riddle solution?

Woman Birthing Twins

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 90: Tessera

ALEXANDRAREIDER

Date: Sat 10 Sep 2022

Original text:

Dedita sum semper voto, non certa futuri.

Iactor in ancipites varia vertigine casus

Nunc ego maesta malis, nunc rebus laeta secundis.

Translation:

I am always dedicated to a vow, not certain of the future.

I am thrown into the varied whirling of twofold chance.

Now I am sorrowful because of misfortune, now I am happy because of good fortune.

Click to show riddle solution?

A die

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 90

MEGANCAVELL

Date: Fri 30 Oct 2020

Matching Riddle: Exeter Riddle 90

The first thing to note about Riddle 90 is that it’s not in Old English! In fact, this little five-liner is the only entirely Latin poem to appear in the Exeter Book. There are bits of Latin elsewhere – a chunk of The Phoenix (lines 667-77) switches between Old English and Latin, and a cipher in Riddle 36 includes a Latin encryption (line 5) – but Riddle 90 is its own special beast.

There are, of course, hundreds of Latin riddles that were composed in and around England during the early medieval period. We have whole collections by high-ranking ecclesiasts Aldhelm, Tatwine, Eusebius, Boniface and several anonymous folks. Some of these collections (and their predecessor Symphosius, the late antique North African riddler extraordinaire) inspired Old English riddles from the Exeter Book.

Click through HERE for some very nice manuscript images of Aldhelm’s riddles on the British Library website!

 But why include a single Latin riddle among the otherwise entirely Old English collection? I don’t have an answer to that question because Riddle 90 has stumped scholars for centuries (sorry)! 

 Several early would-be solvers suggested that the riddle was pointing to a particular individual like the Old English poet Cynewulf or archbishop Wulfstan, while Patricia Davis and Mary Schlueter – arguing for the solution “Augustine and Tertullian” (both famous theologians) – maintain that an anagram solution made it impossible to translate this riddle out of Latin. 

Mercedes Salvador-Bello recently suggested that the compiler of the Exeter Book, in trying to assemble a collection of a hundred riddles (like Symphosius’ and Aldhelm’s collections), began to run out of material and started adding miscellaneous riddles to get to this number (page 108). There are often links between sequences of riddle earlier in the manuscript, but at the end it’s a free-for-all! 

In fact, Salvador-Bello argues that Riddle 90 isn’t a riddle at all. Instead, she suggests it’s a school exercise in Latin grammar, and that the composer is either a student or an amateur poet who makes a LOT of mistakes (page 121). Some of these Latin errors have been smoothed out in Williamson’s edition, so you’ll need to consult his book’s notes (pages 387-8) or Salvador-Bello’s article for a full reckoning of how truly terrible the Latin riddle is! 

So, if Riddle 90 isn’t a riddle, that goes a long way to explaining why no one has been able to solve it conclusively. Not that people haven’t tried…

One of the earliest convincing solutions – and I’m leaving out all the folks who translated lupus as a type of fish and came up with bizarre solutions based on that reading – is Henry Morley’s Agnus Dei (Lamb of God) (pages 224-5). The first few lines of Riddle 90, where a lamb tackles and holds down a wolf, work really well with a Christian theological interpretation like this. Christ is the Lamb of God and the wolf is the devil – a common metaphorical association in the Bible and biblically-inspired medieval writings. Leslie Whitbread develops this suggestion in 1946 by suggesting that the bizarre end to Riddle 90 involves the two criminals crucified with Christ. This isn’t entirely convincing and gets a bit silly when it comes to figuring out what the final line’s play-with-numbers means.



Photo (by Rob Roy) of the Sutton Hoo purse lid with its violent wolves on either side, via Wikimedia Commons
(licence: CC BY-SA 2.5


I actually quite like Whitbread’s follow-up note in 1949 that points to the wolves on the Sutton Hoo purse lid who are attacking a warrior. But there’s still no persuasive explanation of how the seven eyes come into play, as Whitbread imagines the composer of Riddle 90 had a particular material object in mind (unlikely!).

James E. Anderson’s overly complicated solution Candelabra does focus on the number seven in great detail. He suggests that the riddle is playing on the Lamb of God idea and the use of a seven-branched candelabrum in a mass about Christ’s harrowing of hell during Easter holy weekend. 



Photo of a late 10th/early 11th-century seven-branched candelabrum from Essen Minster, via 
Wikimedia Commons (public domain).

Light is frequently associated with eyes and vision in early medieval literature, so the seven candles could be evoked in that reference to seeing in the final line. Anderson also suggests that a spiked candelabrum without its candles could evoke a sharp-toothed wolf (page 84). Perhaps there was even a wolf engraved at the base of the four-footed candelabrum? Of course, we’d need to imagine the use of two of these candelabra both for liturgical purposes and because there are two wolves afflicting a third figure in Riddle 90. I’m not sure I’ve done Anderson’s interpretation justice because it’s really quite complicated. I don’t buy it, personally, but I’m a grumpy person and hard to convince at the best of times.

I do really want to believe Craig Williamson’s suggestion that the Latin riddle is a play on an Old English word (and so the Latin poem does belong in this Old English collection!) (page 385). Williamson argues that we should solve it as Web and Loom, assuming wordplay on the Old English wulflys – wul meaning “wool” and flys meaning “fleece.” This wool-fleece would be the web that’s in process upon the loom. He notes that “the riddler makes a game of construing the word as a wulf plus flys where the lamb (agnus) holds the wolf (lupus) and indeed seizes (capit) the belly or entrails (viscera) of the wolf and thus metaphorically commandeers its last letter. Thus the flys seizes f from the wulf” (page 385). I think this reading is ingeniously clever, but the final lines still don’t really add up. 


Drawing of a loom from Montelius’s Civilisation of Sweden in Heathen Times, p. 160, via Roth’s Ancient Egyptian and Greek Looms, p. 34.

We could read the riddle alongside Riddle 56’s violent loom because wolves definitely have a connection to battle and death (they’re always eating the dead in the gorier Old English poems, with their “Beasts of Battle” motif). It doesn’t seem like too much of a stretch – if you know a thing or two about looms – to read the two wolves in the final lines as the two sets of dangling-down warp threads taking hold of the third set of threads, the weft that is being woven (page 385-6). But the four feet and seven eyes work less well. Most warp-weighted looms have two feet and are propped against a wall because this makes them easy to disassemble and put away. I suppose we could imagine a more permanent, four-footed loom. So, fine, the four feet aren’t a problem.


