RIDDLE POSTS BY ARCHIVE DATE: AUG 2013

Commentary for Exeter Riddle 10

MATTHIASAMMON

Date: Thu 08 Aug 2013
Matching Riddle: Exeter Riddle 10

While the solutions that have been proposed for this riddle range from "alchemy" and "baptism" to "bubble" and "water lily," the most commonly accepted solution is "barnacle goose" (Old English byrnete). This puts this riddle in line with the preceding bird riddles – once again the bird speaks of itself in the first person and tells the audience of its particular identifying characteristic: in this case, the genesis of the bird from wood and water. It was commonly believed in medieval times that barnacle geese were somehow grown from the barnacle shells that cling to driftwood floating in the sea. In fact, the word "barnacle" stems from the name for the bird rather than the other way around! And while this folk belief in the origin of the barnacle goose pops up a lot in the later Middle Ages, this riddle is in fact the earliest evidence that people thought this. Dieter Bitterli, whose work on the bird riddles has already been mentioned in some of the other commentaries, suggests that this myth may have originated in Britain where the arctic barnacle geese spend the winter and was handed down over generations to the authors of later medieval zoology text books.

The process of the birth of the barnacle goose is somewhat obscurely referred to in lines 4b-5 (with the bird’s body "touching" a floating piece of wood) and in the first half-line, which might allude to the bird’s hanging from the piece of wood by its beak, thus obtaining nourishment. Another characteristic is the "black garment" with "white trappings" which the speaker describes (see below for visual proof of this, though there are probably many other creatures to whom this might apply!). And barnacle geese are indeed "carried widely over the seal’s bath" – they breed on islands in the North Atlantic and come south to winter in Great Britain and the Netherlands (nothing like a balmy British winter to take the chill off…).

Goose

A goose! Photo (by Andrey) from Wikimedia Commons (licence: CC BY 2.0).

One interesting expression in this riddle is the feorh cwico of l. 6. I’ve translated this as "living spirit," but Leslie Lockett discusses feorh as meaning something more like "life-force," something that has to enter a thing to give it life – even one born from wood and water (page 44)! If you look back at Riddle 9, the cuckoo likewise explains that it did not have feorh when it was in the egg, so it’s something that comes with being born. And like the cuckoo, which was covered in a protective garment, the barnacle goose is protected by water which allows it to grow and become lifgende.

For those of you who might now be worrying that early medieval folks were a bit obsessed by birds, stay tuned for the next post’s change in direction.

Notes:

References and Suggested Reading:

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



Tags: anglo saxon  exeter book  riddles  old english  solutions  riddle 10 

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Commentary for Exeter Riddle 10

Exeter Riddle 11

MEGANCAVELL

Date: Mon 12 Aug 2013
Matching Commentaries: Commentary for Exeter Riddle 11
Original text:

Hrægl is min hasofag,      hyrste beorhte,
reade ond scire      on reafe minum.
Ic dysge dwelle      ond dole hwette
unrædsiþas,      oþrum styre
5     nyttre fore.      Ic þæs nowiht wat
þæt heo swa gemædde,      mode bestolene,
dæde gedwolene,      deoraþ mine
won wisan gehwam.      Wa him þæs þeawes,
siþþan heah bringað      horda deorast,
10     gif hi unrædes      ær ne geswicaþ.

Translation:

My garment is stained dark, my ornaments bright,
red and shining on my robe.
I delude the fool and urge the idiot
on reckless tracks; others I steer
5     from suitable ones. I do not know why
they, thus mad, robbed of reason,
deluded in deed, praise my
shadowy way to everyone. Woe to them for that habit,
when they bring the most beloved of hoards on high,
10     if they do not first retreat from recklessness.

Click to show riddle solution?
Wine or Cup of Wine


Notes:

This riddle appears on folio 103v 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 186.

Note that this edition numbers the text Riddle 9: Craig Williamson, ed., The Old English Riddles of the Exeter Book (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1977), pages 73-4.



Tags: anglo saxon  exeter book  riddles  old english  solutions  riddle 11 

Commentary for Exeter Riddle 11

MEGANCAVELL

Date: Mon 12 Aug 2013
Matching Riddle: Exeter Riddle 11

That’s right, folks, it’s the one you’ve been waiting for. Were you starting to worry that popular conceptions of early medieval England were all made up? Well, here comes the alcohol-riddle (and not the only one at that!), to make things right again. Of course, this is not a carousing drinking party of early medieval boisterousness, but quite a stern look at the effects of too much wine on one’s table manners and mortal soul. That is, of course, if we accept the solution Wine (OE Win) or Cup/Vessel of Wine (OE Winfæt), which most scholars do. Some, however, prefer the solutions Night, Gold and Phallus. I’m going to leave that last one to your imaginations, but will say that both Night and Gold have a little something going for them.

