Riddle 4. Sun. The sun is portrayed as a warrior of Christ, benefactor and scourge, comfort and torment. The association between the Son (OE sunu) and the sun (OE sunne) is often found in OE religious poetry (see, for example, Advent Lyric II and The Phoenix in the Exeter Book). Christ’s coming on Judgment Day was often depicted in medieval texts as a great sun whose fiery countenance would warm and comfort the righteous while fiercely tormenting the damned (see, for example, the end of Christ II: The Ascension). In the manuscript, there is a marginal S-rune below this riddle that may indicate the solution, OE sigel or sunne, or Latin sol, all words for “sun.”
Riddle 5. Swan. The exact kind of swan is debated. Proposals include Whistling Swan, Whooper, Mute Swan, and Bewick’s Swan. These different swan types were probably not distinguished until the nineteenth century (Bitterli, 39). The idea of the silent swan whose feathers “sing” may derive from “the medieval idea repeated in learned circles and anchored in the system of Christian typology, that there is a special type of wild swan whose wings make actually tuneful music when it flies” (Niles, 2006, 110), or it may refer to the Mute Swan, which is common in the British Isles, whose “broad wings produce a strong, throbbing noise” (Bitterli, 40). The swan’s singing feathers are also referred to in The Phoenix at line 141 (my translation).
Riddle 6. Nightingale, Jay, Wood-Pigeon, Chough, Jackdaw, Thrush, Starling. A songbird of some sort is indicated, though other non-bird solutions such as Bell, Flute, Frogs, and Crying Baby have been proposed. The bird is called an eald æfen-sceop (old evening singer), which seems to indicate the nightingale. Alcuin’s De Luscinia praises the nightingale whose “harmonies grace its tiny throat” and whose “melody remains through night-shadow.” In the manuscript, there is what looks like a post-medieval letter N above the riddle that may indicate someone’s guess as to the nightingale solution.
Riddle 7. Cuckoo. This changeling destroys its foster brothers and sisters. Its bizarre craft and ungrateful behavior have made it a villain of the bird world. The mother cuckoo leaves her egg in the nest of another bird, and by an evolutionary adaptation known as egg mimicry, fools the host mother into adopting the egg as her own. The hatched cuckoo, often stronger than its siblings, is skilled in ejecting both eggs and fledglings from the nest.
Riddle 8. Barnacle Goose is now generally accepted; earlier solutions included Sea-Furrow, Anchor, Bubble, and Water-Lily. The barnacle goose breeds in the Arctic and visits Britain in the winter. This is the earliest account of the bird’s mythical transformations, though the story is recounted in later sources such as the twelfth-century Topography of Ireland by Giraldus Cambrensis, who says that the baby barnacles, which look like marsh geese, hang down from pieces of driftwood, elongating their beaks and growing feathers until they detach themselves and fly off. The bird was even classified as a shellfish by some churchmen who enjoyed eating roast barnacle goose on fast days.
Riddle 9. Wine-Cup or Beaker of Wine is the most popular solution; others include Night, Gold, and Wine Debauch. Like the lady “mead” of Riddle 25, who is “binder and scourge of men,” this seductress lures and lays out the strongest of warriors, stripping them of strength. There is a grim death-joke at the end of the riddle: As drunk fools continue to raise and praise the wine-cup, which they take to be their “dearest treasure,” grim God will raise, judge, and damn their souls (the real treasure) to an eternal drinking of hell’s “dark woe in the dregs of pleasure.”
Riddle 10. Ox or Oxhide. This is one of several medieval ox riddles in Old English and Latin. The riddles are all fashioned about the central paradox: Living (ox), I break the land; lifeless (leather), I bind man. Medieval Latin riddles by Aldhelm and Eusebius use the same motif. The ox of this riddle binds and braces lord and servant (shoe), brings wine to man (wineskin), arches up for the fierce-footed woman (boot), and thrusts against the lecherous slave girl who comes to warm, wet, and work over her lord’s or her own new “skin” (shirt or garment). At the end of the riddle, the drunken, dark-haired slave woman works the leather in a way that leads to her bawdy pleasure.