Photo of early medieval loom weights from Bedford Museum, via Wikimedia Commons (public domain).

Williamson’s suggestion that the seven eyes are the round loom-weights at the bottom makes little sense, though, since these weights should appear in an even number. He concludes that maybe “the riddler meant to refer to seven pairs of eyes, fourteen rings together, seven on each side in a row” (page 386). Sure, maybe. Or maybe this isn’t a riddle at all, and we’ve been making it work waaaaaaaay too hard for too long.

What is clear from Riddle 90 is that we have a similar interest in witnessing a wonder as we do in other Exeter Book riddles. We also have some sort of number puzzle, even if no one can work it out! We’ve got all sorts of wolves running rampant, but that’s to be expected from early medieval poetry, which likes to use these animals as a metaphor for the devil, sinners and all manner of unpleasant individuals. And we have a really striking image of power dynamics reversed, in the lamb taking hold of the wolf, which seems to have religious connotations. Whether we try to push these images, puzzles and clues to find a solution or whether we accept that this little poem is just an exercise in Latin grammar that has got out of hand…well, ultimately that’s up to you!

Notes:

References and Suggested Reading:

Anderson, James E. “Exeter Latin Riddle 90: A Liturgical Vision.” Viator, vol. 23 (1992), pages 73-93.

Davis, Patricia, and Mary Schlueter. “The Latin Riddle of the Exeter Book.” Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen, vol. 226 (1989), pages 92-9.

Morley, Henry. English Writers II, From Caedmon to the Conquest. London, 1888.

Salvador-Bello, Mercedes. “Exeter Book Riddle 90 under a New Light: A School Drill in Hisperic Robes.” Neophilologus, vol. 102 (2018), pages 107-23.

Whitbread, Leslie. “The Latin Riddle in the Exeter Book.” Notes and Queries, vol. 190 (1946), pages 156-8.

Whitbread, Leslie. “The Latin Riddle in the Exeter Book.” Notes and Queries, vol. 194 (1949), pages 80-2.

Williamson, Craig. 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 90

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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 · ᚹ · 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.

Click to show riddle solution?

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.

Tags: anglo saxon exeter book riddles old english solutions riddle 91

Aldhelm Riddle 91: Palma

ALEXANDRAREIDER

Date: Thu 14 Apr 2022

Original text:

Omnipotens auctor, nutu qui cuncta creavit,

Mi dedit in mundo tam "victrix" nomen habendum.

Nomine nempe meo florescit gloria regum,

Martiribus necnon, dum vincunt proelia mundi,

Edita caelestis prensant et praemia vitae;

Frondigeris tegitur bellantum turma coronis

Et viridi ramo victor certamine miles.

In summo capitis densescit vertice vellus,

Ex quo multiplicis torquentur tegmina pepli;

Sic quoque mellifluis escarum pasco saginis

Nectare per populos tribuens alimenta ciborum.

Translation:

The omnipotent author, who created all things by his will,

Gave me the name "victorious" to have in the world. 

Of course the glory of the kings flourishes in my name,

And also for the martyrs, who, when they win the world’s battles,

Take hold of the elevated rewards of celestial life;

The crowd of warriors is covered with leafy crowns

And the soldier, the victor in the contest, with a green branch.

At the top point of my head grows foliage,

From which the coverings of different fabrics are woven;

So too I sustain with the honeyed nourishment of food,

Bestowing items of food among the people with my nectar.

Click to show riddle solution?

Palm

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 91: Pecunia

ALEXANDRAREIDER

Date: Sat 10 Sep 2022

Original text:

Terra fui primo, latebris abscondita terrae;

Nunc aliud pretium flammae nomenque dederunt,

Nec iam terra vocor, licet ex me terra paretur.

Translation:

First I was earth, concealed in the earth’s hiding places;

Now flames have given me another value and name,

I am not called earth now, although earth is obtained through me.

Click to show riddle solution?

Money

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 91

MEGANCAVELL

Date: Mon 02 Nov 2020

Matching Riddle: Exeter Riddle 91

Content Warning: the post discusses sexual assault and violence 

I honestly don’t know what I think about Riddle 91. While the object in question seems to be a Key, or perhaps Keyhole, the way it’s violently sexualized needs *a lot* of contextualizing. 

The first thing to do is remember all the way back to Riddle 44 and its delightful double entendre approach to the same solution. That riddle similarly dwells on the key’s hardness and mentions a þyrel (hole), but it does so with a cheeky glint in its metaphorical eye. 





Check out this cool 9th-century key on the Portable Antiquities Scheme website (licence:  CC BY 2.0).


Riddle 91, on the other hand, conflates sex and violence in a way that should make us question just how “funny” this particular double entendre riddle is supposed to be. It’s certainly meant to catch out any would-be solver with their mind in the gutter (see Bitterli, page 431). It starts by telling us that the riddle-object is manufactured violently – all those hammers and pointy objects – before being chained up and thrust into a hole. All of this is done in order to serve a lord’s mod · ᚹ · (mind-JOY), with an interesting use of the wynn rune here, which means “joy,” acting as a little riddle within the riddle. But, on the whole, Riddle 91 is a lot less joyful than Riddle 44, as it replaces the cheeky sexual reading with battle imagery, warfare and conquest. 

So what have previous scholars made of this riddle? Elinor Teele argues that the riddle plays off its descriptions of both sexual conquest and the plundering of a treasure hoard (pages 193-7). She notes that the Key is itself a victim of violence in the opening lines of the riddle, before it becomes an object of violence wielded by a lord who is driven by violent appetites. The violent coercion of lords is something we see in other riddles, even if they sometimes treat their retainers less cruelly (I’m thinking of Riddle 20 here). 

Edith Whitehurst Williams, on the other hand, reads the riddle as empowering. She takes the solution to be Keyhole and points out that the riddle fits within well-established conquest motifs, as well as sexual metaphors of hammering, wounding, etc. Touching upon the violence of the poem, Whitehurst Williams claims that it nonetheless “offers the strongest argument of all for the mutuality of the sex experience. A female persona relates the incident; four of the significant verbs in the power describe her own actions which seem to be both voluntary and vigorous. Her allusions to joy and pleasure place the same high value on the circumstance that we have seen in the other Riddles. As for the conquest, she seems to take an Amazonian delight in it – except for the figurative “wounded” there is no other word which suggests either discomfort or distaste” (page 144). Was there BDSM in early medieval England? 


