Exeter Riddle 38
MEGANCAVELL
Date: Wed 27 May 2015Matching Commentaries: Commentary for Exeter Riddle 38
Ic þa wiht geseah wæpnedcynnes,
geoguðmyrþe grædig; him on gafol forlet
ferðfriþende feower wellan
scire sceotan, on gesceap þeotan.
5 Mon maþelade, se þe me gesægde:
“Seo wiht, gif hio gedygeð, duna briceð;
gif he tobirsteð, bindeð cwice.”
I saw a creature of the weaponed kind/male sex,
greedy with youthful joy; as tribute for him
the life-saving one let four springs
shoot forth brightly, murmur to his delight.
5 Someone spoke, the one who said to me:
“That creature, if she survives, breaks the hills;
if he dies, binds the living.”
Notes:
This riddle appears on folio 109v 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 199.
Note that this edition numbers the text Riddle 36: Craig Williamson, ed., The Old English Riddles of the Exeter Book (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1977), page 90.
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