Riddle 11. Ten Chickens or Hatchling Chicks. Other less likely solutions are Ten Fingers and Gloves, Ten Pheasants, Butterfly Transformations, and Alphabet Letters. The house of each chicken is a shell with a filament skin or membrane hung on the inside wall. The six brothers and four sisters are difficult to explain with any of the solutions. They may represent the consonants and vowels of OE tien ciccenu (ten chickens) in a Northumbrian dialect spelling.
Riddle 12. Horn. This creature may be a humble ox or cow horn or a more elaborate aurochs horn such as the one discovered at Sutton Hoo. The animal’s horn (already a weapon) is stripped by a hunter, adorned by a smith, borne to battle as a war-horn by a lord or to the table as a mead-vessel by a serving lady. The horn is thus war-weapon and hall-joy: its song bodes wassail or slaughter—and sometimes at the banquet table of feuding families, a grim mixture of both.
Riddle 13. Fox, Red Fox, Vixen, Fox and Hound, Badger, Porcupine, Hedgehog, Weasel. A number of fierce animals have been proposed for this riddle, but the habits and coloring favor some form of fox. The savage protectress of this riddle is probably a female fox, or vixen, known to be a passionate mother and fierce defender of her young. The fox’s natural enemy is the dog, called a “slaughter-hound” in the riddle, probably a terrier of some sort. When the dog attacks, the vixen first secures her young. Then she leads the stalker through tight burrow tunnels and lures him out her back door (Grimsgate), where she turns to offer him an unexpected feast of battle-tooth and war-claw.
Riddle 14. Anchor. This riddle shares some motifs with the fifth-century riddle of Symphosius, but the anchor here is more animated in the storm and strife of the sea than the Latin Ancora. Like an epic warrior, the OE anchor seizes glory in the pitch of war. Against its enemies, wind and wave, it holds its floating hoard with the help of the stones’ clutch.
Riddle 15. Uncertain. None of the proposed solutions completely fits the details of this riddle, but the most likely possibilities are Bee-Skep (a woven basket used as a domestic beehive), Beehive, and Quiver. The “death-spears” could be stinging bees or arrows. Other proposed solutions include Fortress, Ballista, Catapult, Forge, Ink-Well, Oven, and Samson’s Lion and Bees. In some of the proposed solutions, the weapons are real Anglo-Saxon instruments of war; in others, they are only metaphorical weapons.
Riddle 16. Uncertain. The few remaining clues of this fragment point to a broad-bellied container of some sort used in the shipping trade—probably an amphora, large pottery jug, or perhaps a leather bottle or wooden cask of some sort. Such objects were associated with the continental wine trade.
Riddle 17. Ship. The key to this riddle lies in reading the runes in each group backward to spell OE hors (horse), mon (man), wega, (warrior), haofoc (hawk). The horse is a sea-horse (a kenning for ship) that carries a man or warrior on its back along with a bold hawk (the sail flying in the air). Taking the first runic letter of each word group spells Snac, which is a light war-ship (see Griffith, 1992). Other proposed solutions include A Man on Horseback with a Hawk on His Fist, Horse-Man-Servant, Hunting, Falconry, World Riddle, and Writing.
Riddle 18. Sword. This creature celebrates its ominous splendor, the glint of death, then cuts through court-praise to its savage description of killing battle-foe and even bench-friend. The last half of the riddle plays upon an elaborate and bawdy conceit. The celibate weapon brings real death to men, not the metaphoric “sexual death” that women love. If the sword battles well, it begets no children; if it fails on the field, it is sent to the smithy to be melted down and reforged. In contrast, the phallic sword engenders life as it thrusts and parries. The battle-sword that serves well is a celibate killer; the phallic sword that serves well, seeds life.
Riddle 19. Plow. The strange ground-skulker and dirt-biter is a wooden Anglo-Saxon plow; its dagger and sword are the metal coulter and share that turn over the earth. The plow is drawn by the “dark ene
my of forests,” the ox that has uprooted trees and turned woodlands to fields. It is driven by a “bent lord,” the farmer who guides it. Paradoxically, this driving lord of the plow must also slave over his fields.