 

It’s 50 shades of grey…get it? Image via
Wikimedia Commons (public domain)


I’m not sure I buy Whitehurst Williams’ reading, which hinges on an imagined female persona who is both assertive and appropriated into a violent fantasy. And I would also question the heteronormativity of these sorts of interpretations, in assuming that the sexually-charged riddles only ever depict sex between a man and a woman. Why can’t this riddle be about male lovers? Do the power dynamics change if we read it that way? Does imagining that this riddle invites us to observe sex between men as a battle say something about warrior culture? Or about the monks recording these riddles and, in so doing, writing themselves into said warrior culture? Food for thought. 

However we interpret the beginning of this riddle and its various key players, the final four lines ask us to read in a new context. Here, the riddle seems to move away from double entendre to focus on eating. The scene turns to a lord plundering dead bodies for his own desire (ew), though the heroism is seriously deflated when we realize we’re actually reading about a person raiding the store cupboard for a midnight snack. 




Behold, a midnight snack! Image via
Wikimedia Commons
(licence: CC BY-SA 3.0).


Still, there’s a link between literal and sexual appetites here, which is interesting, especially in the context of all the hyper-masculinity this riddle packs in. The ecofeminist in me wants you all to go read Carol J. Adams’ The Sexual Politics of Meat, which argues that patriarchy and misogyny go hand-in-hand with meat-eating. Oh looky look, Carol, Riddle 91 got there first! There’s certainly something very uncomfortable in those final lines’ references to consuming the lafe (remains) of those the lord commanded to be killed wælcræfte (through slaughter-skill). We’re 100% being invited to think about cannibalism here. As if the beginning of the riddle wasn’t unpleasant enough…

So, is this riddle supposed to be one of those “so-uncomfortable-that-it-is-funny” jokes? Realizing that descriptions of an aggressive sexual encounter and cannibalism are actually a person jiggling a key in a lock to nick a bit of food is certainly deflating enough that it might bring about some nervous laughter. But – sorry Riddle 91 – I prefer jokes that punch up.

Notes:

References and Suggested Reading:

Bitterli, Dieter. “The One-Liners Among the Exeter Book Riddles.” Neophilologus, vol. 103 (2019), pages 419-34.

Teele, Elinor. “The Heroic Tradition in the Old English Riddles.” Diss. University of Cambridge, 2004. esp. pages 193-7.

Whitehurst Williams, Edith. “What’s So New about the Sexual Revolution? Some Comments on Anglo-Saxon Attitudes toward Sexuality in Women Based on Four Exeter Book Riddles.” In New Readings on Women in Old English Literature. Edited by Helen Damico and Alexandra Hennessey Olsen. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990. pages 137-45.

Tags: anglo saxon exeter book riddles old english solutions riddle 91

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Exeter Riddle 92

MEGANCAVELL

Date: Wed 02 Dec 2020

Matching Commentaries: Commentary for Exeter Riddle 92

Judy Kendall, Reader in English and Creative Writing at Salford University, returns with a translation of Riddle 92.

Original text:

Ic wæs brunra beot,       beam on holte, 
 
freolic feorhbora       ond foldan wæstm, 

weres wynnstaþol       ond wifes sond, 

gold on geardum.       Nu eom guðwigan 

hyhtlic hildewæpen,       hringe beg... 

...e...       byreð, 

oþrum.

Translation:

I was the boast of red-brown things, a bough in a forest 

flourishing life-giver and fruit of the soil 

stock of man’s merry-making and woman’s love missive 

gold at the hearth. Now I am a hero’s 

exultant battle-arm, with a ring 

            bears, 

     to another.

Click to show riddle solution?

Beech, Beech-wood Shield, Beech Battering Ram, Ash, Book, Oak

Notes:

This riddle appears on folio 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), page 241.

Note that this edition numbers the text Riddle 88: Craig Williamson, ed., The Old English Riddles of the Exeter Book (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1977), page 118.

Tags: anglo saxon exeter book riddles old english solutions judy kendall riddle 92

Aldhelm Riddle 92: Farus editissima

ALEXANDRAREIDER

Date: Thu 14 Apr 2022

Original text:

Rupibus in celsis, qua tundunt caerula cautes

Et salis undantes turgescunt aequore fluctus,

Machina me summis construxit molibus amplam,

Navigeros calles ut pandam classibus index.

Non maris aequoreos lustrabam remige campos

Nec ratibus pontum sulcabam tramite flexo

Et tamen immensis errantes fluctibus actos

Arcibus ex celsis signans ad litora duco

Flammiger imponens torres in turribus altis,

Ignea brumales dum condunt sidera nimbi.

Translation:

On the towering rocks, where the sea beats the rocks

And the salt-waves swell the floods with the sea,

Apparatus constructed me, extensive, with the highest structure,

So that I, a revealer, might disclose the navigable paths to fleets.

I do not traverse the watery fields of the sea with oar 

Nor do I plow through the sea on a curved path with ships

But nevertheless I lead drifting ships impelled by the immense waves

To shore, giving out signals from my lofty summit;

The flame-bearer lights the firebrands in the high towers,

While the winter clouds conceal the fiery stars.

Click to show riddle solution?

A Very Tall Lighthouse

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 92: Mulier quae geminos pariebat

ALEXANDRAREIDER

Date: Sat 10 Sep 2022

Original text:

Plus ego sustinui quam corpus debuit unum.

Tres animas habui, quas omnes intus habebam;

Discessere duae, sed tertia paene peregit.

Translation:

I have sustained more than one body should.

I had three souls, all of which I had inside;

Two left, but the third one almost finished too.

Click to show riddle solution?

Mother who had twins

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 92

MEGANCAVELL

Date: Thu 03 Dec 2020

Matching Riddle: Exeter Riddle 92

 Judy Kendall, Reader in English and Creative Writing at Salford University, has provided Riddle 92’s commentary, including a new solution to the riddle. Take it away, Judy! 




There have been various solutions to this riddle. While a number keep to the theme of beech (“beech,” “beech-wood shield,” “beech battering ram”), we also have “book,” and Ferdinand Holthausen’s initial suggestion of “ash.” Craig Williamson records that A. J. Wyatt read it as the Old English bōc, “beech with its several uses, and book,” and the tendency since then has been for riddle solvers to select “beech” rather than another kind of tree, linking it to “book” as Wyatt does (page 391). This is largely because of the record of pigs enjoying beechmast in line 107 of Riddle 40 where a boar is observed “rooting away” in a beech-wood. So, the argument goes, in line 1 of Riddle 92, “brown” or “red-brown” must indicate pig while “boast” clearly alludes to the beechmast that it is snuffling up. 

