Storms! Philosophy! God! Heaven! Humankind! These are some of the suitably epic subjects that other medieval riddle collections begin with. The first of the Bern riddles, on the other hand, is all about the humble clay pot. But this does not mean that Bern Riddle 1 is mundane. In fact, it is quite the opposite—it describes an ordinary object in very unexpected and fantastical ways.

Pottery is one of the oldest and most important human technologies. Once you learn that clay hardens when baked at high temperatures, you can create all kinds of lovely things—bowls, flasks and jugs, as well as lamps, weights and figurines, and bricks and tiles. Oh, and pots!

Before I start on the riddle, here’s a very brief potted history… of pottery.

Early medieval pottery is incredibly diverse, and it varies greatly by region and time, depending on the material, design, and technologies involved. For example, in England, pottery from the 6th and 7th centuries was typically made on a small scale, shaped by hand, and fired on bonfires. The pottery wheel was introduced by the 9th century and production became more specialised. By the 10th century, a lot of pottery was produced in towns, often using techniques such as wheel-throwing and large, chimneyed kilns.

In Lombardy, where some scholars think the Bern riddles were written, the situation was more complex still, but the general pattern was the same. The turbulent 7th century brought a general decline in quality, but wheels continued to be used in many places, and the pottery industry expanded again from the 800s onwards alongside the newly expanding cities.

Anyway, enough history—let’s get back to the riddle! As with most of the Bern riddles, it is written from the perspective of the object—a technique known as prosopopoeia. The pot riddle is the first of eleven riddles on domestic subjects, and the riddle-creator may have been influenced by chapter XX of Isidore of Seville’s very influential, 7th century encyclopedia, The Etymologies (Salvador-Bello, pages 257-8). On a less scholarly note, when I think of these riddles, I immediately think of the anthropomorphic Mrs Potts, Lumiere and co. in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. Prosopopoeia is still very relevant in our culture today.

Lines 1 and 2 are all about the material of the pot. They challenge us to explain how a daughter can have two fathers, one immortal and the other mortal. Some readers will know that Latin has three genders—masculine, feminine, and neuter. In these riddles, the grammatical gender of the solution is often depicted in terms of human gender identity. For example, the Latin for pot (olla) is feminine, and so the pot becomes a daughter (nata) rather than a son (natus). The same is true about the fathers. The father who dies is probably fire (ignis) and the father who endures is probably clay (limus)—both words are grammatically masculine. Alternatively, Thomas Klein has argued that the father who dies is the maker of the pot and the father who lives is fire or heat (Klein, pages 407-8).

Lines 3 and 4 explain how the clay is softened, shaped and spun. The single word giro (literally “in a circle”) tells us that the riddler was familiar with pottery wheels—which would fit nicely with the idea that the Bern riddles were written in Italy. The mother in line three could be the hand (manus) that kneads the clay or the water that softens it (aqua). This depends on how we understand the word dura (“hard”), which can refer to either the mother or the child.

Just like the Exeter Book riddles, the Bern riddles sometimes use innuendo. Line 3 tells us that a soft thing is twisted into a “suitable form.” This reminds me of the stiþes nathwæt (“something stiff”) of Exeter Riddle 54. It also makes Bern Riddle 1 a medieval precursor to the sexy pottery scene in the popular 1990s film Ghost .

The final two lines refer to the firing of the pot in a kiln or open fire (“when warmed”), which is needed before it can feed people. The riddle then closes with the offer of food to everyone. Thanks, pot—don’t mind if I do!

Bern Riddle 1 is the perfect introduction to the Bern riddles. It contains many of the themes and motifs that we find elsewhere in the collection: children and parents, life and death, feeding and food-giving, the body, and opposites. And, just like the other riddles, it still captures our imagination today, through its uncanny knack of making ordinary objects seem extraordinary and wondrous.

In the last riddle, we met a rather unusual pot. Now, we get to meet the pot’s equally unusual half-sister—the lamp.

The first rule of medieval studies is: 'You do not talk about “The Dark Ages.”' The second rule of medieval studies is: 'You do not talk about “The Dark Ages.”' This is because the term suggests that the Middle Ages were a time of great ignorance or mystery—and, for the most part, they weren’t!

via GIPHY

But, for the sake of an awful joke, I am going to break all the rules. So, I will introduce this commentary by saying: “If you're living in the Dark Ages, you’re going to need a good lamp.”