Riddle 20. Wagon of Stars, Charles’s Wain and the Circling Stars, Ursa Major, Month of December, Bridge, Ice-Bridge. Some form of the constellation and surrounding stars is the most likely solution. The wagon is Charles’s Wain. The eleven special riders are the stars of Canes Venatici (just under the Wain), four of them especially bright. The “sixty” riders may represent a “multitude” of circling stars, according to a briefly documented medieval tradition.
Riddle 21. Bow. This riddle-creature announces its OE name as Agob, which is Boga (Bow) spelled backward. The riddlic bow is a wizard-warrior: when bent with the battle-sting in its belly, it is not dying (as a man might be) but preparing to kill. It spits what it swallows—the whistling snake, the death-drink. The motif of the venomous cup hearkens back to the Devil’s death-feast in the Garden of Eden. Man’s fallen legacy seems symbolized by the bow. Bound, it serves its warlord properly but murderously in a world of vengeance.
Riddle 22. Jay or Magpie. The solution to this riddle is indicated by rearranging the runes to spell higoræ, a variant of OE higora, which has been identified as either a jay or a magpie. Both birds, closely related, are well-known mimics and saucy janglers. The bird here is pictured as an imitator and trickster, hiding its true identity in a multitude of disguised voices.
Riddle 23. Onion is almost universally accepted; other solutions have included Leek, Garlic, Hemp, Rose Hip, and Mustard. This is one of several Anglo-Saxon double-entendre riddles with a sexual solution for the bawdy and a plain solution for the prim. On the kitchen-counter carving-bed, the lady lays an onion—back in the bedroom, another bulb and skin. The onion begins its “song of myself” with a litany of power, but after the entrance of the warrior woman, eager-armed and proud, the “I” fractures into body, head, and skin—as the lady grabs, rushes, holds, and claims. The power struggle is resolved in the paradox of the fast catch, the mutual delight of “our meeting,” the oblique conclusion, the enactment of “something to come.” The phallic onion links the green world with the world of human sexuality. Nature is charged with human metaphor; passion is charted with natural myth.
Riddle 24. Bible, Gospel Book, Holy Scripture, Book. The riddle celebrates the parchment’s life from beast-skin to book. The holy book suffers its own form of passion as it is ripped, stretched, scraped, cut, scratched by the quill (“the bird’s once wind-stiff joy”), and tracked with ink; but as keeper and conveyor of the Word, it transcends its fate to bring grace, honor, and glory to men. Its inner treasure is reflected in its outer appearance—multicolored illuminations, gold leaf, and a jeweled cover.
Riddle 25. Mead. This powerful creature is an alcoholic beverage made from honey. The nectar is taken by bees from flowers and carried to the hive, where honey is made. In turn, man takes the honey to make a powerful drink that can render him reckless or sap his strength. This is the central paradox of the riddle: Helpless to withstand man’s plundering and processing, mead is transformed into a mighty agent that enters man’s home (and head!) to render its conqueror helpless.
Riddle 26. Uncertain. Proposed solutions for this much debated riddle include John Barleycorn, Beer, Ale, Barley and Ale, Malt Liquor, Winesack, Harp, Stringed Instrument, Yew-Horn, Tortoise-Lyre, Parchment, Codex, Damascened Sword, and Barrow or Trial of the Soul. Most of the solutions are either about alcoholic beverages or musical instruments (two sources of Anglo-Saxon hall-joy). The OE text has a number of textual, grammatical, and semantic ambiguities that make it possible to sustain different solutions. My translation tends to support some musical instrument solution. If, however, the OE dream (joy, mirth, melody, music) that is within the creature is alcoholic joy instead of musical melody, then the last half of the riddle might be transformed poetically to read:
This creature brings in hall-joy—sweet
Mirth clings, lingers in the mouth
Of the living who love it and say nothing
Against it. Then after death or drunken sleep,
They clamor in confusion and find fault
With its dangerous pleasure. Sober listeners
Will know what this creature is called.
