Riddle Ages

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.


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, 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

Exeter Riddle 12 in Spanish / en Español

MEGANCAVELL

Date: Tue 04 Jan 2022

This Spanish translation of Riddle 10 from the Exeter Book is by Carlos M. Cepero. Carlos is an architect who was born, raised and lives in Rosario, Argentina. He studied English and German at and after school, is a ravenous reader and a declared Britophile. He is passionate about medieval literature, especially Old English and Old Norse literature. Thank you for your translation, Carlos!

Esta traducción al español del Acertijo 10 del Libro de Exeter es de Carlos M. Cepero. Carlos es un arquitecto que nació, creció y vive en Rosario, Argentina. Estudió inglés y alemán en y después de la escuela, es un lector voraz y un britófilo declarado. Es un apasionado de la literatura medieval, especialmente la literatura antigua inglesa y nórdica antigua. ¡Gracias por tu traducción, Carlos!

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:

Ando a pie, rajando la tierra,

los verdes campos, mientras llevo mi alma.

Si pierdo la vida, ato firmemente

a morenos esclavos (1), a veces a mejores hombres.

5    A veces doy de beber,

de mi pecho, al guerrero, a veces la novia pisotéame

con pies harto orgullosos; a veces, traída de alueñe,

la doncella de cabello oscuro me lleva y esclaviza,

atolondradamente ebria en negras noches,

10    me empapa en agua,  me calienta a veces

placenteramente junto al fuego; mete en mi busto

manos lascivas, volteándome con frecuencia,

frotando mi negrura. Decid cómo me llamo,

que vivo saqueo la tierra,

15    y tras la muerte sirvo a los hombres.

Click to show riddle solution?

Un buey, una piel de buey, un objeto de cuero

Notes:

(1) El término Wealas (Galeses) se terminó usando para referirse a los esclavos, debido al alto número de esclavos Bretones, si bien siempre significando “esclavo bretón” (a diferencia de términos como esne o þræl) / The word Wealas (Welsh) came to be used to refer to slaves, due to the high number of native British slaves, although always meaning "British slave" (unlike words such as esne or þræl).

Tags: anglo saxon exeter book old english riddle 12 Carlos M. Cepero

Commentary for Exeter Riddle 12

MEGANCAVELL

Date: Sat 07 Sep 2013

Matching Riddle: Exeter Riddle 12

This post once again comes to us from Cameron Laird:
The solution to this one is the ever-helpful Ox (OE Oxa), who not only pulled the plough for planting crops but also provided leather for all sorts of useful things in early medieval England. Ælfric (c. 955-1010), an abbot of the monastery at Eynsham, tells us that the farmer or ploughman (OE yrþlingc) led his oxen to the field early in the morning and yoked them to the plough (OE sulh), which was fitted with blades to cut and turn over the soil (Colloquy, lines 5-11, 94-97). Using a sharp poker to motivate the poor oxen, the farmer guided the plough back and forth across the field before seeding. Since there were no big work horses in those days, the early English used the ox as their go-to beast for plowing fields, though some poorer folks who couldn’t afford to buy, feed, and house these expensive animals had to push their ploughs around by hand – just wait till Riddle 21 to see how much fun they had! But if you were a farmer in early medieval England, you’d definitely want to have some oxen so that they could do all the hard work for you. So valuable were livestock, in general, that the very word for money in Old English, feoh, also means cattle or livestock. No wonder farmers had someone called an ox-herd (OE oxanhyrde) watch over and protect their oxen from thieves whenever they weren’t ploughing. Even after death, the ox was good to have around, providing meat to eat and also skin for leather. According to Ælfric, the early medieval shoe-maker (OE sceowyrhta) made a lot more than just shoes (OE sceos) with this leather, including bags (OE pusan), bottles (OE butericas), pouches (OE fætelsas) and stuff for riding horses like reins (OE bridelþwancgas) and straps for the spurs (OE spurleþera). Oh, and did I mention the leather pants?! (OE leþerhosa).
Though there’s – perhaps, regrettably – no mention of leather pants in Riddle 12, it’s the ox’s many uses, especially after death, that take up most of the riddle. Lines 3b-4b portray the speaker as leather straps (“I bind fast swarthy slaves, sometimes better people”). In lines 5a-6a, the speaking leather has been made into a drinking vessel (“I give drink to a brave man from my breast”). Then, lines 6b-7a describe a woman walking on him as if he were shoes (“a bride treads on me so proudly with her feet”). Finally, a fourth object is described in lines 7b-13a, but what it is exactly is the subject of much debate, and I’ll return to it later. But besides leather objects, Riddle 12 also portrays the ox as a living beast (“I travel on feet, tear the ground, the green fields, while I bear my spirit”) and again at the end (“I … who, living, ravages the land”). In both cases, the ox’s life is immediately contrasted with its fate after death as leather (first at line 3a “If life leaves me …” and also at line 15 “and after death serves men”). In fact, this contrast of the ox’s life and death in Riddle 12 is one of the main reasons we can be sure the answer to this one is, in fact, an Ox. Let me explain.


The gaur is not technically an ox, but it sure is impressive!

Although almost all the riddles in the Exeter Book are unanswered, many share – at times striking – similarities to Latin riddles, most of which were composed by early English folks too. They really loved riddles! Most manuscripts of these Latin riddle collections include solutions, so we can be fairly certain what their answers are. Riddle 12 is closely related to not just one but a whole bunch of Latin riddles which are solved as Young Bull (Latin Iuvencus) or a Calf (Latin Vitulus) and the like (see Bitterli, pages 26-34). All these contrast the animal’s life of labour and its uses after death, like the one by Aldhelm (c. 639-709), where the young bull says “while living I break up the deepest clods of earth with a great exertion of force, but when my spirit leaves these cold limbs, I can restrain men with terrible bonds” (1). Later Latin versions retain the same duality of life and death as well as describing various uses for leather like bonds and shoes, so there seems to be a tradition of riddling this topic using the same sort of clues. In fact, besides Riddle 12, two other Exeter Book riddles share details with these same Latin enigmas and are solved unanimously by scholars as Ox (and/or Leather: OE Leþer or Ox-hide: OE Oxanhyd) (2).
What makes Riddle 12 unique within this tradition is all that funny business between lines 7b-13a. What is that dumb, drunk girl doing to that piece of leather? Doing is right! She clasps, crushes, wets, warms, and generally has her way with our long-gone ox. Nina Rulon-Miller points out that the description fits a process of hardening leather called cuir bouilli (literally, “cooked leather”) in which soaked leather is molded into a desired shape, heated over a straw fire, and sealed with a mixture of beeswax, soot, and resin from pine trees (pages 119-21). In this case, the girl may be making something like a hard leather flask, though it’s also possible that the scene portrays the girl using an object such a leather shammy for cleaning dishes. Regardless, amid all the confusing flurry of activity performed by the girl, the description takes on another meaning altogether, which seems to be – wait for it – female masturbation with a leather dildo! To reflect this double-meaning, Nina provides two translations of Riddle 12, culminating in lines 11b-13a: the clean version, describing the cuir bouilli process, reads, “she pierces my surface with her skillful hand; she turns me often, rotates me through a black substance,” while the lewd version reads, “with her wanton hand she thrusts me into her womb; she writhes excessively, she swivels me all around her blackness” (Baum, page 125). As Paull Baum first pointed out, the last verb performed by the girl, swifan, which typically means “to sweep” or “to revolve,” is also related to the Middle English Word swiven, which means “to have sex” (page 24).
The sexuality of Riddle 12 has sparked questions about the audience who read this and other lewd riddles in the Exeter Book: how religious were they? Did they view this scene with laughter, with scorn, or both? These questions are further complicated by the identity of the girl in question, whose low social status is highlighted several times. First, she is called a wale, a word which means both “Welsh woman” and “female slave,” since the early English often took their Welsh neighbours into captivity. It is unclear which sense is meant in Riddle 12, as both could be described as brought from afar (line 7b) and dark-haired (OE won-feax). But despite her low-class, she is, at least, not tied-up like her male counterparts are in line 4a (OE swearte wealas). And, in addition to giving her an active role throughout the riddle, the poet has gone to much effort to render the slave-girl a figure of poetic interest by dedicating three of four compound-words to describe her: she is dark-haired and a drunk-handmaiden (or drunk-slave- girl: OE drunc-mennen) whose hand is lustful or wanton (OE hyge-gal: hyge = thought, mind, heart; gal = wanton, lascivious, wicked). All three appear nowhere else in Old English, though it seems like they probably have pejorative connotations. Still, by being complex, compound words they add to the ambiguity of the action portrayed in lines 7b-13a where the poet evokes his raunchy scene.  
That’s all for this week, folks. Now here’s a special treat for those of you who’ve managed to plough through this post to the end:


Technically this is a Highland Cow, as opposed to an early medieval ox. But still…Photo courtesy of C.J.W. Brown.

Notes:

(1) Aldhelm's Enigma 83, lines 3-6: “vivens nam terrae glebas cum stirpibus imis nisu virtutis validae disrumpo feraces; at vero linquit dum spiritus algida membra, nexibus horrendis homines constringere possum.”

(2) Spoiler alert! It's Riddles 38 and 72.

References and Suggested Reading:

Baum, Paull F. Anglo-Saxon Riddles of the Exeter Book. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1963.

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, pages 26-34.

Cameron, Esther. “Leather-work.” In The Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Anglo-Saxon England. Edited by M. Lapidge et al. Oxford: Blackwell, 1999, pages 280-1.

Higley, Sarah L. “The Wanton Hand: Reading and Reaching Into Grammars and Bodies in Old English Riddle 12.” In Naked before God: Uncovering the Body in Anglo-Saxon England. Edited by Benjamin C. Withers and Jonathan Wilcox. Medieval European Studies, vol. 3. Morgantown, WV: West Virginia University Press, 2003, pages 29-59.

Rulon-Miller, Nina. “Sexual Humor and Fettered Desire in Exeter Book Riddle 12.” In Humour in Anglo-Saxon Literature. Edited by Jonathan Wilcox. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2000, pages 99-126.

Tanke, John W. “Wonfeax wale: Ideology and Figuration in the Sexual Riddles of the Exeter Book.” In Class and Gender in Early English Literature. Edited by Britton J. Harwood and Gillian R. Overing. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1994, pages 21-42.

Note that this post was edited for clarity on 15 January 2021.

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

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Commentary for Exeter Riddle 21

Exeter Riddle 13

MATTHIASAMMON

Date: Thu 12 Sep 2013

Matching Commentaries: Commentary for Exeter Riddle 13

Original text:

Ic seah turf tredan,      X wæron ealra,

VI gebroþor      ond hyra sweostor mid;

hæfdon feorg cwico.      Fell hongedon

sweotol ond gesyne      on seles wæge

5     anra gehwylces.      Ne wæs hyra ængum þy wyrs,

ne siðe þy sarre,      þeah hy swa sceoldon

reafe birofene,      rodra weardes

meahtum aweahte,      muþum slitan

haswe blede.      Hrægl bið geniwad

10     þam þe ær forðcymene      frætwe leton

licgan on laste,      gewitan lond tredan.

Translation:

I saw them walk on the ground, there were ten of them in all,

six brothers and their sisters with them;

they had living spirits. The skins of each of them hung

clear and visible on the walls

5     of the hall. It was not worse for any of them,

nor the journey more grievous, though thus they,

bereft of their clothing, awoken through the might

of heaven’s guardian, were compelled to tear with their mouths

the dusky harvest. The garments are renewed

10     for them who, before having come forth, left their trappings

lying in their wake, they depart to walk on the ground.

Click to show riddle solution?

Ten chickens (this is the generally accepted one), ten pheasants, butterfly cocoon, alphabet, moth, fingers and gloves

Notes:

This riddle appears on folio 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 187.

Note that this edition numbers the text Riddle 11: Craig Williamson, ed., The Old English Riddles of the Exeter Book (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1977), pages 74-5.