However, there are other brown or red animals that also feast on forest tree produce. Red squirrels come to mind. Here’s a really nice picture of one:



Photo (by 4028mdk09) from Wikimedia Commons (licence CC BY-SA-3.0).

Squirrels also eat hazelnuts and acorns. In fact the Old English for squirrel is ācweorna, not that dissimilar to áccærn or áccorn, the word for nuts or “mast” of both beech and oak (ac), so there could perhaps be an intentional allusion to a squirrel gorging on a feast of nuts. After all ácweorran means "to guzzle or glut," and here is a red squirrel about to guzzle an acorn (not that we need proof that they love nuts!).



Photo (by Klearchos Kapoutsis) from Wikimedia Commons (licence CC BY 2.0).

Still, we shouldn’t forget the pigs. So here is an 1894 painting of pigs rooting for beechmast: 



From William Sharp’s Fair Women in Painting and Poetry (1894, page 181), via Wikimedia Commons (no known copyright restrictions).

And an excellent little film of a whole row of pigs cracking and eating hazelnuts – spot the red-brown ones: 



So boast or beot could refer to the red coat of a squirrel or the brown skin of a pig. However, it could also allude to a red-brown carpet of beechnuts, or indeed, acorns. See the glorious russet colours they create here: 



Wet beech bark: Trees alongside the Gloucestershire Way in the Forest of Dean.
Photo (by Jonathan Billinger) from Wikimedia Commons (licence CC BY-SA 2.0).

Who wouldn’t want to boast of that? Here’s an acorn carpet too: 



White oak (Quercus alba) acorns - one prolific tree can nearly cover the ground in a good year. Duke Forest Korstian Division, Durham North Carolina. Photo (by Dcrjsr) from Wikimedia Commons (licence CC BY 3.0).
(https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)

When Williamson dissects Wyatt’s argument for "beech," he stresses the way the riddle seems to turn on the homonymic uses of the word bōc – that is, as referring to both “book” and “beech” (page 391). Strictly speaking, the etymological connection between the two may be in doubt, but it is feasible that Old English speakers would have seen and heard them as linked, and, as Williamson argues, beech is also connected to books in the form of writing on beech-bark. 

However, should we be content with beech? We have already mentioned the nuts of both the hazel and the oak, and certainly, the oak’s magnificent broad crown and reddish-brown or golden autumn leaves fit the celebratory description of many of the lines, while the hazel, too, similarly glorious in autumn, would also provide a possible match. So I would like to suggest "oak" as a new solution to this riddle, as well as urging you to consider the possibility of "hazel" too.

To this end, I will now work through the riddle as if the answer was “beech” and then recast it with an oak in tow, plus a few references to hazel thrown in along the way. Let's see where we get to.

One strong impression I had when approaching this riddle as a poet-translator is its continuous untiring celebration of a tree’s transformative journey in every line. Right from the word “go,” even down in the mud as pig or squirrel fodder, we have beot or “boast.” We have already noted how this could fit the description of an oak or hazel in autumn, and indeed it does also fit the image of a large handsome beech, resplendent in glorious gleaming yellow or orange autumn foliage, surrounded by a carpet of rich russet-coloured beechnuts. Perhaps this riddle is less of a beech teaser and more of a beech feaster: 



Watercolour painting by Myles Birket Foster from Wikimedia Commons (Public Domain).

More celebratory references occur in the next line which describes other, wider forms of fine or noble nourishment. A sense of exultation gleams through line 3’s focus on forms of pleasure, possibly in book, or beech-bark, form, and we can see why such a bark might be chosen and celebrated in this picture of beautiful grey smooth beech: 



Photo of beech bark (by Jonathan Billinger) from Wikimedia Commons (licence CC BY-SA 2.0).

Note, however, that the tree’s transformation into book occurs halfway through the riddle. It is therefore just a stage on the tree’s journey, not its final destination. This throws doubt on the suggestion that “book” constitutes the answer to the riddle. Instead, it would seem that “book” is just a part of the process, as the tree, and riddle, works towards its solution. 

Indeed, does an assessment of which tree is intended really help us solve the riddle? My first thought when looking at this riddle was that it is far too obviously about a tree to be actually referring, in a riddle-like way, to a tree. We riddle, surely, to confuse. If the solution is a kind of the tree, then the usual translation of the second half of line 1 as “tree in the forest” seems a bit much.  Surely that kind of obvious hint should be saved till later – till the last line perhaps (a line of course to which we no longer have much access). 

Observations like these are partly why I have allowed myself to translate beam as “a bough” rather than “tree,” making it more riddle-like, as well of course as facilitating alliteration. 

Frederick Tupper, Jr. describes this riddle a series of kennings, compound descriptions that transform into each other on the way to a final manifestation of the original tree, whatever kind of tree that may be (page xciv). 

However, for the moment, on with the beech! For me, the reference to gold in line 4 could evoke a chest of treasure, or the warming gold of flames of a beech-log fire. It could be the gilded decorations on a book, perhaps a book valued like gold. I even see the glinting gold of the beech leaves in the last chilly days of autumn: 



Photo of golden beech leaves (by Jonathan Billinger) from Wikimedia Commons (licence CC BY-SA 2.0).

But let us place such imaginings against the reference Tupper picks out in line 8 of Riddle 20, with its very similar gold ofer geardas referring to the making of a sword. Perhaps, in our current riddle, the tree is at this point being turned into the exultant battle-weapon that, after the hiatus of the middle of this line, both closes the end of this line and opens the next. In that next line, we have moved on to a heightened moment, as we are presented with the heroic warrior’s joyful battle-weapon. This, whether it be battering ram or shield, could be the final transformation of the tree and therefore the solution to the riddle, particularly since byreð (bears) and oþrum (to another) – the words still visible in the largely obliterated last lines – could be references to carrying, defending or attacking in battle. 

But is it a beech battering ram, a beechwood shield, or another kind of wood? Let’s consider oak. As noted earlier, like the beech, the oak too can be glorious: 



Photo of oak tree near the Teign (by Derek Harper) from Wikimedia Commons (licence CC BY-SA 2.0).

So of course can the hazel tree, and both oak and hazel produce catkins and nuts - sources of protein for squirrels and birds – “flourishing life-givers” indeed. And here I am going to give the hazel tree a little look-in as I think this photograph really suggests that life-giving element well: 



Photo of Common Hazel fruits (by H. Zell) from Wikimedia Commons (licence CC BY-SA 3.0).