There is some truth to this. In early medieval Europe, candles and oil lamps were an important source of illumination for all kinds of people, from night-watchmen to manuscript-reading nuns, and they held great cultural and religious significance too. So, it should come as no surprise that riddles were written about them. One early riddler, Symphosius, wrote a lantern riddle (Symphosius Riddle 67). Another, Aldhelm of Malmesbury, wrote a riddle on the candle (Aldhelm Riddle 52).

Like many other Bern riddles, we are expected to guess the identity if the speaker’s mother and father. The obvious choice for a father is fire (ignis), whose flickering form is different to the shining appearance of the lamp. The “old mother” (vetus mater) is a bit trickier. She could be heat (calor) or a candle (candela) from which it is lit, since both of which are grammatically feminine. Another possibility is the olive (oliva) from which the fuel is made. The “seed” (germen) from which the lamp is formed is probably the “spark” (scintilla) from which it is lit.

Line 4 tells us that the flame comes from an “open mouth” (patulo… ore). This would strongly suggest an oil lamp, which burns its fuel using a wick, which sticks out of a hole in the lamp’s body.

Line 5 explains that the lamp is useless if it gets extinguished by the wind or rain. To protext their flames from the elements, lamps were sometimes housed in storm-lanterns constructed from glass or thin, scraped animal horn. Isidore of Seville mentions glass lanterns in his 7th century encyclopedia, The Etymologies (page 402). Similarly, Alfred the Great’s bibliographer, Asser, tells an elaborate story of how Alfred is said to have ordered a special lantern to be made of wood and ox-horn, since his candle-clock kept on being blown out by the wind (Keynes and Lapidge, page 108). Alfred was certainly not the first person to think of this—horn lamps were used from antiquity. The oldest example in Britain was discovered in the summer of 2010, when a metal detector enthusiast found a bronze Roman lamp in a field near Sunbury, Suffolk. Originally, this lantern would have been surrounded by a thin layer of scraped horn.

But why am I talking about storm-lanterns here? After all, they are conspicuously absent in Bern Riddle 2. Well, the lamp is trying to draw our attention to another riddle, Bern Riddle 59. This riddle depicts the moon as if it were a lantern, protected by a special “shell” (testudo). The shell protects it from “rain, snow, frost, ice, and lightning” (imber, nix, pruina, glacies… fulgora) (line 5). When we read the two riddles together, we see that the moon—which is unaffected by the weather—is a better source of light than the lamp is!

It gets even more complicated when you realise that this is also a response to another riddle, Symphosius Riddle 67, which depicts a lantern as if it were the moon. The conceit is that the lantern is made of horn and the moon is “horned.” We will return to this riddle in the commentary for Bern Riddle 59.

The final line of Bern Riddle 2 is also speaking to yet another riddle. It calls the lamp a ‘friend of light’ (amica lucis). This phrase is also used (in a very different way) to describe the papyrus in Bern Riddle 27. Papyrus was a common wicking material in lamps—filling the hole of line 4.

So, there we have it! Riddle 2 starts off with the puzzle of the lamp’s parentage, and it ends with a series of intertextual puzzles. And this is one of the fascinating things about medieval riddles—they are always whispering to each other. And if we listen carefully, we can hear them chatter.

For this riddle, we turn to sodium chloride—or plain ol’ salt.

For the third riddle in a row, we are asked to work out who the father and the mother are in the opening lines. The father is probably the sun, who heats up the sea water, leaving a residue of salt. The mother is the sea water (aqua marina), who ‘gives away’ salt-marks with the ebbing tide. Thus, salt is the child of a curious marriage between two opposing elements—fire and water. The riddler may have also had an etymological connection in mind—according to Isidore, some people thought that sal (‘salt’) was derived from salum (“ocean”) and sol (“sun”) (Isidore, Etymologies, page 318).

Lines 3 and 4 play upon the dissolving and precipitating of salt in water—the Latin words used are solvere (‘to loosen’) and constingere (‘to tie up’) from which we get the modern words ‘solution’ and ‘constrict.’ The processes of binding and unbinding are often used in riddle descriptions, probably because they can also describe the process of composing (“binding”) and solving (“unbinding”) riddles. For example, the mousetrap in Bern Riddle 40 is described as soluta (“unbound”) when it is not set to catch mice.