Tags: anglo saxon exeter book riddles old english solutions riddle 13

Related Posts:
Exeter Riddle 22
Exeter Riddle 26
Exeter Riddle 39

Exeter Riddle 13 in Bosnian / на босанском

MEGANCAVELL

Date: Tue 04 Jan 2022

Denis Ferhatović was born in a city that no longer exists, in a country that no longer exists. He is the author of Borrowed Objects and the Art of Poetry: Spolia in Old English Verse (2019). He loves to read, think, and write about languages, travels, translation, queerness, art, cats, food, and many other things.

Денис Ферхатовић је рођен у граду који више не постоји, у држави која више не постоји. Аутор је књиге Позајмљени предмети и умијеће поезије: Сполије у староенглеском пјесништву (2019). Воли да чита, размишља и пише о језицима, путовањима, превођењу, настраности, умјетности, мачкама, храни и многочему другоме.

Original text:

Ic seah turf tredan,      X wæron ealra,

VI gebroþor      ond hyra sweostor mid;

hæfdon feorg cwico.      Fell hongedon

sweotol ond gesyne      on seles wæge

5     anra gehwylces.      Ne wæs hyra ængum þy wyrs,

ne siðe þy sarre,      þeah hy swa sceoldon

reafe birofene,      rodra weardes

meahtum aweahte,      muþum slitan

haswe blede.      Hrægl bið geniwad

10     þam þe ær forðcymene      frætwe leton

licgan on laste,      gewitan lond tredan.

Translation:

Видјех, по топраку ходе    десеторо њих

Шесторица браће    са сестрама својим

Пуни жеље за животом. Опне им висише

Јасне и очевидне    на дуварима одаје

5     Од сваког понаособ. Никоме не бје захмет

Нити им пут бје мучан    премда су морали

Робе лишени        куветом цара на небу

Из сна пробуђени    устима раскинути

Жyћкасто жито.     Одјећа бје обновљена

10     Онима који стигавши   прво оставише оправу

Да лежи на тлу    и почеше да земљом ходе.

Click to show riddle solution?

шест пијеваца и четири кокошке

Tags: exeter book old english riddle 13 denis ferhatovic

Commentary for Exeter Riddle 13

MATTHIASAMMON

Date: Tue 08 Oct 2013

Matching Riddle: Exeter Riddle 13

Having moved into the realm of four-footed animals with Riddle 12, we now leave the oxen to plough his lone furrow and return – supposedly – to the realm of birds. That being said, we immediately encounter the riddle’s first paradox: both the first and last half line refer to the riddle object’s ability to walk or tread (tredan) on the ground (turf and lond). However, some of the motifs used in this riddle may be familiar by now: the feorg cwico (living spirit) mentioned in line 3 takes us back to Riddles 9, 10 and 12 and strongly suggests that we are dealing with an animal. The hrægl of line 9 recalls the swan’s feathers being described by the same term back in Riddle 7. And thus, the argument goes, we are dealing with a kind of bird. At the centre of the riddle is again the transformation that this creature undergoes, when it is awoken through God’s might and gains its living spirit. However, the riddler wants us to puzzle over a more serious paradox: what kind of creature lives, walks and eats even though its skin is hanging on the wall? And who are the six brothers and four sisters of the first two lines? 

Early solutions to this riddle focused on the transformation aspect and suggested, for example, a caterpillar which metamorphoses into a butterfly. But I’m sure you’ll agree that this does not really cover all the clues the riddle gives us. A more metaphorical solution was that of ten fingers in a glove (which accounts for the numerological clue and gloves were made out of a fell or skin, but the second part of the riddle doesn’t really fit the metaphor). It was the German scholar Moritz Trautmann who first hit upon the solution of "chick" or "chicken." This quickly gained general acceptance as it matches something we know from the real world: in this reading, the "skin on the wall" is the membrane on the inside of the egg that a newly-hatched chick leaves behind, its "renewed" garment is its new down. Furthermore, the idea of the chick shedding its skin as its distinctive aspect seems to have been part of a wider riddle tradition. There are several Latin riddles that play on this phenomenon; in fact most of them are boiled down (the pun is courtesy of Martha Bayless, who edited one of these Latin riddles) to a couple of lines or so but they all mention the shedding of the skin. On the other hand, one of our readers, Linden Currie, suggests that the "skin hanging on the wall" may in fact refer to the caul of a new-born calf which was used in early medieval Iceland to cover the window-holes in houses when stretched over a frame and made translucent to let light in. Might we not imagine something similar for early medieval England? Such an object, Linden argues, could easily be described as sweotol in the sense of "transparent" as well as "visible" (gesyne). And would the description of something "treading the ground" not fit a calf better than a chicken? Such a solution would also yoke (or yolk?) this riddle to its predecessor.*

At any rate, I hear you cry, what of the six brothers and four sisters? Back in 1950, Erika von Erhardt-Siebold hit on an ingenious solution to this part: she suggested that the answer to the riddle in Old English is ten ciccenu or "ten chickens." Now count the number of consonants and vowels in this phrase and what do you get? Six…and four! Brilliant! Only…the word ciccenu doesn’t really exist in Old English, at least in the texts we have. The standard Old English (or West Saxon) version of this word would be cicenu which ruins our nice solution (and it should really be tien, but we won’t mention that). But we can’t rule out that this is a possible Northern spelling, and nobody has really come up with a better solution – the most recent commentators also accept it, though Patrick Murphy is slightly unhappy with the fact that the "ten" of the answer refers both to the number of chickens in the solution and to the letters in the "name" of the solution (though this is again not unknown in medieval riddle tradition in general). 

 
Ten chickens! What are the chances of finding a photo with the right number? Image from Wikimedia Commons (licence: CC BY-SA 4.0).

Murphy has also pointed out that this riddle may evoke other associations: some creatures who lose their garments, are "awoken" by their creator and have to walk the earth and are forced to eat what they can get through their own toil? I hope you’ve realised this is of course the story of Adam and Eve being cast out of Eden. Murphy finds some parallels between the language of this riddle and Old English poetic versions of the Edenic story. Somebody who focuses on this allusive metaphorical reading might come up with the solution Adam ond Eue – and if we count the consonants and vowels there…I assume you can guess what the answer is. Murphy is not necessarily disputing the accepted solution but it is a reminder that it is worth keeping in mind that riddles can work on several levels.

By the way, despite all this work, there are some bits in the riddle that have so far defied solution, in particular the haswe blede of line 9. Both of these words have a range of meanings – if we look at the work of previous translators and commentators, the average meaning is something like "grey(ish) fruit," though nobody has been able to come up with a convincing explanation beyond "the stuff that new-born chicks eat" – which, like greyish fruit, is slightly unsatisfying. Any thoughts on this (and anything else) would be welcome in the comments!
Not wishing to overegg the pudding, I have chickened out of giving you the full arguments, but if you want to brood on it a bit more, here are some references you can follow up on:

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, pages 115-21.

Murphy, Patrick J. Unriddling the Exeter Riddles. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2011, pages 53-60 and 91-95.

von Erhardt-Siebold, Erika. “Old English Riddle 13.” Modern Language Notes, vol. 65 (1950), pages 97-100.

Williamson, Craig, ed., The Old English Riddles of the Exeter Book. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1977, pages 168-70.

*If you want to know more details, Linden can be contacted under linden.currie(at)gmail.com.

Tags: anglo saxon exeter book riddles old english solutions riddle 13

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Exeter Riddle 13

Exeter Riddle 14

MEGANCAVELL

Date: Mon 28 Oct 2013

Matching Commentaries: Commentary for Exeter Riddle 14

Original text:

Ic wæs wæpenwiga.      Nu mec wlonc þeceð

geong hagostealdmon      golde ond sylfore,

woum wirbogum.      Hwilum weras cyssað,

hwilum ic to hilde      hleoþre bonne

5     wilgehleþan,      hwilum wycg byreþ

mec ofer mearce,      hwilum merehengest

fereð ofer flodas      frætwum beorhtne,

hwilum mægða sum      minne gefylleð

bosm beaghroden;      hwilum ic bordum sceal,

10     heard, heafodleas,      behlyþed licgan,

hwilum hongige      hyrstum frætwed,

wlitig on wage,      þær weras drincað,

freolic fyrdsceorp.      Hwilum folcwigan

on wicge wegað,      þonne ic winde sceal

15     sincfag swelgan      of sumes bosme;

hwilum ic gereordum      rincas laðige

wlonce to wine;      hwilum wraþum sceal

stefne minre      forstolen hreddan,

flyman feondsceaþan.      Frige hwæt ic hatte.

Translation:

I was an armed warrior. Now a bold

young retainer covers me with gold and silver,

twisted coils of wire. Sometimes men kiss me,

sometimes I call close comrades

5     to battle with my voice, sometimes a horse bears me

over the bounds, sometimes a sea-steed

draws me over the depths, brightly decorated,

sometimes one of the girls fills

my bosom, ring-adorned; sometimes I must lie

10     on boards, hard, headless, despoiled,

sometimes I hang decorated with ornaments,

appealing on the wall, where men drink,

comely army-attire. Sometimes battle-warriors

carry me on a horse, when I must swallow,

15     treasure-stained, breath from a certain one’s breast;

sometimes I proudly call with cries

warriors to their wine; sometimes I have to reclaim

stolen goods from enemies with my voice,

put to flight fiendish foes. Reveal what I am called.

Click to show riddle solution?

Horn

Notes:

This riddle appears on folio 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 187.

Note that this edition numbers the text Riddle 12: Craig Williamson, ed., The Old English Riddles of the Exeter Book (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1977), page 75.

Tags: anglo saxon exeter book riddles old english solutions riddle 14

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Exeter Riddle 63

Commentary for Exeter Riddle 14

MEGANCAVELL

Date: Mon 28 Oct 2013

Matching Riddle: Exeter Riddle 14

So, revealing that my childhood nickname was “Moo Moo” (thanks, Dad) is endearing, right? Well, maybe it’s because of that personal connection, but I really have a soft spot for the Old English cattle riddles. Hopefully you’ll all remember the potential “Ox and Ox-hide” of Riddle 12, and I’ll go ahead and hint that you haven’t seen the last of early medieval oxen (say that twelve times fast) in this collection. Admittedly, this riddle is more interested in the horn itself, rather than the animal that provided it, but still.


Me with Corpus Christi College, Cambridge’s aurochs drinking horn at my matriculation ceremony in 2008. Photo courtesy of James Brown. But not THE James Brown.

I guess the first order of business concerns the solution. But, unfortunately for the purposes of filling out a full post, there really hasn’t been a great deal of debate for this one. In fact, because the solution “Horn” – which is the same word in Old and Modern English – has received such wide support, the riddle hasn’t been hugely popular in scholarship. But even if the solution is a bit…well…obvious, the poem still deserves to be read!
In fact, it’s a very stylish poem, as far as Old English poetics are concerned. Many of the lines employ double alliteration, which is when two words (or elements of a compound word) in the first half-line share the same initial sound as a word in the second half-line. Like “w” in line 1: Ic wæs wæpenwiga. Nu mec wlonc þeceð. In fact, there, we’ve got three “w”s in the first half-line! Calm down, poet! Sheesh! Old English poetry doesn’t require double alliteration by any stretch – the poem would still be nice and poetic-like if the half-lines were linked by only one alliterating word in each (like “g” in line 2: geong hagostealdmon golde ond sylfore). So 12+ lines of double alliteration is extra fancy. The reason I say “12+” is because it could be argued that lines 4 and 11 doubly alliterate too…it’s just that adverbs like hwilum (sometimes) don’t usually contribute to the alliteration.
But this is all getting terribly technical. Let’s pause over the use of hwilum for a moment. It certainly deserves attention because this word is used no fewer than 10 times in 19 lines! It’s as though the horn is saying: “Look at all the things I can do! I’m a multitasker!” In the very least, the poet is emphasizing the horn’s versatility through repetition. Also, I wonder if maybe all these “hw” sounds are meant to recall the shape of the mouth when blowing a horn and the actual sound that it would make. I don’t want to read too much into alliteration (sorry…back to that), but “w” and “h” alliterate A LOT in this poem. This is significant not only on an aural level, but also because Horn starts with an “h.” I get the sense that the poet wants us to solve this riddle a bit too much.