However, oak is more prized for its strength and density, and therefore stands up better in terms of the references to nourishment, stability and power in lines 2 and 3. As for the wifes sond (woman’s love missive), here oak for me also trumps beech: oak galls were used as the main ingredient in writing ink at this time and oak bark was also used by tanners to tan the leather that formed the vellum of manuscripts. I more easily imagine “gold at the hearth” as an allusion to a strong oaken chest of treasure than a chest made of beech. It could of course also allude to the decoration of a manuscript; oak, like beech, makes great gold flaming firewood; and oak, perhaps more than beech, could at this point be in the process of being fashioned into a weapon. Battering rams were typically made of oak, ash or fir, although I am not sure if they would have included gold, as perhaps a shield might. However, while a shield is used in defence, what more celebratory, joyful or “exultant” weapon can there be than the thrusting battering ram? 

Well, in the end, there’s no clear answer – because of course we have, to this riddle, no end. Whether it refers to beech, oak, hazel or book, what seems clear is that this riddle is tracking, and celebrating, a tree’s metamorphosis through a series of kenning-like phrases – and that perhaps (given the last lines, which presumably hold the essential clue, are practically obliterated), it is only appropriate that we do not know for sure what the tree’s final transformation is. Indeed, if this is a good riddle, such an uncertainty in our knowledge and our guessing would seem fitting. Otherwise those last invisible words become redundant...and no poet worth the name wants redundancy.

Notes:

References and Suggested Reading:

Crossley-Holland, Kevin, trans. The Exeter Book Riddles. London: Enitharmon, 2008.

Porter, John. Anglo-Saxon Riddles. Hockwold-cum-Wilton: Anglo-Saxon Books, 1995 and 2013.

Tupper, Frederick, Jr. Riddles of the Exeter Book. Boston, Ginn, 1910.

Williamson, Craig, trans. The Complete Old English Poems. Penn State University Press, 2017.

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

Tags: anglo saxon exeter book riddles old english solutions judy kendall riddle 92

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Exeter Riddle 93

MEGANCAVELL

Date: Mon 11 Jan 2021

Matching Commentaries: Commentary for Exeter Riddle 93

The beginning and end of this riddle are obscured by the burn that has damaged both pages the poem appears on, but there is plenty of excitement in the middle!

Original text:

Frea min           

...de           willum sinum, 

...... 

heah ond hyht... 

5     ...rpne,           hwilum 

...wilum sohte 

frea...          ...s wod, 

dægrime frod,           deo... ...s , 

hwilum stealc hliþo           stigan sceolde 

10     up in eþel,           hwilum eft gewat 

in deop dalu           duguþe secan 

strong on stæpe,           stanwongas grof 

hrimighearde,           hwilum hara scoc 

forst of feaxe.           Ic on fusum rad 

15     oþþæt him þone gleawstol           gingra broþor 

min agnade           ond mec of earde adraf. 

Siþþan mec isern           innanweardne 

brun bennade;           blod ut ne com, 

heolfor of hreþre,           þeah mec heard bite 

20     stiðecg style.           No ic þa stunde bemearn, 

ne for wunde weop,           ne wrecan meahte 

on wigan feore           wonnsceaft mine, 

ac ic aglæca           ealle þolige, 

þæt ...e bord biton.           Nu ic blace swelge 

25     wuda ond wætre,           w... ...b... befæðme 

þæt mec on fealleð          ufan þær ic stonde, 

eorpes nathwæt;           hæbbe anne fot. 

Nu min hord warað           hiþende feond, 

se þe ær wide bær           wulfes gehleþan; 

30     oft me of wombe           bewaden fereð, 

steppeð on stið bord, … 

deaþes d...           þonne dægcondel, 

sunne …

...eorc           eagum wliteð 

35     ond spe....

Translation:

My lord … 

… according to his wishes 

… 

high and hope… 

5     … [sha]rp, sometimes 

…sometimes sought 

lord… went, 

aged in the count of days dee[p]… , 

sometimes had to ascend steep hillsides 

10     up in the homeland, sometimes departed again 

into deep dales to seek a troop 

strong in step, dig up the stony plains 

hard with rime, sometimes the hoary frost 

shook out of his hair. I rode on the eager one 

15     until my younger brother claimed for himself 

the seat of wisdom and drove me from my homeland. 

Afterwards dusky iron wounded me 

inwardly; blood did not come forth, 

gore from the heart, although the hard thing bit me, 

20     the strong-edged steel. I did not bemoan that time, 

nor weep because of the wound, nor might I take vengeance 

on the warrior’s life for my misfortune, 

but I suffer all the miseries, 

that … have snapped at shields. Now I swallow black 

25     wood and water, … embrace 

what falls on me from above where I stand, 

something dark; I have one foot. 

Now a pillaging enemy protects my hoard, 

who once widely carried the companion of the wolf; 

30     often travels, filled from my belly, 

steps onto a hard board, … 

death’s … when the day-candle, 

sun … 

… gazes with eyes 

35     and …

Click to show riddle solution?

Ink-well, Antler, Horn

Notes:

This riddle appears on folios 130r-130v 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 241-2.

Note that this edition numbers the text Riddle 89: Craig Williamson, ed., The Old English Riddles of the Exeter Book (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1977), pages 119-20.

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Aldhelm Riddle 93: Scintilla

ALEXANDRAREIDER

Date: Thu 14 Apr 2022

Original text:

Quae res in terris armatur robore tanto

Aut paribus fungi nitatur viribus audax?

Parva mihi primo constant exordia vitae,

Sed gracilis grandes soleo prosternere leto,

Quod letum proprii gestant penetralia ventris.

Nam saltus nemorum densos pariterque frutecta

Piniferosque simul montes cum molibus altos

Truxque rapaxque capaxque feroxque sub aethere spargo

Et minor existens gracili quam corpore scnifes,

Frigida dum genetrix dura generaret ab alvo

Primitus ex utero producens pignora gentis.

Translation:

What thing on earth is equipped of such strength

Or, bold, labors to discharge similar strength?

At first my foundations in life are but little,

But, though meagre, I tend to overthrow the great in ruin,

Which ruin the innermost parts of my womb themselves carry.

For dense regions of forest and likewise thickets

As well as pine-bearing mountains with high mounds

I, savage and greedy and able and aggressive, squander under the heavens,

And with my meagre form I stand smaller than a flea,

When my cold, hard mother brings me from her womb,

Producing from her uterus for the first time the offspring of her race.