Much of the difficulty in choosing between Night, Gold and Wine lies in the translation of the word, hasofag. In fact, both parts of this unique compound have quite a few meanings. To start with the second element, fah can mean "hostile" or even "foe," as well as "variegated," "discoloured," "bright" or "adorned." I’ve chosen to translate it as "stained," hoping to get across both the sense of colour and bad behaviour. The first element, hasu, is also tricky to translate. It can mean "grey," "ash-coloured" or "tawny". But how can it be both dark/grey and yellowy-brown?, you might ask. The simple answer is that early medieval folks didn’t think of colours in quite the same way that we do. The slightly-more-complicated answer is that, while modern colour theory is more interested in identifying different hues, the early medieval English tended to differentiate based on brightness. I guess if most of your possessions are a dull brownish-grey, the bright glinting of a sword would be far more interesting than that fact that it’s a similar colour (in our sense of the word). Because of the complexities of translating Old English colours into Modern English ones, we can similarly argue that read doesn’t necessarily mean what we think of as "red." And so the first few lines of the riddle can be said to represent some sort of dark thing that has other, shinier things on it! Stars on the face of the night sky? Or light glinting off gold? (gold and read are a common pair in Old English poetry) Or the glistening of wine in a glass? These are all decent options.

The next few lines, then, go on to talk about the silly people who get all turned around and misled by whatever our riddle-object is. Night would, of course, make sense here, but it seems a bit obvious. Early medieval poets like metaphors, so a riddle about people who actually go out and get lost may have less going for it. Gold (like Wine) works, though. Both hoarding and drinking excessively are, after all, clearly no-no’s according to the church. There is, of course, another hoard mentioned in the last two lines, although, again, hord could be translated a number of ways, including as just "treasure." The treasure raised on high, then, may be the riddle-object, i.e. a glass of wine or a piece of gold (though I think it makes more sense to raise up a glass than a piece of gold…unless you’re Gollum). But this may also be a reference to a metaphorical hoard: the soul. Old English poetry often describes the body as a kind of fancy treasure-chest for storing the spirit. According to this metaphorical reading, the raising up bit is of course death, at which point the repentant soul hopes to go to heaven.

Native_gold_nuggets

Gold nuggets! Image from Wikimedia Commons (public domain).

So, the wordplay-ish reference to raising things on high has me leaning toward Wine now, over Gold. Not literally. And there are a few other parts of the poem that imply this is the right direction to take. One is the reference to the owner of the riddle-object being mode bestolene (robbed of reason). The deprivation of sense associated with drinking is also mentioned in the equal-parts-awesome-and-gross Old English Judith. This poem tells the story of a woman who chops off the head of her invading enemy, Holofernes, when he’s drunk. Early on in the poem, we hear: Gefeol ða wine swa druncen / se rica on his reste middan, swa he nyste ræda nanne / on gewitlocan (67b-9a) (Then the powerful one fell in the middle of his bed, so drunk from wine that he did not know any reason in his mind). Although these poems don’t share the same words in Old English, they certainly share a similar sense: drinking is bad…it causes you to pass out and/or do stupid things.

Finally, the clincher for the Wine solution, as far as I’m concerned, is the very last line of the poem, gif hi unrædes ær ne geswicaþ. This line is repeated almost word for word at the end of (SPOILER ALERT) Riddle 27, which is commonly solved as Mead. I should also say that the line has close approximations in Juliana, line 120 (gif þu unrædes ær ne geswicest) and Elene, line 516 (ond þæs unrihtes eft geswicaþ), which are more interested in blasphemy than alcohol…but still.

I’m feeling quite thirsty now, so I’m going to leave you there.

Red wine in glass

Red, red wine. In a non-medieval glass. Obv. Image (by André Karwath) from Wikimedia Commons (licence: CC BY-SA 3.0).

Tags: anglo saxon  exeter book  riddles  old english  solutions  riddle 11 

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Commentary for Exeter Riddle 27

Exeter Riddle 12

MEGANCAVELL

Date: Thu 22 Aug 2013
Matching Commentaries: Commentary for Exeter Riddle 12

This week’s translation is a guest post from the enigmatic Cameron Laird. Cameron is PhD student at the Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Toronto, where he is working on a thesis about this very riddle collection! Stay tuned for his commentary in the next post.



Original text:

Fotum ic fere,      foldan slite,
grene wongas,      þenden ic gæst bere.
Gif me feorh losað,      fæste binde
swearte Wealas,      hwilum sellan men.
5     Hwilum ic deorum      drincan selle
beorne of bosme,      hwilum mec bryd triedeð
felawlonc fotum,      hwilum feorran broht
wonfeax Wale      wegeð ond þyð,
dol druncmennen      deorcum nihtum,
10     wæteð in wætre,      wyrmeð hwilum
fægre to fyre;      me on fæðme sticaþ
hygegalan hond,      hwyrfeð geneahhe,
swifeð me geond sweartne.      Saga hwæt ic hatte,
þe ic lifgende      lond reafige
15     ond æfter deaþe      dryhtum þeowige.

Translation:

I travel on feet, tear the ground,
the green fields, while I bear my spirit.
If life leaves me, I bind fast
swarthy slaves, sometimes better people.
5     Sometimes I give drink to a brave man
from my breast; sometimes a bride treads on me
so proudly with her feet.  Sometimes a dark-haired
slave girl brought from far away clutches and crushes me;
the dim drunken maid in dark nights
10     wets me in water, sometimes warms me
pleasantly by the fire.  A lustful hand
shoves me to a bosom, turns just enough,
and touches me throughout the dark. Say what I am called,
who, living, ravages the land
15     and after death serves men.

Click to show riddle solution?
Ox, Ox-hide, Leather (object), etc.


Notes:

This riddle appears on folios 103v-104r 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 186.

Note that this edition numbers the text Riddle 10: Craig Williamson, ed., The Old English Riddles of the Exeter Book (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1977), page 74.



Tags: anglo saxon  exeter book  riddles  old english  solutions  riddle 12