A feasting scene from the Bayeux Tapestry scene (I don’t know what’s going on with the guy on the right’s hand), excerpted from an image on Wikimedia Commons (public domain). 

Okay, enough with the sounds now. I get it: you want themes and imagery. Well, this poem is not about to let you down. In it, we have all the trappings of the early medieval, aristocratic warrior lifestyle: treasure, horses, ships (sea-steeds!), drinking, battle and chasing off enemies. And there appears to be a bit of kissing going on, but I’ll let you read into that what you will (check out Riddle 63 too…this seems to be a thing).
One aspect I like most about this riddle is the tension between the object-as-object and the object-as-agent. Of course, this is a theme we see throughout the riddles, but I think it’s especially interesting here with all the emphasis on actions, as opposed to just attributes. In only 19 lines, the horn characterizes itself as the passive object of the following actions: it’s covered with treasure, kissed, borne by horses and ships, filled up with drink, despoiled, carried and forced to hang on the wall. These are all things done to what used to be a wæpenwiga (armed warrior) but is now an object of heroic use. However, a shift takes place in the final lines after the horn is forced to swallow someone’s breath, which seems to draw on the idea that the early English understood speech as coming from the chest (see Jager, full ref below). I find that image powerfully weird. It’s almost like it’s undergoing mouth-to-mouth, and, when it takes in the person’s breath, it gains a voice. In fact, after the ingesting of air, the horn begins to take action: it calls warriors to a feast, reclaims stolen goods and puts enemies to flight. This little theory is slightly marred by the early reference to the horn calling warriors to battle in lines 4-5, but perhaps we can assume that the calling to action is another mouth-to-mouth image…after all, it takes place just after the kissing. At any rate, all this object-agent tension is nicely summed up by the use of wlonc (proud) twice – once in line 1 and once in line 17. This is an envelope pattern that ties together the proud retainer who uses the horn and the horn itself, which proudly calls together the retainers for wine-sodden bonding. Good times.
Righto, before I let you go, there’s one final thing I want to draw your attention to. Riddle-objects that relate to drinking are not just a remnant of the past. Has anyone seen the San Miguel commercial? Watch it…I’m sure someone on the creative team was a student of Old English!:

Notes:

References and Suggested Reading:

Jager, Eric. “Speech and the Chest in Old English Poetry: Orality or Pectorality?” Speculum, vol. 65 (1990), pages 845-59.

I also published an academic version of this post recently: Cavell, Megan. “Sounding the Horn in Exeter Book Riddle 14.” The Explicator, vol. 72 (2014), pages 324-7.

Tags: anglo saxon exeter book riddles old english solutions riddle 14

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Exeter Riddle 15

MEGANCAVELL

Date: Mon 04 Nov 2013

Matching Commentaries: Commentary for Exeter Riddle 15

Original text:

Hals is min hwit      ond heafod fealo,

sidan swa some.      Swift ic eom on feþe,

beadowæpen bere.      Me on bæce standað

her swylce swe on hleorum.      Hlifiað tu

5     earan ofer eagum.      Ordum ic steppe

in grene græs.      Me bið gyrn witod,

gif mec onhæle      an onfindeð

wælgrim wiga,      þær ic wic buge,

bold mid bearnum,      ond ic bide þær

10     mid geoguðcnosle,      hwonne gæst cume

to durum minum,      him biþ deað witod.

Forþon ic sceal of eðle      eaforan mine

forhtmod fergan,      fleame nergan,

gif he me æfterweard      ealles weorþeð;

15     hine berað breost.      Ic his bidan ne dear,

reþes on geruman,      (nele þæt ræd teale),

ac ic sceal fromlice      feþemundum

þurh steapne beorg      stræte wyrcan.

Eaþe ic mæg freora      feorh genergan,

20     gif ic mægburge mot      mine gelædan

on degolne weg      þurh dune þyrel

swæse ond gesibbe;      ic me siþþan ne þearf

wælhwelpes wig      wiht onsittan.

Gif se niðsceaþa      nearwe stige

25     me on swaþe seceþ,      ne tosæleþ him

on þam gegnpaþe      guþgemotes,

siþþan ic þurh hylles      hrof geræce,

ond þurh hest hrino      hildepilum

laðgewinnum,      þam þe ic longe fleah.

Translation:

My neck is white and my head dusky,

my sides just the same. I am fast on my feet,

I bear a battle-weapon. On my back stands

hair, likewise on my cheeks. Two ears

5     tower over my eyes. On spears I step

in the green grass. Sorrow is ordained for me,

if someone finds me hidden,

a slaughter-cruel warrior, where I inhabit a house,

a dwelling with my children, and I remain there

10     with my young family, when the stranger comes

to my doors, death is ordained for them.

Therefore I must carry my children out of the homeland,

frightened at heart, defend them by flight,

if he pursues me at all afterward;

15     his breast bears him. I do not dare await his

cruel [nature] in the room, (good advice will not require that),

but I must boldly with walking-hands

produce a path through a high hill.

I can easily defend the lives of the precious ones,

20     if I may lead my kindred

on a secret track through a hole in the hill

the near and the dear ones; afterward I do not need

to concern myself at all with the slaughter-whelp’s attack.

If the evil-enemy on a narrow trail

25     seeks my track, he will not lack

a war-meeting on the hostile path,

when I reach through the hill’s roof,

and ferociously strike with battle-spears

the loathed-foe, from whom I have long fled.

Click to show riddle solution?

Badger, Fox, Porcupine, Hedgehog, Weasel

Notes:

This riddle appears on folio 104v 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 188.

Note that this edition numbers the text Riddle 13: Craig Williamson, ed., The Old English Riddles of the Exeter Book (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1977), pages 76-7.

Tags: anglo saxon exeter book riddles old english solutions riddle 15

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Exeter Riddle 15 in Spanish / en Español

MEGANCAVELL

Date: Fri 09 Aug 2024

Dr. José Antonio Alonso Navarro holds a PhD in English Philology from the Coruña University (Spain) and a BA in English Philology from the Complutense University of Madrid (Spain). Currently, Alonso Navarro is a Full Professor of History of the English Language at the National University of Asuncion (Paraguay). His main interest revolves around the translation of Middle English texts into Spanish. Needless to say, he is also very enthusiastic about Old English riddles.

El Dr. José Antonio Alonso Navarro es Doctor en Filología Inglesa por la Universidad de La Coruña (España) y Licenciado en Filología Inglesa por la Universidad Complutense de Madrid (España). Actualmente, Alonso Navarro es Catedrático de Historia de la Lengua Inglesa en la Universidad Nacional de Asunción (Paraguay). Su principal interés gira en torno a la traducción de textos del inglés medio al español. No hace falta decir que también está muy entusiasmado con los acertijos en inglés antiguo.

Original text:

Hals is min hwit      ond heafod fealo,

sidan swa some.      Swift ic eom on feþe,

beadowæpen bere.      Me on bæce standað

her swylce swe on hleorum.      Hlifiað tu

5     earan ofer eagum.      Ordum ic steppe

in grene græs.      Me bið gyrn witod,

gif mec onhæle      an onfindeð

wælgrim wiga,      þær ic wic buge,

bold mid bearnum,      ond ic bide þær

10     mid geoguðcnosle,      hwonne gæst cume

to durum minum,      him biþ deað witod.

Forþon ic sceal of eðle      eaforan mine

forhtmod fergan,      fleame nergan,

gif he me æfterweard      ealles weorþeð;

15     hine berað breost.      Ic his bidan ne dear,

reþes on geruman,      (nele þæt ræd teale),

ac ic sceal fromlice      feþemundum

þurh steapne beorg      stræte wyrcan.

Eaþe ic mæg freora      feorh genergan,

20     gif ic mægburge mot      mine gelædan

on degolne weg      þurh dune þyrel

swæse ond gesibbe;      ic me siþþan ne þearf

wælhwelpes wig      wiht onsittan.

Gif se niðsceaþa      nearwe stige

25     me on swaþe seceþ,      ne tosæleþ him

on þam gegnpaþe      guþgemotes,

siþþan ic þurh hylles      hrof geræce,

ond þurh hest hrino      hildepilum

laðgewinnum,      þam þe ic longe fleah.

Translation:

Mi cuello es blanco y mi cabeza es oscura, y los costados de mi cuerpo son iguales. Soy rápido al andar, y llevo conmigo un arma de combate. Tengo pelo tanto en la espalda como en mis mejillas. Dos orejas cuelgan sobre mis ojos. Encima de lanzas camino por la fresca hierba. La congoja me oprime si alguien, un guerrero cruel, me encuentra escondido allí donde vivo con mis crías, allí donde habito con mi prole, (y) cuando el intruso se acerca a las puertas de mi casa la muerte los acecha. Así pues, debo sacar a mis crías, que están llenas de temor, de su tierra, defenderlas de inmediato si el extraño me persigue después; su pecho lo lleva. No me atrevo a esperar su crueldad allí donde estoy (no hace falta que me aconsejen sobre ello), sino más bien con audacia hacer con mis patas delanteras un camino a través de una elevada colina. Con facilidad puedo proteger las vidas de aquellos que me son más valiosos si soy capaz de conducir a mis crías por un sendero secreto a través de un agujero en la colina. Después no tendré que preocuparme en absoluto por el ataque del depredador. Si el enemigo cruel busca mi rastro por un estrecho camino no evitará una pelea en el belicoso sendero cuando hasta allí llegue a través del techo de la colina y ataque ferozmente con mis lanzas de combate al odioso enemigo, de quien he huido durante mucho tiempo.

Click to show riddle solution?

Tejón, zorro, puercoespín, erizo, comadreja

Tags: anglo saxon exeter book riddles old english riddle 15 José Antonio Alonso Navarro

Commentary for Exeter Riddle 15

MEGANCAVELL

Date: Tue 12 Nov 2013

Matching Riddle: Exeter Riddle 15

Well, at least we can agree on one thing: the subject of Riddle 15 is an animal of some sort. But just which animal has been the cause of much discussion and a fair amount of scholarly squabbling. The options include: Badger, Fox, Porcupine, Hedgehog, Weasel, etc.
Badger (OE brocc) is one of the earliest suggestions. Badgers burrow, which fits nicely with this poem’s description of the besieged creature’s situation. While the badger’s colouring also seems to tally with the poem’s description of the white neck and fealo head, I’d like to mention (as I’ve done before) that colour terms in Old English are very difficult to define. For this particular one, the Dictionary of Old English notes that its “varied meaning” encompasses a sort of pale or dull yellow with shades of red, brown and/or grey. I reckon this term applies to most of the animal options discussed here, so I’m not sure it’s particularly handy in sorting out a solution.


Photo (by BadgerHero) from the Wikimedia Commons (licence: CC BY-SA 3.0).