Click to show riddle solution?

Spark

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 93: Miles podagricus

ALEXANDRAREIDER

Date: Sat 10 Sep 2022

Original text:

Bellipotens olim, saevis metuendus in armis,

Quinque pedes habui, quod numquam nemo negavit.

Nunc mihi vix duo sunt; inopem me copia reddit.

Translation:

I was once martial, ferocious and feared in arms,

I had five feet, which no one ever denied.

Now I barely have two: abundance has rendered me helpless.

Click to show riddle solution?

Soldier with gout

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 93

MEGANCAVELL

Date: Tue 12 Jan 2021

Matching Riddle: Exeter Riddle 93

Like so many of the riddles in the final part of the Exeter Book, Riddle 93 is a bit of a mess. The long burn that stretches across both pages of the open book befuddles (yes, befuddles!) both the beginning and end of this poem. Luckily, it’s one of the longer riddles in the collection, so there is plenty of detail in the middle to sink our teeth into. 

Riddle 93 is one of those rare riddles whose solution doesn’t cause much scholarly in-fighting. Everyone is pretty much agreed that this riddle describes an antler that is used to make an ink-well. In Old English, we might solve it as either horn (antler/horn) or blæc-horn (ink-well/ink-horn). 


Behold, a 12th-century inkhorn! St Matthew is busy at work in © British Library, Add MS 11850, folio 17v.

The riddle is easy to solve in part because it builds upon the many other antler/horn and stag references throughout the Exeter Book. In particular, it’s a companion piece to Riddle 88, which also frames the shed antlers of a stag as exiled warriors – brothers – facing violence at the hands of human craftsmen. But here in Riddle 93, it's the relationship between stag and antler – lord and retainer – that is prized above all and mourned when the antler is displaced. 

The first 16 lines of the riddle describe the antler’s place on the head of a stag, his frea (lord) in lines 1a and 7a. The stag’s behaviour is described as he wanders the wilderness and its hills, seeking out a duguþ (troop) in line 11b, which is presumably his herd. Dieter Bitterli emphasizes just how accurate the riddle’s account of red deer is – both their behaviour and their habitat: “male and female red deer segregate for most of the year. Whereas the hinds remain in a herd with their young, stags form their own, less stable groups, or sometimes live alone, and seek out the hinds only during the rut” in the autumn, leaving again when winter comes (page 158). At that point, “hind populations tend to occupy richer soils and grassland, while stags are generally found on poorer ground; this tallies with the ‘stony plains’ (12) the stag in the riddle is said to dig into when the ground is ‘hard with rime’ (13)” (page 158). 

While the stag is separated from the herd throughout the frosty winter, the antler remains with his lord, secure upon his head – his gleawstol (seat of wisdom) in line 15a. But as the seasons move on, line 15b’s gingra broþor‏ (younger brother) forces the antler into exile. The stag has shed his antlers, which are replaced by new growth, something that is also described as a kin relationship in Riddle 88 (lines 15-17a). 


A fantastic red deer (by Luc Viatour) from Wikimedia Commons (licence: CC BY-SA 3.0).

 Siþþan (Afterwards) at line 17 signals a change in the antler’s fortunes and a turn in the narrative. In exile, the shed antler is found and put to new purpose. An iron implement is used to gouge it out, creating a wound that does not bleed because the object is antler rather than flesh, as lines 17-20a remind us. The imagery in this section is full of references to warfare and violence – lots of biting and sharp edges, which we might expect to apply to swords rather than a craftsman’s tool. In fact, Patrick Murphy reads Riddle 93 alongside Riddle 5’s bord (shield or chopping board), noting the play with heroic imagery that describes a fairly mundane task in both poems (pages 69-70). 

While the task of making the ink-well may be mundane, as Mercedes Salvador-Bello notes, Riddle 93 takes the elegiac theme it shares with Riddle 88 down a darker path, focusing especially on “the dire consequences of the creature’s change of status by giving free rein to the notion of feud” (page 428). Here, the antler laments that it can’t take revenge for its miseries (because it’s an inanimate object) by lashing out at the wiga (warrior, line 23a) who abuses it. 

When we reach lines 24b-5a, the antler’s new purpose has become very clear: Nu ic blace swelge / wuda ond wætre (Now I swallow black wood and water). The antler has been used to create an ink-well that has to hold black ink made from a mixture of various types of wood, wine and chemicals (Bitterli, pages 160-1). Into the ink-well dips the hiþende feond (pillaging enemy) of line 28b – a quill pen. 


A quill pen, ink and parchment (by Mushki Brichta) from Wikimedia Commons (licence: CC BY-SA 4.0)

The description that follows includes a kenning, a mini riddle-within-a-riddle, as it were. The wulfes gehleþan (companion of the wolf) of line 29b refers to the “beasts of battle” motif that crops up in a variety of Old English poems (Bitterli, page 162). Wherever we find wolves, ravens and eagles feasting upon people who have been killed in battle, we have the (equal parts unpleasant and fascinating) beasts of battle motif! Here in Riddle 93, the wolf’s companion is one of these birds – likely the raven, whose feathers were used as quills for fine and detailed work by medieval scribes (Bitterli, page 162). The raven-feather quill is here dipped into the unwilling ink-well, creating a strange mishmash of animal body parts, conflict and agency. 

Ultimately, this scene of violence is clearly the work of human scribes, which is presumably how the riddle ends. In among the damaged lines, we can catch glimpses of the sense. Lines 32b-33a include references to the light of the dægcondel (day-candle) and sunne (sun), and line 34 suggests that someone who eagum wliteð (gazes with eyes) was imagined as looking upon the work of the scribe. 

If we want to get really meta (and of course we do – don’t we?), we might think of the poem that we’re reading as the work of this scribe. We might think that the quill, ink and ink-well used to pen the Exeter Book found a life of their own in this antler’s lament. How profound.

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 157-63.

Murphy, Patrick. Unriddling the Exeter Riddles. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2011, esp. pages 69-70.

Salvador-Bello, Mercedes. Isidorean Perceptions of Order: the Exeter Book Riddles and Medieval Latin Enigmata. Morgantown: West Virginia University Press, 2015, esp. pages 425-31.

Tags: anglo saxon exeter book riddles old english solutions riddle 93

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Exeter Riddle 94

MEGANCAVELL

Date: Wed 09 Jun 2021

Matching Commentaries: Commentary for Exeter Riddle 94

Riddle 94’s translation is by Erin Sebo, senior lecturer in English at Flinders University in Australia.