Lines 5 and 6 focus on the usefulness of salt for humans. Salt was used extensively as a flavouring and as a food preservative for food during the Middle Ages. Cheeses, meats, fish, and many vegetables could all be salted and then stored for several weeks or even months. In a world without fridges, this made salt an indispensable resource for many communities, and so the salt industry and trade were extremely important. So much so, in fact, that this riddle tells us that a country cannot flourish without it. Salt was also used to prevent cadavers from swelling—and this explains the reference to the deceased in line 5.

This is certainly not the most original or inventive riddle in the Bern collection—it is not as playfully metaphorical or outlandishly weird as some of the others. But it does tell us a lot about the importance of salt in early medieval Europe. It also still manages to disguise its subject in some very creative ways… and no riddle worth its salt would do otherwise.

Imagine you are a lovely horse. You happily grow old in your stable, and you like to carry people on your back. But you don’t like being kicked, wearing bridles, or walking on soft ground. Then, one fateful day, you catch a glimpse of yourself in a mirror and—to your horror!—you discover that you aren’t a horse at all. You are… a wooden bench!

This is one of my all-time favourite riddles. It describes a stool or bench that thinks it is a horse. It begins by talking about soft or squishy places (mollibus locis), which makes one think of the difficulties that horses can have in marshy ground. The verb consistere (“to stand”) can also mean to harden or solidify, which seems to be the link with the previous riddle on salt.

So far, so horsey.

But then lines 3 and 4 complicate things, by describing a special kind of ‘horse’ who goes out riding without a human rider, and yet loves to carry people in the stable. Line 5 explains that the bench is tame, since it will never buck its rider, and yet obstinate, in that it does not accept a harness. The final line uses the idea of kicking a mature horse (it is unclear whether this refers to the use of the spurs of a form of animal abuse) to describe the damage that can be incurred on furniture from swinging heels.

Riddles like this one are all about seeing one thing as if it were another. Like all metaphors, they are based around common features. One can find this technique in all kinds of riddles from all kinds of places and periods. Among the most innovative examples I have come across recently are a modern Yorùbá riddle from western Africa that describes a road as a coffin and travellers as corpses (Akinyemi, page 37), an ancient Greek riddle that describes a flute as a ship and the fingers as sailors (The Greek Anthology, page 35, number 14), and a medieval Persian riddle that depicts a jar of beer as a beautiful woman (Seyed-Gohrab, page 30).

In the case of Bern Riddle 4, several common features are mentioned: horses and benches are both sat upon, they both have a ‘home’ inside etc. The most obvious similarity between the two—that horses and benches have four feet—is not mentioned. The riddle also mentions dissimilar features. These are used to reveal that the eccentric horse is actually a bench. In this way, the riddle is a little bit like an optical illusion such as the famous “duck-rabbit” image.

Turn all her mother's pains and benefits
To laughter and contempt, that she may feel
How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is
To have a thankless child.
William Shakespeare, King Lear, Act 1, Scene 4 (lines 278-81).

The pages of English literature are filled with stories of put-upon parents and their thankless children. But I doubt that there are any other examples where the parent has four legs and is made of wood. This innovative riddle transforms the description of a dining table into a tragic lament about filial ingratitude—the human “children” greedily use the table for dinner, before clearing it and putting it away.

Riddle 5 is the first Bern riddle where the parent is speaking, rather than the children—and her speech is laced with emotion. Just as Bern Riddle 4 made us sympathise with the poor bench who is kicked, so Bern Riddle 5 makes us feel sorry for the neglected table, whose fond memories of her infant children contrast with the undeserved abuses that they now heap upon her.

According to Mercedes Salvador-Bello (pages 222-4), the riddle plays upon an established literary tradition of personifying wisdom as a breastfeeding mother. Similar tropes appear in several other riddles. Perhaps the earliest example is found in the Pseudo-Bedean Collectanea, an early medieval collection of 388 texts of different kinds, which probably dates from the eighth century.