Badger-wise, the weapon imagery (beadowæpen bere (I bear a battle-weapon); Ordum ic steppe (On spears I step); ond þurh hest hrino hildepilum (and ferociously strike with battle-spears)) refers to the creatures’ teeth and claws. The enemy itself, the so-called wælhwelp (slaughter-whelp) could be any one of a number of predators if we take hwelp metaphorically, or the dogs used by hunters if we’re going for a more literal reading. Also note that dogs and wolves are associated with violent men elsewhere in Old English: The Battle of Maldon describes Vikings as wælwulfas (slaughter-wolves) in line 96b; Judith refers to the heroine’s nasty opponent Holofernes as þone hæðenan hund (that heathen hound) in line 110a; and Wulf and Eadwacer revolves around the relationships between a woman, a figure identified as “Wulf” and an earmne hwelp (miserable whelp) who is borne away in lines 16-17. So the canine enemy shouldn’t come as a shock.
At any rate, Badger has seemed like a decent option to many scholars in the past, although Dieter Bitterli isn’t too keen on it for the following reasons: the poem doesn’t mention the animal’s most striking feature (stripey head!), badgers aren’t particularly fast-moving, which contradicts line 2’s statement: Swift ic eom on feþe (I am fast on my feet), and they don’t get a lot of attention in early works of zoology (pp. 472-5). I don’t think these strike a death-blow to the Badger-reading, although Bitterli’s argument for his preferred solution (discussed below) is convincing. His article is also very thorough, by the way, so if you’re interested in this riddle, I suggest you read it. There’s a link at the bottom of this commentary.
The next animal on the list is the fox.


Photo (by Rob Lee (Evergreen, CO, USA)) from the Wikimedia Commons (licence: CC BY 2.0).

This is the solution that John D. Niles includes in his list of Old English riddle solutions: OE fox ond hund (fox and hound) (at p. 141). Fox is quite widely accepted as a solution to this riddle, especially by recent editors of the riddles and the Exeter Book, including Williamson and Muir. However, again Bitterli notes that foxes, which aren’t burrowers or diggers – they tend to use other animals’ dens or natural features of the landscape – are more known for their wisdom in medieval literature, an attribute that doesn’t appear in this list (p. 476). One part of the poem that seems to describe the fox particularly well is the ears that tower over the creature’s eyes (Hlifiað tu / earan ofer eagum), although Bitterli argues that these may be attributed to any animal in contrast to human ears. I like to think of them as the ears of a Monty Python-esque battle-rabbit, personally. You can beg to differ.


Photo (by Steve Hillebrand, USFWS) from the Wikimedia Commons (public domain).

Making our way speedily along, Weasel (OE wesle) has been pretty soundly rejected. This one was suggested in the 1940s by Jean I. Young, who notes that weasels walk almost entirely on their toes. The implication is that line 5b’s statement, Ordum ic steppe, should be translated as “I step on points.” Yes, ord means “point,” but more specifically the point of a blade, so I read this as more weapon imagery referring to claws. Young further argues that the enemy attacking the weasel is a snake because of the reference to the creature crawling (hine berað breost) – a similar characteristic to Satan-in-snake-form in lines 906-7 of Genesis A. Unfortunately for Young, weasels are the ones that eat snakes. Of course, we could still accept Weasel as the solution without accepting Snake as the predator. But Bitterli points out that weasels don’t burrow, and that medieval Latin weasel-riddles and classical lore make a big deal out of the weasel’s apparent conception in the ear (say wha?) (p. 477). At any rate, there’s a better solution awaiting you!
It’s not Hedgehog (OE igil), although that’s getting closer.


Photo (by Lars Karlsson) from the Wikimedia Commons (licence: CC BY-SA 2.5).

A spiny creature like this involves re-reading some of the weapon imagery – as spikes rather than teeth (having recently put a cactus through my hand at a party, I totally get this association). The problem with the hedgehog for Bitterli is that it doesn’t burrow or shoot its spines (p. 487). His preferred solution is therefore Porcupine, which is referred to as se mara igil (the larger hedgehog) in an Old English gloss of the Latin word for porcupine: hystrix (p. 478).


Photo (by Eloquence) from the Wikimedia Commons (public domain).

You may have gathered that this is Bitterli’s solution from the title of his article. It’s a very good title with both puns AND alliteration. So you know the article is going to be good. Content-wise, Bitterli lists several medieval analogues (pp. 479-81), and notes that porcupines – though not native to England – were known from widely-circulated works of natural history (p. 485). Where Bitterli’s argument is strongest is in his discussion of the porcupine’s quills, which can easily lodge into other animals (p. 482-3). He also notes that porcupines are diggers and that their burrows tend to have multiple entrances and holes for escaping (p. 484). Porcupine meets all the criteria and does it well. Still, it’s probably only a matter of time before someone writes another article arguing for Badger or Fox. So keep your eyes peeled.
Phew, right…those are the options for you to pick and choose from (or suggest more!). But I personally think the solution isn’t as significant as the fact that THIS POEM FREAKING ROCKS! So much action. So much heart-break. A rousing battle and a change of fortunes. It’s an exciting, elegiac beauty of a poem. Do we really want to spend all our time squabbling about which animal this is, or should be maybe focus on the fact that the poem makes us identify so strongly with her?
That reminds me…other things I should mention: gender! Did you realize that this animal is a female one? I’m not just saying that because there are chilluns involved, and female animals tend to spend more time with their young than males. In addition to this, line 7a includes a dead giveaway in the form of grammar (wonderful, wonderful grammar!). In case we aren’t all obsessed with grammar, a quick lesson: Old English nouns have grammatical genders. They are either masculine, feminine or neuter. This does not have to relate to “natural” gender – the classic example is that wif, which means woman, is neuter. Sorry, ladies. Anywho, adjectives change their endings based on whether they’re referring to a masculine, feminine or neuter word. So when line 7a includes the feminine form of the adjective onhæle (hidden), this is kinda important. Given that all of the proposed solutions to this riddle are likely masculine nouns except for the weasel, it’s likely that the adjective is referring to the animal’s natural, rather than grammatical, gender. Which means we have a badass lady-warrior going to town on the enemy trying to break into her house. Eat your heart out, Eowyn.
Okay, I should stop writing now. I have lots more I could say…heck, I haven’t even mentioned style (rhyme! envelope patterns! weird compounds!). But in the interests of rewarding those of you who’ve gotten to the end of this – admittedly rather long – commentary, here’s a little quote from Edward B. Irving, Jr.’s discussion of the heroic world of the riddles: “Of course this riddle is not about an animal – how could it be? – but about people driven to act like animals and about how that would feel: women (and men) attacked mercilessly in their houses, hiding in forests or bogs, dragging children, their hands clapped over screaming mouths, out of the way of some marauder. It may not be action at the high and significant heroic level, but the riddler knows it is important action, to be viewed with empathy and respect. It is fighting any way we can for the survival of those we love” (p. 204). I’m inclined to read the poem’s human/animal balancing act in a slightly more nuanced way…but I still think this quotation is a poignant one.
 
[Editorial update: I recently published a note on this riddle, which hopefully doesn’t disagree with this post too, too much (like all academics, I do like to change my mind from time to time)! Email me if you’d like an electronic copy, but don’t have access to the journal: Cavell, Megan. “The Igil and Exeter Book Riddle 15.” Notes and Queries, vol. 64, issue 2 (2017): 206-10]

Notes:

References and Suggested Reading

Bitterli, Dieter. “Exeter Book Riddle 15: Some Points for the Porcupine.” Anglia, vol. 120 (2002), pages 461-87. (postprint available on the University of Zurich’s Open Repository and Archive)

Irving, Edward B. “Heroic Experience in the Old English Riddles.” In Old English Shorter Poems: Basic Readings. Edited by Katherine O’Brian O’Keeffe. New York: Garland, 1994, pages 199-212.

Muir, Bernard J., ed. The Exeter Anthology of Old English Poetry. 2 vols. Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1994.

Niles, John D. Old English Enigmatic Poems and the Play of the Texts. Studies in the Early Middle Ages, vol. 13. Turnhout: Brepols, 2006.

Young, Jean I. “Riddle 15 of the Exeter Book.” Review of English Studies, vol. 20 (1944), pages 304-6.

Williamson, Craig, ed. 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 15

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Exeter Riddle 15

Exeter Riddle 16

MATTHIASAMMON

Date: Thu 21 Nov 2013

Matching Commentaries: Commentary for Exeter Riddle 16

Original text:

Oft ic sceal wiþ wæge winnan      ond wiþ winde feohtan

somod wið þam sæcce,      þonne ic secan gewite

eorþan yþum þeaht;      me biþ se eþel fremde.

Ic beom strong þæs gewinnes,      gif ic stille weorþe;

5     gif me þæs tosæleð,      hi beoð swiþran þonne ic

ond mec slitende      sona flymað,

willað oþfergan      þæt ic friþian sceal.

Ic him þæt forstonde,      gif min steort þolað

ond mec stiþne wiþ      stanas moton

10     fæste gehabban.      Frige hwæt ic hatte.

Translation:

Often I must struggle against the waves, and fight against the wind,

war against them both together, then I endeavour to seek out

the ground covered by waves; the land is alien to me.

I am strong in that fight, if I become still;

5     if it should go wrong for me, they will be stronger than I,

and, ripping, will straightaway put me to flight,

they want to ferry away what I am meant to protect.

I prevent them from that, if my end endures

and stones are able to keep me fixed

10     resolutely fast. Figure out what I am called.

Click to show riddle solution?

Anchor

Notes:

This riddle appears on folios 104v-105r 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 188-9.

Note that this edition numbers the text Riddle 14: Craig Williamson, ed., The Old English Riddles of the Exeter Book (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1977), page 77.

Tags: anglo saxon exeter book riddles old english solutions riddle 16

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Exeter Riddle 3
Exeter Riddle 20
Exeter Riddle 23

Commentary for Exeter Riddle 16

MATTHIASAMMON

Date: Tue 24 Dec 2013

Matching Riddle: Exeter Riddle 16

Happily (or boringly, you decide), this is one of the few riddles for which there is little to no argument about the solution. Ever since Franz Dietrich proposed "anchor" in the 19th century, people have looked at it, nodded appreciatively and moved on. So, what can we say about it? Well, first of all, it’s (presumably) based on a Latin riddle by a chap called Symphosius (whose name literally means "party-er" – which is not only cool in and of itself but may also give us a hint about when riddles might have been performed), though the Old English riddler expands on the original. So, for example, the anchor (an inanimate object) speaks of itself as if it were a living creature – it has a steort (which I have translated as"‘end" but can also mean "tail") and, as Dieter Bitterli puts it, strives against wind water like a restless exile or a wild beast (page 101). The paradox is that despite these struggles it remains stiff and still, a description that tells us that it’s probably not an actual living thing.


A reconstruction of an early medieval anchor from Poland from Wikimedia Commons (licence: CC BY-SA 4.0).

But let’s look a bit more carefully at this riddle. Like a lot of Old English riddles, this one can be read on two levels – on the one hand we have the literal solution of "anchor," an everyday object, but on the other we can again draw comparisons with the character of the exile in Old English poetry (such as in The Wanderer, which we have already referred to in Riddle 4). The exile has been cast out of his homeland which has become alien to him (compare line 4 – eþel usually specifically means "homeland"). He yearns for stability in his life because the transience and constant movement of his restless earthly existence seem horrible to him. What he wants is a place of security, something fixed and unchanging – which he can ultimately only find with God in the afterlife. But like the anchor striving against the elements, he needs to resist the pulls of worldly possessions and enjoyments because they want to "ferry away what he is meant to protect," i.e. his soul and spirit. He needs to find a place where he can be still and fastened to something, otherwise the "bad things" will be stronger than him and overcome him. In this way, what looks like a fairly straightforward riddle about an object that would have been familiar to many early medieval folks becomes a metaphorical description of the trials of an individual soul, anchored in faith.

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.

Jember, Gregory K. “Literal and Metaphorical: Clues to Reading the Old English Riddles.” Studies in English Literature (Tokyo), vol. 65 (1988), pages 47-56.

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Exeter Riddle 16

Exeter Riddle 17

MEGANCAVELL

Date: Tue 24 Dec 2013

Matching Commentaries: Commentary for Exeter Riddle 17

This week’s translation is a guest post from Wendy Hennequin. Wendy is an Associate Professor at Tennessee State University where she is currently researching the connection between Grendel’s mother and Beowulf’s kings, as well as the comitatus bond in contemporary literature. We’re posting her translation and commentary back-to-back because the commentary discusses issues of translation and so is best read alongside the poem.

