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