Dic mihi, quaeso, quae est illa mulier, quae innumeris filiis ubera porrigit, quae quantum sucta fuerit, tantum inundat?
Tell me please—who is the mother who offers her breasts to innumerable children, and who gives flow as much as she is sucked?
Collectanea Pseudo-Bedae, page 122.

The answer is sapientia (“wisdom”), who offers the milk of knowledge that her “children” need for their intellectual growth.

Depictions of wisdom as a breastfeeding mother appear in several early Irish texts from the 7th and 9th centuries, as well as in another riddle from the 11th, the Bibliotheca magnifica de sapientia collection (Salvador-Bello, pages 216-221). Other riddles play with the motif in different ways. For example, in his riddle on terra (“earth”), Aldhelm depicts the soil as a “nursemaid” (altrix) who feeds all the world (Aldhelm Riddle 1). But the closest analogue to Bern Riddle 5 is another table riddle, Tatwine Riddle 29. Tatwine depicts his table in a similar way—as a generous, well-dressed lady who is stripped and robbed, and whose nudata… membra (“naked limbs,” line 5) are left behind. However, in Tatwine’s riddle, the woman seems to be depicted as a prostitute rather than a nursemaid (Salvador-Bello, page 223-4).

The meaning of the last line is slightly uncertain. Firstly, does “per angula” mean that the children tip their mother on her side or in a corner? Secondly, does “nudata me pede… versant” mean that the table was completely naked (“they tipped me over, naked, by foot”) or merely barefoot (“they turned me over, naked in foot”)? Fortunately, these different readings do not affect the meaning too much.

So, there you have it. Riddles love ideas of overthrow and change, and this one is no exception. The table-mother rears her children with kindness, but they soon grow up and the tables are turned—literally!

“Hold me now. La, la, la, la!” Often, when I am writing on a particular theme, a song starts playing over and over in my head. My internal soundtrack for this commentary has been the 1983 hit, “Hold Me Now,” by The Thompson Twins. And it is a very fitting song, since this is the first of three riddles that are all about things that hold other things—that is to say, containers!

This riddle is all about a cup. Cups are a common riddle topic—they also feature in the Lorsch (Riddle 5) and Aldhelm (Riddle 80) riddles, and possibly the Exeter Book riddles too (Riddle 63). In the Early Middle Ages, cups and goblets were generally made from wood. Those made from glass or metal were luxury items at the upper end of the market.

Glassmaking was a highly specialist skill in early medieval Europe, just as it is today. There is plenty of archaeological and textual evidence for glassmaking in 7th and 8th century England—religious hubs such as Glastonbury Abbey were also early centres for glass production, and several sources mention the emigration of glassmakers from the continent during this period (Broadley, pages 1-7).

Several centres of glassmaking existed in medieval northern Italy, with Venice being the most notable. Some of the earliest evidence for Venetian glassmaking comes from the excavation of a 9th century glass factory on the Venetian island of Torcello. Glass droplets and smashed crucibles were found, alongside what may have been a furnace—the glass was produced by fusing silica with natron (a naturally occurring mix of soda ash and other minerals) imported from the Middle East (Whitehouse, pages 76-7).

The cup in our riddle is made from translucent glass, as made clear by lines 1 and 2—it isn’t decorated with gems, as some expensive metal goblets or chalices might be. Line 3 refers to the melting of silica (i.e. sand or limestone) in a furnace to produce molten glass. It also notes that fire-damaged glass will fracture easily.

Lines 4 to 6 are particularly fun, because they describe the cup as a kind of amorous zombie who kisses everyone. They begin by explaining that the cup cannot rot (unlike wooden cups), and that the cup does not care about death. They then go on to talk about the cup’s own death and resurrection—perhaps with the Christian idea of the resurrection of Jesus in mind. The word defunctus means “dead,” but also “used up’ or “finished.” Thus, the cup that has been finished will be raised again when it is reused. This reminds me of when I worked in a pub—when I cleared the bar, I would ask drinkers if their nearly empty glasses were “dead.” Alternatively, defunctus alludes to the practice of melting down and reusing discarded glass (see Wickham, page 702). The riddle closes with the once-dead object offering kisses. Figurative kissing appears in several Bern riddles, including nos. 5, 35, 42, and 46. In this case, kissing is a metaphor for drinking.