Original text:

Ic eom mundbora      minre heorde,

eodorwirum fæst,      innan gefylled

dryhtgestreona.      Dægtidum oft

spæte sperebrogan;      sped biþ þy mare

5     fylle minre.      Frea þæt bihealdeð,

hu me of hrife fleogað      hyldepilas.

Hwilum ic sweartum      swelgan onginne

brunum beadowæpnum,      bitrum ordum,

eglum attorsperum.      Is min innað til,

10     wombhord wlitig,      wloncum deore;

men gemunan      þæt me þurh muþ fareð.

Translation:

I am herd-protector,      hand-ruler of the flock,

fast in wire-fences,      and filled inside

with army-treasures.      Often, in daytime,

I spit spear-terror.      My success is greater,

5     luck-might, with fullness.      The lord sees how

battle-arrows      from my belly fly.

Sometimes, I begin      to swallow dark

brown battle-arms,      bitter spear-points,

painful poison-spears.      Precious to the proud

10     is my bright womb-hoard,      wonderful stomach.

People remember      what passes through my mouth.

Click to show riddle solution?

Ballista, Fortress, Quiver, Bee-skep, etc

Notes:

Here are some notes on my translation.

Line 1. I have rendered mundbora twice in this line, though it appears only once in the original text. Clark Hall glosses mundbora as “protector” (242), though it literally breaks down to “hand-ruler.” I have used the second half-line, translated literally as “of my flock,” to make a kenning in the first half-line and preserve the line’s alliteration.
Line 5a: This half-line translates literally as “with my fullness,” which doesn’t have enough stresses to complete a half-line. I have added, “luck-might,” as a variation of sped in the previous half-line, to fill out 5a.
Line 9a: “Painful poison-spears” is a literal translation; as a poet, I would have preferred the stronger meter of “Poison pain-spears.”
Lines 9b-10b: I have rearranged these three half-lines for grammatical sense and alliteration. I have taken a slight liberty with the meaning of the word til, “good, apt, suitable, useful, profitable: excellent: brave: astounding,” by rendering it “wonderful” (Clark Hall 341).

This riddle appears on folio 105r 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 189.

Note that this edition numbers the text Riddle 15: Craig Williamson, ed., The Old English Riddles of the Exeter Book (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1977), pages 77-8.

Tags: anglo saxon exeter book riddles old english solutions riddle 17

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Exeter Riddle 23
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Exeter Riddle 60

Commentary for Exeter Riddle 17

MEGANCAVELL

Date: Tue 24 Dec 2013

Matching Riddle: Exeter Riddle 17

This post once again comes from Wendy Hennequin:
Translation is a tricky business at its best. Lines 4b-5a, for instance, has a grammatical structure that we rarely use in Modern English, and its first word, sped, has multiple and varied meanings.  Which one of these meanings should I choose? How should I render that grammatical structure?  Riddles add another layer to the problems, as riddles often play on multiple meanings, sounds, and puns. The 
word fylle, “fullness,” in line 5a, may be a pun on fiell, also spelled fyll, “destruction, death, fall.” How do I translate a pun which doesn’t exist anymore?
To make matters more difficult for myself, I like to render my Modern English translations into the correct Old English poetic form, as much as is possible without losing meaning. Meaning must be the ultimate priority, since a translation is useless if it doesn’t tell the reader, as far as is possible, what a text says.
But it is also good to preserve the poetry, to give the reader an idea of the sound and feel of the original text. I therefore try to put the text into the correct Old English meter and adhere to the rules of Old English alliteration. I use Sievers’ types for the meter (Sievers’ types, named for the scholar who codified them, are the five patterns of stress in Old English half-lines. You can read about them here), though I don’t try to match the meter of the original half-line with the meter of the translation. It is often impossible to match the original metrical type and preserve the meaning, though sometimes it does happen.
Sometimes, it is not possible to translate meaning and render proper meter and alliteration. In those cases, I preserve meaning but relax the poetry. Generally, it is possible to keep the meter if I let the alliteration go. But in some cases, I am able to rescue both meter and alliteration by using the Old English poetic technique of variation. Line 1b in Riddle 17, when translated literally into Modern English, doesn’t have enough syllables to make a half-line: “I am protector of my flock.”  In cases like these, I often use an alternate meaning for a word already in the line: mundbora, “protector,” is literally “hand-ruler.” By putting both meanings in the line—in other words, repeating mundbora as a variation of itself—I can render the poetry without adding or losing meaning, though it does regrettably add emphasis.
Even in the best of times, my Modern English translations are not as poetic as the originals. Modern English grammar sometimes makes for clumsy Old English poetry, as it does in lines 4a and 9a of my translation. And Modern English syntax often necessitates moving words from one line to another, and even moving entire half-lines, in order to make grammatical sense.
Perhaps my translations are not the best or most accurate, nor even the most poetic. But I hope to preserve the meaning of the poem and give at least a good idea of what Old English poetry sounds like.

Notes:

References and Suggested Reading:

Clark Hall, J. R. A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary. 4^th ed. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1960.

Osborn, Marijane. “‘Skep’ (Beinenkorb, *beoleap) as a Culture-Specific Solution to Exeter Book Riddle 17.” ANQ, vol. 18 (2005), pages 7-18.

Sorrell, Paul. “A Bee in My Bonnet: Solving Riddle 17 of the Exeter Book.” In New Windows on a Woman’s World: Essays for Jocelyn Harris. Edited by Colin Gibson and Lisa Marr. Dunedin, NZ: University of Otago Press, 2005, pages 544-53.

Wilcox, Jonathan. “New Solutions to Old English Riddles: Riddles 17 and 53.” Philological Quarterly, vol. 69 (1990): pages 393-408.

Note that this post and the related translation were edited and restructured for clarity on 15 January 2021.

Tags: anglo saxon exeter book riddles old english riddle 17 translation style wendy hennequin

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Exeter Riddle 17

Exeter Riddle 18

MATTHIASAMMON

Date: Mon 06 Jan 2014

Matching Commentaries: Commentary for Exeter Riddle 18

Original text:

Ic eom wunderlicu wiht;      ne mæg word sprecan,

mældan for monnum,      þeah ic muþ hæbbe,

wide wombe

Ic wæs on ceole      ond mines cnosles ma.

Translation:

I am a strange creature, I cannot speak words,

nor talk with men, although I have a mouth,

and a broad belly.

I was on a boat with more of my kin.

Click to show riddle solution?

Jug, Amphora, Cask, Leather bottle, Inkhorn, Phallus

Notes:

This riddle appears on folio 105r 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 189.

Note that this edition numbers the text Riddle 16: Craig Williamson, ed., The Old English Riddles of the Exeter Book (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1977), page 78.

Tags: anglo saxon exeter book riddles old english solutions riddle 18

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Commentary for Exeter Riddle 18

MEGANCAVELL

Date: Thu 30 Jan 2014

Matching Riddle: Exeter Riddle 18

I know, guys, you’re dying to hear more about this riddle. But word on the street is: it’s kinda short. And so shall you be, commentary. So shall you be.
Solution-wise, most of the options are pretty similar: Jug, Amphora, Cask or Leather Bottle…so, an object for carrying/storing liquid (the Old English word for this sort of vessel is crog). Riddle-editor Craig Williamson points out that there’s archaeological evidence for the transportation of liquids in pottery vessels, although he notes that leather bottles were less likely to be used for shipping (think of the mess!) (p. 184). He also points out that there’s no evidence for wooden casks until after the Norman Conquest…but, then, wood does break down fairly quickly.


An early-5th-to-middle-7th-century pottery jug, © Trustees of the British Museum (licence: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0).

The Inkhorn option also involves liquid, so you can see the relation. Note, however, that this solution doesn’t really account for the ship at the end of the poem. I also personally doubt this one, seeing as the speaker specifically says that it can’t speak, and writing implements in the riddles often riff on the fact that they have the ability to communicate. And finally, WHO keeps suggesting Phallus? Seriously, someone has suggested this for nearly every riddle. Stop acting like school children, riddle-scholars of the past. And get it together.


10th-century Spouted Jug, © Trustees of the British Museum (licence: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0).

Now, things to note: having human-ish body parts but not being able to speak is very common in the riddles. This particular object has a muþ (mouth), which is why I like the Jug- (or Amphora-) reading of the poem. It also has a womb/wamb (belly). This is a very riddley word as far as Old English poetry is concerned. Of the fourteen poetic instances only two are outside of the riddles: Riddles 3, 17, 18, 36, 37, 62, 81, 86, 87, 88, 89, 93, The Phoenix (line 307a) and An Exhortation to Christian Living (line 41b). It also comes up in prose quite a bit. Slight support for the Cask-reading comes in the form of Aldhelm’s Anglo-Latin Enigma 78, Cupa Vinaria (wine-cask), lines 5-7 of which describe the object’s swollen body and innards.


A scene from the Bayeux Tapestry of men carrying arms and a cask on a wagon, excerpted from an image on Wikimedia Commons (public domain).

Another thing to note: self-identified “wonderful creatures” (braggarts) are also pretty common in Old English riddles. In fact, we find the formulaic half-line Ic eom wunderlicu wiht (I am a wonderful creature) applied to riddle-subjects four times: here and in Riddles 20, 24 and 25. Similarly, the half-line Ic wiht geseah wundorlice (I saw a wonderful creature) is repeated at the beginning of Riddles 29 and 87 (here, wiht actually appears at the end of the half-line), while wundorlic is dropped into various other phrases in Riddles 29, 31 and 88. I can’t remember how much I’ve talked about Old English “formulas” in previous posts, but you should certainly get used to seeing these repeated phrases cropping up in multiple contexts (outside of the riddles, as well). This is pretty essential to Old English poetics (and I can recommend some great formulaic theory readings for our hardcore readers).
Another-another thing to note: this riddle appears to have a missing half-line. Did the poet just get bored and lose the will to live? Is this some sort of crazy otherwise-unheard-of metrical pattern or device? Notice that lines 1 and 3 both alliterate on “w,” so there’s potential linking going on here. It seems likely, though, that the scribe writing this poem down lost track of a half-line. There is some damage to the manuscript (blotting), but it appears to affect the following line more than this one. At least, Williamson doesn’t attribute the gap to damage, saying only: “Though single half-lines are known to exist in Old English poetry […], the sense of the riddle seems to demand something more here” (p. 185).
Finally, I should nod to the comments about the final line in this riddle’s translation post. Although the reference to ceol (boat) works nicely if this object is imagined as being transported by ship (along with its great-big-happy-family of other jugs/amphorae/casks), commenter-Conan pointed out the easy mix-up that might occur with a similar word: ceole (throat). The grammar certainly seems to point to the first and we should note that these words likely sounded a bit different because ceol has a long diphthong and ceole a short one. But still, given that we’re looking at a situation that involves drinking (and therefore throats), I find that mix-up rather charming. But maybe it’s just that I’m thirsty…
Good-bye for now, readers. I think there’s an amphora at my local pub that’s calling my name.

Notes:

References and Suggested Reading:

Glorie, F., ed. Variae Collectiones Aenigmatum Merovingicae Aetatis. Corpus Christianorum Series Latina, vol. 133-133A. Turnhout: Brepols, 1968 [you’ll find an edition and translation of Aldhelm’s Latin enigmata in here].

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

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Exeter Riddle 18

Exeter Riddle 19

MEGANCAVELL

Date: Mon 24 Feb 2014

Matching Commentaries: Commentary for Exeter Riddle 19

We have a slight complication this week, folks: RUNES! Runes are great, but they can be a bit of a technological nightmare, so bear with me. If you can’t see the runes in the Old English riddle below, scroll down to the bottom of this post where you'll find a screenshot. Not ideal, I know, but this way everyone should get to revel in the glory of runes. Aaaaaaaaand, go!

Original text:

Ic on siþe seah      . ᛋ ᚱ ᚩ

ᚻ . hygewloncne,      heafodbeortne,

swiftne ofer sælwong      swiþe þrægan.