Original text:

Smeþr[. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .]ad, 

hyrre þonne heofon[. . . . . . . . . 

. . . . . . . . . . ]           glædre þonne sunne, 

[ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ] style, 

5       smeare þonne sealt ry[ . . . . . . . . . . . ] 

leofre þonne þis leoht eall,           leohtre þon w[ . . . . ]

Translation:

Smoother [. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .] 

higher than heaven [. . . . . . . . .  

. . . . . . . . . . ]            brighter than the sun, 

[ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ] … steel 

5       sharper than salt [ . . . . . . . . . . . ] 

dearer than all this light, lighter than the w[ind]

Click to show riddle solution?

Creation

Notes:

This riddle appears on folio 130v 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 242.

Note that this edition numbers the text Riddle 90: Craig Williamson, ed., The Old English Riddles of the Exeter Book (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1977), page 120.

Tags: anglo saxon exeter book riddles old english solutions erin sebo riddle 94

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Commentary for Exeter Riddle 94

Aldhelm Riddle 94: Ebulus

ALEXANDRAREIDER

Date: Thu 14 Apr 2022

Original text:

Sambucus, in silva putris dum fronde virescit,

Est mihi par foliis; nam glesco surculus arvis

Nigros bacarum portans in fronte corimbos.

Quem medici multum ruris per terga virentem,

Cum scabies morbi pulpas irrepserit aegras,

Lustrantes orbem crebro quaesisse feruntur:

Cladibus horrendae, dum vexat viscera tabo,

Ne virus serpat, possum succurrere, leprae,

Sic olidas hominum restaurans germine fibras.

Translation:

The elder tree, when it grows, putrid, in the woods,

Is like me in its leaves; for I grow as a sprig in the fields,

Carrying black bunches of berries on my brow.

Doctors, when the roughness of disease creeps on to sick skin,

Are said frequently to have sought much of me, 

Growing green, by roaming the world around the back country: 

I am able to bring remedy so that the poison of leprosy, horrendous in its harm

When it irritates the insides with pestilence, does not progress,

Thus restoring fetid bowels with my sprout.

Click to show riddle solution?

Wallwort

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 94: Luscus alium vendens

ALEXANDRAREIDER

Date: Sat 10 Sep 2022

Original text:

Cernere iam fas est quod vix tibi credere fas est:

Unus inest oculus, capitum sed milia multa.

Qui quod habet vendit, quod non habet unde parabit?

Translation:

Now it is possible to see what is scarcely possible to believe:

There is one eye, but many thousand heads.

From where will he, who sells what he has, acquire what he does not have?

Click to show riddle solution?

One-eyed garlic seller

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 94

MEGANCAVELL

Date: Wed 09 Jun 2021

Matching Riddle: Exeter Riddle 94

Riddle 94’s commentary is also by Erin Sebo, senior lecturer in English at Flinders University in Australia. Take it away, Erin!

Riddle 94 is one of the most fragmented riddles in the Exeter Book. It is often ignored and even left out of translations, such as in Kevin Crossley-Holland’s excellent translation. Just enough survives for it to be identified as a creation riddle, a version of the same idea found in Riddles 40 and 66. Which seems to make it even less interesting: why waste time on a few disconnected words when we have two complete versions of the riddle already as well as Aldhelm’s original Latin version?!

But, actually, the fact we have something to compare this riddle to – an absolute luxury in Old English literature – means that it is possible to learn things that we can’t with texts that survive in one version (or one manuscript!). In this case – as I argued in my book – because we have different versions of the same text, we can see a range of different popular cosmological and astronomical ideas, and possibly even get a hint of how these ideas changed over time. 



Photo of stars rotating (by Jordan Condon) from Wikimedia Commons (licence: CC BY 3.0).

Riddle 94 draws on much of the imagery of Riddles 40 and 66 and is also based around a series of comparatives, but the form is simplified, perhaps suggesting it was composed later or had circulated in popular culture. Often we have lost what is being compared but we can still tell the order of these images – and that’s revealing. For example, the riddles doesn’t begin with the large celestial comparatives “higher than heaven” and “brighter than the sun.” Both are demoted to after whatever thing was designated “smoother.” It’s an odd choice. The other creation riddles start with the celestial…and what could the universe be smeþr (smoother) than that could be theologically and cosmologically important enough to earn it a place above the heavens and the sun? There is no other instance of smeðe in its comparative form in the Old English corpus so the comparison was not common. Obviously, this riddle was doing something new. 

The seven surviving adjectives in Riddle 94 are: smeþr (smoother), hyrre (higher), glædre (brighter), smeare (sharper), leofre (dearer) and leohtre (lighter). Since these are virtually all we have to go on, it’s worth looking at how they’re used elsewhere. The first, smoother is not found in Riddles 40 or 66, but Aldhelm and Symphosius use a Latin equivalent, teres (smooth), for the stars – in Aldhelm’s Enigma 100, De Creatura (line 57) and the horn casing of a lantern in Symphosius’s Enigma 67, Lanterna (line 1), respectively. The next adjective, higher, in very common and usually contrasts heaven or heavenly things with infernal depths. Brighter, the next, refers to the sun. It seems the obvious adjective to moderns but actually the sun is usually described as swift in Old English poetry. (Riddle 66 describes the moon as brighter!) 



Sun vs Moon in a late 15th-century calendar by Johannes von Gmunden from Wikimedia Commons (public domain).

Smeare, especially in the metaphorical sense in which it applies to salt, is absent from earlier creation riddles, though Aldhelm makes saltiness a comparative in its own right. Leofre is equally absent from Riddle 94’s antecedents and it is the first instance of a “subjective” quality: something may only be dear if it is dear to someone. Leohtre, the last, is more fraught since we can’t be sure if it’s used in the sense of “brighter” or “less weighty.” 

These last two form the most complete line of the fragment: “dearer than all this light, lighter than…” Unlike the other Creation riddles which have dualistic parings, this seems to be associative – for a sense of how unusual this is, it’s worth comparing it with “religious” cosmological descriptions. The most influential of these is the creation of the world in the Book of Genesis which works through a hierarchy of oppositions, starting with the division of earth and heaven, then light, then sky from sea, then sea from land. This basic structure is echoed elsewhere, such as this description of God’s power in Homily 5 of the Vercelli Book: his miht is ufor þonne heofon & bradre þonne eorðe & deopre þonne sæ & leohtre þonne heofones tungel (Scragg, page 121, line 194) (…His might is higher than heaven, and broader than the earth, and deeper than the sea and lighter than Heaven’s star).