So there we have it. Time and time again, the Bern Riddles show how a few lines about an everyday object can hold the most extraordinary ideas. Next time you drinking from a cup, remember that you are also kissing a zombie.

The second of three container riddles, this is an interesting and rather tricky riddle, which describes an animal bladder used in two different ways. Bladders, usually from domesticated pigs, are excellently stretchy containers.

Lines 1 and 2 are all about stretchiness. They refer to the use of a bladder to carry water when used by humans. In line 1, the expanding bladder “follows” (sequi) the liquid that it hides when it stretches as it is filled. The beating of the liquid in line 2 probably refers to the water sloshing around during a traveller’s journey (cursus).

At this stage, the bladder still speaks in the first person. However, from line 3 onwards, the third person is used—and then it starts to describe an empty bladder. This is introduced with the apparent paradox of a thing that is both “filled” (impletur) and “empty of stuff” (vacua rebus). The problem of the vacuum was an ancient one, which had been debated by Plato and Aristotle. As Paul Winterfeld observed, we should not be surprised that the Bern riddler also found this scientific-philosophical problem intriguing (Winterfeld, p. 292).

The weightless citizen in line 4 is air, which the bladder holds for as long as it “endures” (permanet). Some manuscripts replace civem (‘citizen’) with cibum (“food, nourishment”), but the idea of a sausage or other food that is both empty and filled does not really work.

In the final two lines, we are told that the bladder floats when blown up with air, and it cannot carry anything when burst. The Middle Ages had balloons too!

It is amazing that six short lines about an ordinary container can hold so many extraordinary ideas. Riddle 7 begins with the bladder’s stretchiness, before taking in vacuums, the weight of air, and balloons. As I suggested in the previous commentary, riddles are perhaps the most fantastic containers of all.

There are several words that describe the last of the container riddles. Egg-cellent! Egg-quisite! Ab-shell-utely egg-ceptional! Can you guess what it is yet?

Line 1 begins egg-actly as you would expect a riddle about eggs—with a ‘who came first’ paradox. However, this is not the usual chicken-and-egg paradox, but rather an embryo-and-egg one. The paradox is resolved by recognising that the mother (the egg) and child (the embryo) are siblings because they were both born together. Unusual birth stories like this are very common in the Bern riddles.

Line 2 explains that the egg remains unbroken whilst it is ‘pregnant.’ The word intacta can mean “intact,” but also “chaste,” which plays on the idea of a virgin birth. Although the Bern riddles are never explicitly Christian, they do occasionally refer subtly to religious motifs such as this one.

The final two lines hint at the idea of caesarean birth and maternal death during childbirth, but they really describe the breaking of the egg by the emerging young.

This riddle shares several interesting language features with others in the collection. Firstly, rather than using the genitive personal pronoun, mei (“my”), it uses the dative, mihi (“to me”). This dative of possession is not at all unusual, but the Bern riddler seems to have been a fan of this construction—they use it extensively. Secondly, this is the first time that we encounter the words venter (“belly, womb, bowels”) and fundere (“to pour out,” “to give birth to”)—both words feature prominently in other descriptions of birth and the body in the Bern riddles (see Riddles 19, 21, 23, 31, 40, 47, and 53).

This takes us to the end of the “container” series of riddles. Sadly, it also brings us to the end of all my egg puns. I guess the yoke is on me!

Riddles are usually fun, but this one really grinds you down—because it is about millstones!

Three Bern riddles describe the process of processing cereals into flour. Riddle 12 describes how it is reaped and threshed, and Riddle 17 describes how the flour is sieved. In this riddle, the grain is ground into flour—and this process described in a charmingly bizarre fashion.

Millstones always come in pairs. In larger, water-powered mills, a runnerstone would rotate and grind against a static bedstone. In smaller handmills, a pair of quernstones would be placed together and the top stone would be rotated by hand—this could be a laborious process. Animals could also be used, as demonstrated by the Old English word esolcweorn (lit. “donkey-millstone”). Grain was poured through the hole in the centre of the stone, and, once ground into flour, found its way out to the millstone’s outer edge through furrows cut into the stones. Although windmills did not arrive in Europe until the 11th century, watermills and handmills were both common across Europe from ancient times. Because of its economic and cultural importance, milling is a common theme in all kinds of medieval documentary and literary texts, from Gregory the Great in the 6th century to Chaucer and Boccaccio in the 14th.