Hæfde him on hrycge      hildeþryþe

5     . ᚾ ᚩ ᛗ .      nægledne rad

. ᚪ ᚷ ᛖ ᚹ.      Widlast ferede

rynestrong on rade      rofne . ᚳ ᚩ

ᚠᚩ ᚪ ᚻ .      For wæs þy beorhtre,

swylcra siþfæt.      Saga hwæt ic hatte.

Translation:

I saw on a journey a mind-proud,

bright-headed S R O H,

the swift one running quickly over the prosperous plain.

It had on its back a battle-power,

5     the N O M rode the nailed one

A G E W. The far-stretching track conveyed,

strong in movement on the road, a valiant C O

F O A H. The journey was all the brighter,

the expedition of such ones. Say what I am called.

Click to show riddle solution?

Ship, Falconry/Horseman and hawk [sometimes with wagon/servant] and Writing

Notes:

This riddle appears on folio 105r 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 189-90.

Note that this edition numbers the text Riddle 17: Craig Williamson, ed., The Old English Riddles of the Exeter Book (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1977), page 78.

Screen shot for the runes:
Riddle 19 with runes

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Commentary for Exeter Riddle 19
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Commentary for Exeter Riddle 19

MEGANCAVELL

Date: Fri 24 Jan 2014

Matching Riddle: Exeter Riddle 19

Warning: a LOT of ink has been spilled on this bad boy. I’ll try to sum it up as best I can, but if you’re interested in this riddle in particular, you really ought to follow up with the suggested reading below, which should provide you with a fuller scholarly back-story. Why so popular, you might ask? Well…that’s easy…RUNES! And horses and hawks and all the other lovely things that spring to mind when we think of early medieval England. Here, have a picture of a horse. Because I can.



Well, that’s a very nice horse, you might say, but where, oh where, is the horse in this poem? Of course, it’s the runes that hold the key. The four groups of runes spell out words in reverse. If you flip the first, ᛋ ᚱ ᚩ ᚻ (SROH), you get hors (horse). Similarly, the second, ᚾ ᚩ ᛗ (NOM) spells mon (man) and the fourth, ᚳ ᚩ ᚠ ᚩ ᚪ ᚻ (C O F O A H), haofoc (hawk). These largely equate with the closely-related Riddle 64’s runic horse/man/hawk. You may be wondering why I’ve skipped the third, ᚪ ᚷ ᛖ ᚹ (A G E W), and that is of course because people fight about it a lot. We’re talking mega scholarly bloodbath when it comes to interpreting wega. Okay, maybe it’s not quite that dramatic, but there are certainly a few options to pick from. One is that it is a variant spelling of wiga (warrior), which would mean we have two people in the runes (or perhaps poetic variation). Another option is a form of wægn (wagon), but that’s a bit of a stretch. Better options include a plural form of weg (way/path) or weg with a long e (wave). What we have, then, is a man with a hawk travelling on a horse over some paths or waves. Sounds like a nice little holiday.
Of course, when it comes to solutions, some people stop right there. Donald K. Fry’s list of proposed riddle solutions (at p. 23) points to quite a few scholars who feel that decoding the runes leads directly to the solution, which they take to be Falconry, Hunting or even just a Horseman and Hawk (sometimes wega is interpreted as another person leading to a warrior/servant reading and sometimes these creatures are assumed to be accompanied by a wagon, as mentioned above). Here, have a drawing of what this group might look like. Because I can.



But this all seems a little obvious. And we know that early medieval riddlers are really quite clever, which is why some people push this poem a little further. Metaphorical interpretations of the riddle include Norman E. Eliason’s: Writing. According to Eliason, the swiftly travelling group represents the fingers and pen tip, as well as the hand (with a pun on nægledne (nailed) pointing to finger-nails) and the pen’s plume, which together leave tracks of ink on the page. I get the plume/hawk equation, but I must admit I’m a bit stumped as to how the fingers, pen tip and hand represent a horse and man. I guess it would look something like this:


Now you understand why I’ve gotten into cartooning…you try finding a ready-made picture of this craziness!

But there’s another metaphorical reading available to us, and it works better for many reasons. This is of course: Ship. Craig Williamson suggested this solution in his edition of the riddles and developed it in his later translation (pp. 186-92 and 173, respectively). The key, he claims, lies in the common Old English kenning that associates the ship with a sea-horse. This explains why it is nailed and works nicely with the reading of wega as “ways” or “waves” (although Williamson takes it as a “man” word). If the horse is a ship, then the hawk is its sail and the man its sailor. Not convinced yet? You soon will be. Indeed, Mark Griffith developed this solution by pointing out a nifty linguistic feature. Questioning why the runes are written in reverse, Griffith demonstrates that the first rune of each cluster (or final letter of each word) together spells SNAC. Rather than a tasty treat, an Old English snac(c) refers to a swiftly sailing war-ship. Oh snap. This is why it is so, so, so, so, so, so important to solve the riddles in their original language and not just using Modern English words/concepts.


The Oseberg ship in Oslo, Norway. Photo (by Grzegorz Wysocki) from the Wikimedia Commons (licence: CC BY 3.0).

So, those are our solutions. But of course we’re not done yet. We still have to talk quickly about emendations (or changes made to the manuscript reading by its editors). First of all, you should note that on siþe (on a journey) doesn’t actually appear in the manuscript. Editors have added it in to lengthen out the first half-line and preserve the poem’s metrics. A less major change is to the beginning of line 3, which actually reads swist ne, not swiftne. But even scribes make mistakes, so modern editors occasionally have to reinterpret bits like this to make sense of them. We run into trouble, though, when editors read errors where there are none and emend in ways that change the poem’s interpretation. This is what Jonathan Wilcox argues Craig Williamson has done in his edition. Williamson changes the final half-line from Saga hwæt ic hatte (Say what I am called) to Saga hwæt hit hatte (Say what it is called). This is an attempt to make the final question more logical – the poem isn’t written in the first person, so why would it ask a who-am-I question at the end? Surely, it should ask what all this hullabaloo the riddler has just described indicates instead. Well, Wilcox argues that the complexity of the riddle, the concatenation of descriptive details and the use of runes are all intended to trick the solver and distract him or her from answering the simple question at the end: Who am I? To which we should respond: “You are the riddler! And who cares about all that other stuff!” This, Wilcox takes as a mock-riddle that parodies normal riddling conventions (at pp. 186-7). That’s “conventions” as in “practices” rather than “gatherings”…although a Comic-Con-style riddle convention would be worth seeing. Costume ideas, anyone?
Right, this post is already quite long, so I think I should start to wrap it up. But before I do, I feel I ought to at least allude to the wider discussion of runes and how they functioned in Old English. The question of runic pronunciation came up in the previous post’s comments, although unfortunately whether runes in Old English poetry were read out as letters, read out by their runic name or merely a written device that was never intended to be spoken is open for debate. What is clear is that – whatever their origins – they were often written or copied in a Christian context. To quote Robert DiNapoli’s rather eloquent conclusions about runic use in Old English: “The runes, for Anglo-Saxon poets at least, are ambiguity incarnate. However much assimilated to scribal and authorial practice in a monastic setting, their angular forms continue to point to their origins outside the cloister and outside the grand edifice of Christian literacy erected in Anglo-Saxon England by the Church. With only vague and scant knowledge of what the runes may have meant to their pagan forebears in the poetic craft, the poets who use them in surviving texts make them very much their own, emblems of an ancient and venerable verbal art whose authority they continued to honour alongside that of the institutional authorities of Scripture and the Church Fathers” (p. 161). How wonderfully syncretistic.
I’ll leave you on that note. I need to go pursue my newfound (and promising, no doubt) career in obscure cartooning.

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 86-91.

DiNapoli, Robert. “Odd Characters: Runes in Old English Poetry.” In Verbal Encounters: Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse Studies for Roberta Frank. Edited by Antonina Harbus and Russell Poole. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005, pages 145-61.

Eliason, Norman E. “Four Old English Cryptographic Riddles.” Studies in Philology, vol. 49 (1952), pages 553-65.

Fry, Donald K. “Exeter Book Riddle Solutions.” Old English Newsletter, vol. 15 (1981), pages 22-33.

Griffith, Mark. “Riddle 19 of the Exeter Book: SNAC, an Old English Acronym.” Notes and Queries, new series, vol. 237 (1992), pages 15-16.

Wilcox, Jonathan. “Mock-riddles in Old English: Exeter Riddles 86 and 19.” Studies in Philology, vol. 93 (1996), pages 180-7.

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

Williamson, Craig, trans. A Feast of Creatures: Anglo-Saxon Riddle-Songs. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982.

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Exeter Riddle 19

Exeter Riddle 20

MEGANCAVELL

Date: Tue 25 Mar 2014

Matching Commentaries: Commentary for Exeter Riddle 20

Original text:

Ic eom wunderlicu wiht,      on gewin sceapen,

frean minum leof,      fægre gegyrwed.

Byrne is min bleofag,      swylce beorht seomað

wir ymb þone wælgim      þe me waldend geaf,

5     se me widgalum      wisað hwilum

sylfum to sace.      Þonne ic sinc wege

þurh hlutterne dæg,      hondweorc smiþa,

gold ofer geardas.      Oft ic gæstberend

cwelle compwæpnum.      Cyning mec gyrweð

10     since ond seolfre      ond mec on sele weorþað;

ne wyrneð wordlofes,      wisan mæneð

mine for mengo,      þær hy meodu drincað,

healdeð mec on heaþore,      hwilum læteð eft

radwerigne      on gerum sceacan,

15     orlegfromne.      Oft ic oþrum scod

frecne æt his freonde;      fah eom ic wide,

wæpnum awyrged.      Ic me wenan ne þearf

þæt me bearn wræce      on bonan feore,

gif me gromra hwylc      guþe genægeð;

20     ne weorþeð sio mægburg      gemicledu

eaforan minum      þe ic æfter woc,

nymþe ic hlafordleas      hweorfan mote

from þam healdende      þe me hringas geaf.

Me bið forð witod,      gif ic frean hyre,

25     guþe fremme,      swa ic gien dyde

minum þeodne on þonc,      þæt ic þolian sceal

bearngestreona.      Ic wiþ bryde ne mot

hæmed habban,      ac me þæs hyhtplegan

geno wyrneð,      se mec geara on

30     bende legde;      forþon ic brucan sceal

on hagostealde      hæleþa gestreona.

Oft ic wirum dol      wife abelge,

wonie hyre willan;      heo me wom spreceð,

floceð hyre folmum,      firenaþ mec wordum,

35     ungod gæleð.      Ic ne gyme þæs compes…

Translation:

I am a marvelous creature, shaped for battle,

dear to my lord, beautifully clothed.

My mail-coat is particoloured, likewise bright wire

stands about the slaughter-gem that my ruler gave me,

5     he who sometimes directs me,

wandering widely, to battle. Then I carry treasure,

throughout the clear day, the handiwork of smiths,

gold in the courtyards. Often I kill

soul-bearers with battle-weapons. The king clothes me

10     with treasure and silver and honours me in the hall;

he does not withhold words of praise, proclaims my nature

to the company, where they drink mead,

he holds me in confinement, sometimes he allows me again,

travel-weary, to hasten unrestricted,

15     battle-bold. I often injured another,

fierce to a friend; I am widely hostile,

accursed among weapons. I do not need to expect

that a son should avenge me on the life of my killer

if a certain enemy should attack me in battle,

20     nor will the race into which I was born

become increased by my children

unless I may turn lord-less

from the protector who gave me rings.

Hence it is certain for me, if I obey my lord,

25     take part in battle, as I have already done

for my lord’s satisfaction, that I must forfeit

the wealth of descendants. I must not be intimate

with a bride, but he now denies me

that pleasant play, who earlier

30     laid bonds upon me; therefore I must enjoy

the treasure of warriors in celibacy.