This is a version of the “creation comparatives,” which conforms to the Christian structure and order of the images in Genesis. God makes Heaven (ufor þonne heofon), then separates the land (bradre þonne eorðe) from the sea (deopre þonne sæ) and then sets the celestial bodies on their trajectory (leohtre þonne heofones tungel).

 Although this riddle in its fragmented state is easy to ignore, it survived long after most of the Exeter Book riddles were forgotten (except by scholars).  Unlike most of the Exeter riddles, Riddle 94 is the first which is not characterized by word pictures, instead favouring a stable structure into which any number of formulaic elements may be fitted. This makes it far better suited to popular riddle-telling (as opposed to riddle reading) than most in the Exeter Book. And that’s what happened. The question implicit in Riddle 94’s statement that Creation is “higher than heaven” becomes overt in a 1430 lyric “Inter Diabolus et Virgo”* (Rawlinson MS. D. 328, folio 174b): “What ys hyer than ys…?” Each adjective is turned into its own question and new adjectives are added. The lyric survives as a ballad into the 19th century, when it was collected by the folklorist Francis James Child who made it the first ballad in his monumental collection, The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, under the title “Riddles Wisely Expounded”. Anything set to music tends to survive and you can even find the very last traces of “Riddles Wisely Expounded” in Tom Waits’ 2006 recording of “Two sisters” on Orphans: brawlers, bawlers and bastards (Sebo, page. 136). Go have a listen!



*Don’t @ me, I know what case inter takes.

Notes:

References and Suggested Reading:

Crossley-Holland, Kevin, trans. The Exeter Book Riddles. London: Enitharmon, 2008.

Scragg, D. G., ed. The Vercelli Homilies and Related Texts. Early English Text Society 300. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992.

Sebo, Erin. In Enigmate: The History of a Riddle, 400–1500. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2018.

Tags: anglo saxon exeter book riddles old english solutions erin sebo riddle 94

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Exeter Riddle 95

MEGANCAVELL

Date: Wed 17 Feb 2021

Matching Commentaries: Commentary for Exeter Riddle 95

Riddle 95’s translation is by Brett Roscoe of The King’s University, Alberta. Thanks for taking on the very last Exeter riddle, Brett!

Original text:

Ic eom indryhten           ond eorlum cuð, 

ond reste oft;           ricum ond heanum, 

folcum gefræge           fere (1) wide, 

ond me fremdes (2) ær           freondum stondeð (3) 

5     hiþendra hyht,           gif ic habban sceal 

blæd in burgum           oþþe beorhtne god. (4) 

Nu snottre men           swiþast lufiaþ 

midwist mine;           ic monigum sceal 

wisdom cyþan;           no þær word sprecað 

10     ænig ofer eorðan.           Þeah nu ælda bearn 

londbuendra           lastas mine 

swiþe secað,           ic swaþe hwilum 

mine bemiþe           monna gehwylcum.

Translation:

I am noble and known to men of rank, 

and I rest often; to rich and poor, 

to people far and wide I am known, 

and to me, formerly estranged from friends, remains 

5     the hope of plunderers, if I should have 

honour in the cities or bright wealth. 

Now wise men above all cherish 

my company; to many I must 

tell of wisdom, where they speak not a word, 

10     nothing throughout the earth. Though now the sons of men, 

sons of land-dwellers, eagerly seek 

my tracks, I sometimes hide 

my trail from all of them.

Click to show riddle solution?

Book, Quill Pen, Riddle (Book), Wandering Singer, Prostitute, Moon

Notes:

This riddle appears on folio 130v 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 243.

Note that this edition numbers the text Riddle 91: Craig Williamson, ed., The Old English Riddles of the Exeter Book (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1977), pages 120-1.

Translation Notes:

(1) The manuscript reads fereð. Williamson takes hiþendra hyht as the subject of fereð wide, translating, “The plunderers’ joy (gold) travels far, and, once estranged from friends, stands on me (shines from me?), if I should have glory in the cities or bright wealth” (pp. 398-99). Murphy translates, “The plunderer’s joy travels widely and stands as a friend to me, who was a stranger’s before, if I am to have success in the cities or possess the bright Lord.” See Patrick J. Murphy’s Unriddling the Exeter Riddles (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2011), page 87.
(2) The manuscript fremdes does not make sense because there is no genitive noun in the sentence. I follow Williamson’s suggestion in reading this as fremde (pages 399-400).
(3) Stondeð literally means “stands,” so a literal translation would be “stands on me.” But the meaning may be understood as “remains (to me)” or “falls to my lot” (Williamson, page 400).
(4) Here I have followed the suggestion of numerous editors in assuming that beorthne should be beorhte, an adjective describing god, which here means “goods” or “wealth.” See Williamson, page 401.

Tags: anglo saxon exeter book riddles old english solutions brett roscoe riddle 95

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Aldhelm Riddle 95: Scilla

ALEXANDRAREIDER

Date: Thu 14 Apr 2022

Original text:

Ecce, molosorum nomen mihi fata dederunt

(Argolicae gentis sic promit lingua loquelis),

Ex quo me dirae fallebant carmina Circae,

Quae fontis liquidi maculabat flumina verbis:

Femora cum cruribus, suras cum poplite bino

Abstulit immiscens crudelis verba virago.

Pignora nunc pavidi referunt ululantia nautae,

Tonsis dum trudunt classes et caerula findunt

Vastos verrentes fluctus grassante procella,

Palmula qua remis succurrit panda per undas,

Auscultare procul, quae latrant inguina circum.

Sic me pellexit dudum Titania proles,

Ut merito vivam salsis in fluctibus exul.

Translation:

Behold, the Fates gave me the name of dogs

(Thus does the language of the Argive people express it in speech),

After the songs of frightful Circe deceived me,

She who sullied the streams from the flowing fountain with words:

Thighs as well as shins, calves with both knees, 

The cruel woman removed, joining words.

Fearful sailors now tell of the howling offspring—

When the fleets drive through with oars and cleave the sea,

Sweeping along the vast waves as the storm advances,

And the curved blade of the oar runs through the waves—

That they hear far away, which bay around my loins.

Thus did Titania’s progeny once deceive me,

Such that I deservedly live as an exile in the salt-waves.

Click to show riddle solution?

Scylla

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