Now back to the riddle! It is easy to overlook the poetic form of the Bern Riddles, simply because the content is so interesting. But this riddle begins with a great example of how these riddles can use alliteration and assonance within and across lines. The word “Eva” alliterates and assonates nicely with the previous riddle subject, ovum (“egg”), as well as the words aevum (“age”) and ego (“I”) in the same line. The first line also contains two-fold alliteration on s- (“senior,” “sum,” “senior”).

Line 1 also contains an intriguing sub-riddle: why is the millstone older than Eve? It could simply refer to the hard-wearing limestones, granites, and sandstones that were typically used for milling. Or it could allude to the fact that, according to Genesis, God created the earth on the first day, and dry land—including rocks—on the third day, three days before he fashioned Adam and Eve. But it also seems to be drawing on wider associations of millstones with cyclic time and aging—the stone’s hardness and heaviness, circular shape, and associations with work naturally lent itself to this. For example, in Gregory the Great’s Pastoral Rule, a reference to the millstone in the Gospel of Matthew (Matt. 18:6) is said to represent “the cycle and labour of this worldly life” (secularis vitae circuitus ac labor) (Gregory, PL77:16B). When viewed in this way, the riddle seems to be playing with the idea that the millstone is as old and unstoppable as worldly time itself.

Line 3 relies on the extended sense of vita (“life”) as “sustenance.” The millstone takes the “many” dead grains and transforms them into flour for everyone. Line 4 continues this theme, by explaining that the millstone destroys or humbles (prosternere) thousands, i.e. it crushes thousands of individual grains. It does this without striking or punching them, since the process is one of crushing and cutting.

Line 5 alludes to a very real problem. When turned without grain, millstones could create dangerous sparks, and when combined with combustible flour in the air, this was a serious hazard for millers. Thus, the millstone makes food when fed, but fire when “hungry.”

Riddles like this one rely on a whole host of cultural and intertextual references, and we have only touched the surface here. We often imagine of writing as a creative act, but we do not often think this about reading. This is one of the great things about the Bern Riddles—you get to be a really creative and imaginative reader, trying out all kinds of associations and seeing if they fit. Even if you know a riddle’s solutions straight away, it is only the beginning of the game. If I wanted to put it into puns, I might even say that the best riddle-readers go against the grain and leave no stone unturned. If you can do that, then riddling is sedimentary, my dear Watson!

Some riddles are more straightforward than others. But what about those riddles where it is not clear whether we are supposed to read them literally or figuratively? Well, this is one of them.

I have translated the title of this riddle as ‘On the ladder.’ However, it seems to be referring to a single rung or step, or perhaps the side-rail of a ladder. The riddle-creature explains that if she lived alone, then she could not go upon the directam viam (“straight path”). However, when joined with her twin sister—twin because they are identical—they allow everyone an iter velox (“speedy journey”) all the way to the top.

The riddle echoes several other Bern riddles. The opening line about “firm feet” (firma planta) recalls the “squishy places” of the extra-brilliant Riddle 4 and its eccentric horse-bench. Similarly, the closing two lines are reminiscent of the final line of Riddle 4, when the horse-bench explains that he dislikes being kicked. In this case, if the ladder is to be used, she must put up with having its feet stood on all the time. The “firm places” trope also turns up in the fish riddle, Riddle 30.

I mentioned at the start of this commentary that I am not sure how straightforward this riddle is. The question is whether the ladder just represents a ladder, or whether it has a deeper and more spiritual significance. On the one hand, there is no overt religious message in the riddle. It could be all about a very ordinary, bog-standard ladder. The riddle tells us that people use the ladder to reach what they want—perhaps the fruit or honey mentioned in nearby riddles. On the other hand, it might suggest the occasion in the Book of Genesis when the patriarch Jacob dreamt of a ladder or stairway leading from earth to heaven, with angels travelling up and down it (Genesis 28:12). In medieval exegesis, the ladder was an allegory for the path to heaven that the faithful must take, with the steps representing the piety, virtues, or ascetic struggles that led there.

I will leave you with this question: is the ladder supposed to be understood literally or figuratively? Or perhaps both? Is it is the kind of ladder you’d find in a shed, or is it an allegorical stairway to heaven.