Often I, foolish in wires, infuriate a woman,

frustrate her wish; she speaks terribly to me,

strikes me with her hands, reviles me with words,

cries unkindness. I do not care for that conflict…

Click to show riddle solution?

Sword, Falcon/Hawk, Phallus

Notes:

This riddle appears on folios 105r-105v 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 190-1.

Note that this edition numbers the text Riddle 18: Craig Williamson, ed., The Old English Riddles of the Exeter Book (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1977), pages 78-80.

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Exeter Riddle 63
Exeter Riddle 73
Exeter Riddles 79 and 80

Exeter Riddle 20 in Spanish / en Español

MEGANCAVELL

Date: Mon 05 Jul 2021

This Spanish translation of Riddle 20 from the Exeter Book is by Carlos M. Cepero. Carlos is an architect who was born, raised and lives in Rosario, Argentina. He studied English and German at and after school, is a ravenous reader and a declared Britophile. He is passionate about medieval literature, especially Old English and Old Norse literature. Thank you for your translation, Carlos!

Esta traducción al español del Acertijo 20 del Libro de Exeter es de Carlos M. Cepero. Carlos es un arquitecto que nació, creció y vive en Rosario, Argentina. Estudió inglés y alemán en y después de la escuela, es un lector voraz y un britófilo declarado. Es un apasionado de la literatura medieval, especialmente la literatura antigua inglesa y nórdica antigua. ¡Gracias por tu traducción, Carlos!

Original text:

Ic eom wunderlicu wiht,      on gewin sceapen,

frean minum leof,      fægre gegyrwed.

Byrne (1) is min bleofag,      swylce beorht seomað

wir ymb þone wælgim      þe me waldend geaf,

5     se me widgalum      wisað hwilum

sylfum to sace.      Þonne ic sinc wege

þurh hlutterne dæg,      hondweorc smiþa,

gold ofer geardas.      Oft ic gæstberend (2)

cwelle compwæpnum.      Cyning mec gyrweð

10     since ond seolfre      ond mec on sele weorþað;

ne wyrneð wordlofes,      wisan mæneð

mine for mengo,      þær hy meodu drincað,

healdeð mec on heaþore,      hwilum læteð eft

radwerigne      on gerum sceacan,

15     orlegfromne.      Oft ic oþrum scod

frecne æt his freonde;      fah eom ic wide,

wæpnum awyrged.      Ic me wenan ne þearf

þæt me bearn wræce      on bonan feore,

gif me gromra hwylc      guþe genægeð;

20     ne weorþeð sio mægburg      gemicledu

eaforan minum      þe ic æfter woc,

nymþe ic hlafordleas      hweorfan mote

from þam healdende      þe me hringas geaf.

Me bið forð witod,      gif ic frean hyre,

25     guþe fremme,      swa ic gien dyde

minum þeodne on þonc,      þæt ic þolian sceal

bearngestreona.      Ic wiþ bryde ne mot

hæmed habban,      ac me þæs hyhtplegan

geno wyrneð,      se mec geara on

30     bende legde;      forþon ic brucan sceal

on hagostealde      hæleþa gestreona.

Oft ic wirum dol      wife abelge,

wonie hyre willan;      heo me wom spreceð,

floceð hyre folmum,      firenaþ mec wordum,

35     ungod gæleð.      Ic ne gyme þæs compes…

Translation:

Soy una maravillosa criatura, creada para la lid,

dilecta de mi señor, bellamente vestida.

Mi malla (1) es multicolor, asimismo brillante es el abultado

alambre que engarza la gema de la muerte otorgada por quien me empuña,

5     aquél que a veces dirígeme, deambulando a sus anchas,

hacia la contienda. Tan luego yo, manualidad de forjadores,

en despejado día, llevo tesoros

[y] oro a los palaciegos patios. A menudo aniquilo

portadores de almas (2) con armas de guerra. El rey atavíame

10     con alhajas y plata, y me honra en el salón;

no reprime palabras de alabanza, proclama mi guisa

frente a muchos [allí] donde se bebe hidromiel,

[y] sujétame confinada; por momentos me permite,

exhausta, apurar la zurra,

15     ansiosa por la lidia. Frecuentemente a otra hiero,

feroz hacia una amiga; holgadamente hostil soy,

maldita entre las armas. No necesito esperar

que mi prole se vengue de mi verdugo,

si recio alguno arreméteme en la batalla;

20     ni la estirpe de la cual provengo

se dilatará en descendencia

a menos que sin amo me aleje

de aquél poseedor que me dispensa anillos.

Es certero para mí, si obedezco a mi dueño,

25     participar en el combate, como ya he hecho,

para placer de mi señor, debiendo renunciar

a la procreación. No yaceré

con novia alguna; mas ahora me rehúsa él

el placentero juego, quien anteriormente

30     me tuviera encadenado; por lo tanto debo gozar,

en celibato, las riquezas de los guerreros.

A menudo, insolente en mis adornos, enfurezco a una dama,

disminuyendo su deseo; ella me habla penosamente,

me azota con sus manos, me injuria con palabras,

35     chilla descortesías. No atiendo esa disputa…

Click to show riddle solution?

Una espada

Notes:

Las palabras entre corchetes [] fueron agregadas en la traducción para lograr mayor fluidez de continuidad /The words in brackets [] were added into the translation to achieve better fluency.

(1) El texto dice byrne, en inglés moderno byrnie, una cota de malla corta, desde los hombros hasta la cintura o los muslos / The text says "byrne," in modern English "byrnie," a short chain mail, from the shoulders to the waist or thighs.

(2) Kenning: “seres humanos, hombres” / Kenning: "human beings, men."

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Exeter Riddle 20

Commentary for Exeter Riddle 20

MEGANCAVELL

Date: Tue 04 Mar 2014

Matching Riddle: Exeter Riddle 20

This week’s riddle has layers. Not the sort of layers that an onion has (you’ll have to wait for those). But, still, layers. Also: controversy! Like so many of the riddles that offer multiple solutions and interpretations, this riddle has caused scholars to regress to childhood and offer an over-abundance of passive-aggressive digs at each other. I shall try to refrain from such behaviour myself…even though a chatty website is really the only format in which writing something like “stupid-face” is acceptable for an academic.
But actually, there is nothing stupid (or face-ish, for that matter) about the main solutions proposed for this particular riddle. In fact, they’re all so good that it can be quite difficult to pick a side. Let’s start with Falcon or Hawk. Here’s a particularly charming one:

Photo (by Jjron/John O’Neill) from Wikimedia Commons (licence: CC BY-SA 3.0).

Suggested by an early riddle-editor, this solution was fairly unpopular until Laurence K. Shook rehabilitated it in 1965. His article points out that taking into account a poetic compound word in another poem brings the Falcon solution into line with the more popular Sword solution. This compound is heoruswealwe, which means literally “sword-swallow” (as in the type of bird, rather than the throat action), and appears in the beautiful and at times depressing Fortunes of Men (full translation here). The relevant lines are usefully descriptive of the trained falcon’s relationship with its human captor and so worth quoting in full:
Sum sceal wildne fugel      wloncne atemian,

heafoc on honda,      oþþæt seo heoroswealwe

wynsum weorþeð;      deþ he wyrplas on,

fedeþ swa on feterum      fiþrum dealne,

lepeþ lyftswiftne      lytlum gieflum,

oþþæt se wælisca      wædum ond dædum

his ætgiefan      eaðmod weoþeð

ond to hagostealdes      honda gelæred. (85-92)
(One shall tame the proud, wild bird,

the hawk on the hand, so that the sword-swallow

becomes pleasant; he puts jesses on,

feeds thus in fetters the one proud in feathers,

gives the air-swift one little morsels,

until the alien creature becomes easy-minded

toward his food-giver in dress and deeds

and used to the young warrior’s hands.)
It’s also worth noticing that hagosteald, which refers to a celibate young man who lives in the household of his lord (so likely a warrior/retainer) or to the state of being such a man, appears in both this passage and in Riddle 20 (at line 31a).
In general, then, a close reading of the riddle-as-Falcon would go something like this: all the references to clothing, wires and treasure refer to the jesses and varvels (cords and rings) that are attached to the bird’s legs/feet. These are the poetic trappings of the warrior bird whose battle is the hunt, yet they also hold it in confinement and so provide an ironic context of forced servitude. Likewise, the colourful byrne (mail-coat) mentioned in line 3a is the bird’s plumage. If you’re unconvinced of this detail, take a look at lines 305-6 of The Phoenix, in which that creature’s feathers are described using jewel/armour diction (esp. rings: hring/beag and interlocking construction: brogden). The compwæpna (battle-weapons) of line 9a are of course the beak and talons, but far more elusive is the wælgim (slaughter-gem) of line 4a. Your guess is as good as mine on this one. It could be a general adornment-term and so connote weaponry. Or it could refer to the bird’s eyes, gimm being elsewhere connected to the orbs of the sun and the head (see the Dictionary of Old English, senses 2.-3. The “eyes” reference is from Guthlac B, line 1302a).
As for line 5a’s reference to the riddle-subject “wandering widely” (similarly line 14a’s travel-weariness), Shook argues that this better fits a living creature than a weapon. That being said, the broad strokes of a sword could be described in this way. Generally accepted as more in line with falcons than swords is the description of the riddle-subject’s inability to procreate in lines 17b-31a. Shook explains that this passage relates to the tendency not to allow the captive birds to mate. The only way these hawks can have widdle baby birds is to abandon their lord. This is what separates avian retainers from human ones (although also see Tanke’s article for more on the sexual restraints of young warriors).
Finally, the much-debated last four lines of the riddle (before it trails off due to the loss of at least one manuscript leaf) deserve attention. Why are they much-debated? Because they refer to a woman. As you may have inferred from previous riddles and from other texts, Old English poetry tends to shy away from lady-folks in a rather annoying way. So when a clear reference to a woman does come up, medievalists get excited. The fact that this particular woman seems to have been upset by the riddle-solution has led to a great array of speculations, which I’ll briefly deal with below in relation to the Sword reading. Shook’s interpretation, though, is lovely. He links this female figure to the falcon-subject itself, noting both that more than one bird would often be placed on the same perch and that captive birds are given to “bating” or the occasional beating of their wings as though about to take off. All this flapping about and squawking may well appear to the casual onlooker as a confrontation between the mixed company of male and female falcons.
Shook’s interpretation is supported by Marie Nelson, who reads a combination of bird, warrior and monk connotations in the riddle’s approach to sexuality and by Eric G. Stanley in his treatment of the riddles’ heroic content (at pp. 207-8). In general, the Falcon/Hawk solution has a lot going for it, not least the fact that the verb galan (to sing/call), which is invoked in relation to the woman at the end of the poem, carries specific connotations of birdsong in lines 20b-3 of The Husband’s Message and lines 52b-3a of Elene (see the Dictionary of Old English entry for galan, sense B.). If you want to learn more about falconry, there are plenty of resources in print (see Oggins, for example) and online. Here’s a video of a rescued peregrine falcon and its trainer to start you off:




Right, that’s an awful lot of material about falcons. Sorry about that…it’s just that they’re  really cool. Also cool is the other solution-contender for Riddle 20: the sword! The Sword-reading is the more popular solution amongst scholars, and there’s a slew of research that aims to work out the ins and outs of this interpretation. The gist of it is as follows. The various references to treasure, clothing and the hondweorc smiþa (handiwork of smiths) are obvious here: the sword is made of metal and is itself a treasure with adornments on the hilt and sheath. The courtly context (praise! mead! battle!) is also pretty run-of-the-mill if we’re talking about a sword, since it is the heroic accoutrement par excellence. The confinement references relate to the sheathing of the weapon or perhaps to the tying of it onto the belt, and it is of course here that the voice of the weapon-as-a-retainer becomes ironic: it’s not generally advisable to tie up your followers…unless they’re actually weapons.


The Sutton Hoo Sword © Trustees of the British Museum (licence: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0).

As for the procreation bit, well this is where things get a bit dicey. If we stick with Sword, then H. R. E. Davidson would have us believe this passage may refer to the re-forging of old swords (pp. 152-4). There’s certainly a pun on the use of streona, which can mean both literal treasures and those metaphorical little treasures some people call children. But if we’re really honest with ourselves, the procreation passage is where the Sword reading breaks down. And this is where the third suggestion comes in: Phallus. Obviously, I’m not going to include a picture, but I will just leave this little link to the Icelandic Phallological Museum right here (it’s a museum. So it’s legit). Anyway, the scholar who most ardently argued for the Phallus-reading was Donald Kay (too bad his name wasn’t Richard or William…I would have had a world of puns to work with). Kay was all like “don’t you think Sword is…well…a bit obvious?” (not a direct quote!), and certainly given the reference to offspring, the poem seems to offer a way into his reading.
The way in, though, seems to be through a metaphorical relationship between the sword and a man. In fact, John D. Niles indicates that this sword/man imagery-play actually derives from an Old English play on the word wæpen, literally “weapon,” but also occasionally used in compounds referring to men as wæpnedmen (weaponed-humans) (p. 141). But this sword is not a human or a body part and therefore will never procreate. It’s sad.
As for the woman at the end of the poem, scholars go a bit off the rails with speculation here, given the lack of textual evidence. Some suggest that the woman is angry because the celibate sword has denied her desire (obviously, this works better with a sword-phallus metaphor), or that the reference is to a sexual crime (because wom can mean “shame” or “defilement”). I don’t think either of these readings really stands up to scrutiny. Better is Melanie Heyworth’s suggestion that “the sword is self-condemnatory because he has diminished the wife’s joy – her marriage – presumably by killing her husband” (p. 176). And best is Patrick J. Murphy summary of the poem’s conclusion: “The rage of the woman in Riddle 20 could be explained by any number of unfortunate incidents: swords can slaughter enemies and friends, husbands and wives, children as well as kings. Perhaps the sword has slaughtered the hawk? The riddling point, however, is simply that one kind of wæpen causes pleasure, another causes pain. One can be conventionally desired, the other painfully reviled. Whatever its imagined literal cause, the displeasure the woman takes in the solution (a sword) is described in terms that echo the pleasures of the riddle’s phallic focus” (p. 214).
And so we come to the end of another post. I’ll leave you with one final tidbit. Andy Orchard in his as-of-yet-unpublished edition of the early English riddle tradition offers one last solution, or rather a synthesis of those discussed above. The Old English word secg can, usefully, be translated as both “sword” and “man.” This would seem to put the matter to rest when it comes to sorting out the complicated sword/phallus/procreation/infuriated-woman details. But I’m afraid you still have to choose between secg and heoruswealwe. I’ll leave that to you.

Notes:

References and Suggested Reading:

Davidson, Hilda Roderick Ellis. The Sword in Anglo-Saxon England: its Archaeology and Literature. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962.

Heyworth, Melanie. “Perceptions of Marriage in Exeter Book Riddles 20 and 61.” Studia Neophilologica, vol. 79 (2007), pages 171-84.

Kay, Donald. “Riddle 20: A Reevaluation.” Tennessee Studies in Literature, vol. 13 (1968), pages 133-9.

Murphy, Patrick J. Unriddling the Exeter Riddles. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2011, pages 206-15.

Nelson, Marie. “Old English Riddle 18 (20): a Description of Ambivalence.” Neophilologus, vol. 66 (1982), pages 291-300.

Niles, John D. Old English Enigmatic Poems and the Play of the Texts. Studies in the Early Middle Ages 13. Turnhout: Brepols, 2006.

Oggins, Robin S. The Kings and Their Hawks: Falconry in Medieval England. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004.

Shook, Laurence K. “Old English Riddle No. 20: Heoruswealwe.” In Franciplegius: Medieval and Linguistic Studies in Honor of Francis Peabody Magoun, Jr. Edited by Jess B. Bessinger and Robert P. Creed. New York: New York University Press, 1965, pages 194-204.

Stanley, Eric G. “Heroic Aspects of the Exeter Book Riddles.” In Prosody and Poetics in the Early Middle Ages: Essays in Honour of C. B. Hieatt. Edited by M. J. Toswell. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995, pages 197-218.

Tanke, John W. “The Bachelor-Warrior of Exeter Book Riddle 20.” Philological Quarterly, vol. 79 (2000), pages 409-27.

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Commentary for Exeter Riddle 20

Exeter Riddle 21

MEGANCAVELL

Date: Tue 25 Mar 2014

Matching Commentaries: Commentary for Exeter Riddle 21

Original text:

Neb is min niþerweard;      neol ic fere

ond be grunde græfe,      geonge swa me wisað

har holtes feond,      ond hlaford min

woh færeð      weard æt steorte,

5     wrigaþ on wonge,     wegeð mec on þyð,

saweþ on swæð min.      Ic snyþige forð,

brungen of bearwe,      bunden cræfte,

wegen on wægne,      hæbbe wundra fela;

me biþ gongendre      grene on healfe

10     ond min swæð sweotol      sweart on oþre.

Me þurh hrycg wrecen      hongaþ under

an orþoncpil,      oþer on heafde,

fæst ond forðweard.      Fealleþ on sidan

þæt ic toþum tere,      gif me teala þenaþ

15     hindeweardre,      þæt biþ hlaford min.

Translation:

My nose is turned downward; I travel flat

and carve out the ground, going as the old foe

of the forest directs me, and my lord

travels crooked, a watchman at my tail,

5     moves over the plain, moves me and presses,

sows in my path. I go nose forwards,

brought from the wood, skillfully bound,

borne on a wagon, I have many marvels;

travelling, there is green on one side of me

10     and my path is clear, black on the other.

Driven through my back, there hangs underneath

a skillful spear, another on my head,

firm and forward-facing. To the side falls

what I tear with my teeth, if he serves me rightly

15     from behind, he who is my lord.

Click to show riddle solution?

Plough

Notes:

This riddle appears on folio 106r 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 191.

Note that this edition numbers the text Riddle 19: Craig Williamson, ed., The Old English Riddles of the Exeter Book (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1977), page 80.

Tags: anglo saxon exeter book riddles old english solutions riddle 21

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Commentary for Exeter Riddle 21

MEGANCAVELL

Date: Sun 06 Apr 2014

Matching Riddle: Exeter Riddle 21

Boy, we sure are plowing through these riddles, aren’t we? Get it? Get it? If not, you must have forgotten the solution to Riddle 21: plough or plow (depending on how you prefer to spell)! If you prefer to spell like someone from early medieval England, then you’d be spelling it sulh. There isn’t a great deal of debate over this riddle’s solution, which – I have to say – is kind of obvious. So instead of scholarly debate, I’m going to impress you with pictures. And also details and such-like.
Here is a reproduction of a plough drawing in an eleventh-century calendar now housed in the British Library (Cotton MS Tiberius B V/1, folio 3r):


From The New Gresham Encyclopedia, available free online at Project Gutenberg. The original, in all its colourful glory, is digitized here.

The (quite lumpy-looking, though nonetheless smiley) team of oxen is nicely visible here, as are the various parts of the plough. These include the share (the bit that breaks up the earth) and the coulter (the bit that makes a groove for sowing seeds), which may be represented in the poem as the creature’s neb (nose), as well as the weapon that pierces the plough’s head (similar to the orþoncpil (skillful spear) driven through its back). Here’s a picture of an early medieval iron coulter from North Lincolnshire Museum:


Image from the Portable Antiquities Scheme (licence: CC BY-SA).

In addition to the specifics of actual ploughing (i.e. the description of the object laying horizontally and being pushed along, the sowing of seeds, the churning up of earth to make a path and the elements that pierce the object’s body), this poem provides useful information on an important aspect of the early medieval world: slavery. Whether born into it, taken in warfare or punished for criminal activity, slaves were common in this period. Despite the widespread nature of slavery at this time, few slaves are given voice in Old English literature, which is one of the reasons Riddle 21 is such an important text.
“Why the plough?” you might ask. “Surely there are all sorts of objects and animals that could have been chosen to represent an enslaved person in early medieval England.” That’s true, of course, and there are other riddles that give evidence of slavery. However, the fact that ploughing was a common role for slaves (according to the Domesday Book) goes some way to explaining the riddler’s choice. The unhappy conditions of slavery are also expounded in the Colloquy that Ælfric of Eynsham wrote in order to help his students learn Latin. It introduces a variety of figures who are quizzed about their roles and responsibilities. In a particularly empathetic passage, the enslaved ploughman cries: O! O! magnus labor. etiam, magnus labor est, quia non sum liber in Latin, or Hig! Hig! micel gedeorf ys hyt. / Geleof, micel gedeorf hit ys, forþam ic neom freoh (34-5) (Oh! Oh! The labour is great. Yes, the labour is great, because I am not free) in Old English (at page 21, lines 34-5). This is a rare example of a slave having a voice at all, let alone one that demands empathy.


Dexter cattle at Bede’s World in Jarrow. Photo courtesy of C.J.W. Brown.

Riddle 21 is another example of a metaphorical slave describing her/his condition. In fact, this riddle provides us with information about the type of slave the poem depicts: this slave has been brought from the forest, bound and borne into the settlement (brungen of bearwe, bunden cræfte, / wegen on wægne). The implication of the half-line har holtes feond (the old foe of the forest) is that the ploughman or ox responsible for clearing the land takes slaves during battle, an idea driven home by the weapon-imagery toward the end of the poem.
This context of slavery makes the poem’s innuendo pretty disturbing, if you ask me (Murphy talks about this innuendo at pages 175-6 of his book, cited below). All the riddle’s references to the prone speaker being aggressively pushed by its master (class/status implications are also clear when the poem refers to the plough’s hlaford (lord) twice) who sows seed are brought to a head by the final lines’ description of being served from behind. It doesn’t take an especially pervy imagination to see how this could be read sexually, particularly given the connotations of “plowing” in Modern English. Of course, the reference to the speaker’s steort (tail) and tearing teeth (ic toþum tere) may introduce a bestial element that only makes things worse.
All in all, Riddle 21 presents us with a creature forced to perform hard labour for its captor. I’d like to think that this image is a sympathetic one, but the introduction of innuendo may imply that the enslaved victim is the butt of the joke. Or maybe the fact that we’re dealing with an object rather than a person can ease our discomfort. I haven’t decided yet.

Notes:

References and Suggested Reading:

Ælfric of Eynsham. Ælfric’s Colloquy. Edited by G. N. Garmonsway. London: Methuen, 1939.

Bintley, Michael D. J. “Brungen of Bearwe: Ploughing Common Furrows in Riddle 21, The Dream of the Rood, and the Æcerbot Charm.” In Trees and Timber in the Anglo-Saxon World. Edited by Michael D. J. Bintley and Michael G. Shapland. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013, pages 144-57.

Cochran, Shannon Ferri. “The Plough’s the Thing: A New Solution to Old English Riddle 4 of the Exeter Book.” Journal of English and Germanic Philology, vol. 108, (2009), pages 301-9. (although this article deals with a different riddle, its discussion of the plough is relevant here)

Colgrave, Bertram. “Some Notes on Riddle 21.” Modern Language Review, vol. 32 (1937), pages 281-3.

Murphy, Patrick J. Unriddling the Exeter Riddles. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2011.

Neville, Jennifer. “The Exeter Book Riddles’ Precarious Insights into Wooden Artefacts.” In Trees and Timber in the Anglo-Saxon World. Edited by Michael D. J. Bintley and Michael G. Shapland. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013, pages 122-38.

Williams, Edith Whitehurst. “Annals of the Poor: Folk Life in Old English Riddles.” Medieval Perspectives, vol. 3 (1988), pages 67-82.

Editorial Note:

The image of a different plough coulter was replaced and some text edited on 14 January 2021.

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