Regular readers of The Riddle Ages will have noticed that I like to communicate ideas using tangentially related music videos. This occasion is no exception—our riddle plays upon what it means to be dead or alive, so take it away, Bon Jovi.

Riddles often use binaries to generate surprising ideas; one of the most common is the binary of living/dead. In Line 1, the dead wood (in the form of a ship) carries a maiorem laborem (“greater burden”) than the living tree did. Interestingly, although death in the early Middle Ages was often depicted as a relief from a lifetime of hardship, here the idea is reversed. The “greater burden” is, of course, all the contents of the ship that it carries. Line 2 continues this theme: the wood does far more work when lying down than standing up. Again, this is the exact opposite of us humans.

Line 3-4 describe the unloading of a ship as if it were an animal being disembowelled. The word viscera (“innards”) occurs on three other occasions in the Bern collection (Riddles 23, 24, and 32)., and each time it is used in a new and creative way. It also appears in Exeter Riddle 90 (the only Latin riddle of the Exeter Book). The various uses of viscera are testament to the importance in riddles of disclosing the hidden interior of things.

The creature tells us that it is intact and inedible once dead, before returning to the theme of travel and feet from the previous riddle. When alive, the creature moves as if it was never there, leaving no marks behind it. This “no traces” trope is very common in the medieval riddle tradition, from Symphosius to the Exeter Book. For example, Symphosius’ Riddle 13, which is also about a ship, tells us that curro vias multas, vestigia nulla relinquens (“I run many roads, leaving no tracks behind”). Alcuin of York even uses it as a trick question in his mathematical puzzles, Propositiones ad acuendos iuvenes. He asks, Bos qui tota die arat, quot uestigia faciat in ultima riga (“If an ox ploughs for the whole day, how many footprints does he make in the final furrow?”). The solution is “none,” since the plough that the ox pulls will cover all his footsteps with earth.

This riddle manages to pack so much into six lines: live and death turned upside down, things turned inside out, and a traveller that leaves no traces. If you want to compare it to another very interesting ship riddle, you can read Megan’s commentary for Exeter Riddle 32 here.

One of the hallmarks of the early medieval riddle tradition is describing ordinary things in fantastic ways. A description of the humblest object can become an extraordinary drama, full of twists and turns. Our subject today, Riddle 12, is a tiny epic masterpiece. It takes the story of a cereal grain being prepared for sowing and transforms it into a tragic story of parental self-sacrifice. It is the second of a trilogy of riddles on cereal crops, along with Riddles 9 and 17.

The story is a violent one, just like Bern Riddle 9, which describes milling as a massacre. Are we meant to feel sorry for the grain? After all, we are told that no one mourns it. I think we are, at least momentarily, before we realise the absurdity of it all. The death is the reaping, and the torture is the threshing and winnowing. Since this grain will eventually be sown rather than used for food, the story does not include milling for flour. The grain undergoes all these hardships so it eventually will produce a new cereal crop. However, this noble act is ignored by “all parents” (cuncti parentes), who are glad at the grain’s death. Presumably these parents are the humans, and their rejoicing is the festivals that developed around harvesting and threshing.

The grain’s burial is, as you might have already guessed, its sowing, but the reference to the vilis urna (“cheap or vile urn”) is a bit trickier to explain. In one sense, it seems to be referring to the older, pagan practice of storing the ashes of the dead in cremation urns—the ancient Romans built underground tombs, or columbaria, to store theirs. But how does this refer to agriculture? Perhaps the urn is the furrow into which the grain is sown, although you would expect this to be described as a grave.

After all this hardship and sadness, the plot twists dramatically in the final line. Turning the tables on its oppressors, the grain rises from the dead in the maiori forma (“greater form”) of a new cereal plant. This line also has echoes of the Resurrection of Christ—the grain, who has willingly accepted death for the sake of his children and then been entombed, now rises from death. But it would be wrong to claim that the whole riddle is an allegory for Christ, since it is hard to explain why Jesus would be pusillus (“minuscule”) or buried in an urn. Unlike many other medieval riddles, the Bern Riddles are never particularly religious, and they can be quite profane at times. In this respect, they really go against the grain.*

*Shame on me for reusing the pun from my commentary for Riddle 9.