Riddle 27. Moon and Sun. This riddle describes an imaginary celestial conflict. A few days before new moon, a waning sliver rises, stealing its strand of light from the sun. This “curved lamp of the air” fetches home to its night-chamber another booty of pale light between its tips or horns (sometimes called by sailors “the old moon in the arms of the new”) that is actually earthlight—sunlight reflected from earth to moon. The crescent-moon marauder plots to keep this light-treasure in its sky-castle, but dawn appears and the pale treasure disappears, retaken by the sun. As the sun becomes visible, the moon itself pales, then disappears over the horizon. The next night (new moon), the plundering moon has disappeared, and groundlings wonder where the wandering thief has gone. Other less likely solutions are Cloud and Wind, Bird and Wind, Swallow and Sparrow, and Star-Riddle.
Riddle 28a. Tree or Wood. This riddle occurs twice in the Exeter Book with slight variations. Though other solutions have been proposed (Rainwater, Snowflake, Cornfield, Harp), most scholars agree that this creature is the OE treow or beam, which can refer to the variety of wooden forms in the riddle. The living tree endures wind and weather until it is cut and crafted by man into cup or cross, when it is loved and worshipped by hall-thanes. Whether the last lines refer to the holy cross or demonic cup (compare Riddle 9) may be less important than the transformation of the wounded wood to a place of power over men.
Riddle 29. Bagpipe is generally accepted. Other proposed solutions include Fiddle, Organistrum, Hurdy-Gurdy, Organ, and Harp. This riddle is one of the earliest known descriptions of the bagpipe. Like a canny shaper or dream-singer, the bird plays mute—her beak (chanter) hung down and her hands and feet (drones and mouthpiece) slung up. Helpless but song-hungry, she is passed round the hall and pressed to sing. She drinks no mead but a bellyful of air—her hoard. Jeweled and naked, she sings through her dangling legs—makes melody with her chanter while the drones ride dangling from their glory-sister’s neck. While her shape is strange, her song is sublime. She transforms the plain hall of earls into a dream-world of dance and song.
Riddle 30. Ship. Other suggestions include Wagon or Cart, Millstone, Wheel, and Wheelbarrow. This one-footed monster from the workshops of men that sails on the smooth plain is probably a merchant ship. Strangely misshapen, with a belly full of food for the disgorging, she slides onto the shore, carrying “corn-gold, grain-treasure, wine-wealth.” Her hoard is not gold or jewels but the sustaining treasures of food and drink.
Riddle 31. Iceberg, Ice-Floe. Today these are not normally found in British waters, but occasional “erratics” from Greenland were probably sighted there in earlier times. The legendary creature may also derive from earlier tales. The iceberg or floe is depicted as a beautiful but dangerous woman-warrior armed with ice-blades and a ready curse. The solution of the riddle-within-a-riddle of the last five lines is “water.” Water is the mother of ice and also its daughter (pregnant again with potential ice). A more general solution might be Ice.
Riddle 32. Rake. This virtuous ground-dogger, plant-scratcher, crop-catcher is not some weird pooch but an Anglo-Saxon rake. It noses, scruffs, and plunders weeds, thins gardens and fields for a crop of fair flowers and good grain. It is both weed-warrior and farmyard slave. It feeds cattle with its catch of teeth. The tone here is a curious mixture of mock heroic and pastoral joy.
Riddle 33. Mail-Coat. This riddle and a Northumbrian version of it, The Leiden Riddle (see “The Minor Poems”), are both based on the Latin Lorica riddle of Aldhelm. The creature here defines itself mainly by negatives: it is not made by the traditional weaving process. Chain-mail was formed from iron rings welded together by a skilled smith. Like jeweled
swords, mail-coats were heirlooms of great value worn only by leaders and lords. Ordinary soldiers probably wore leather jerkins on the battlefield.
Riddle 34. Ship is the most likely solution here, though the riddle is extremely difficult, and one editor says he wishes it “at the bottom of the Bay of Portugal [for] there is no poetry in it, and the ingenuity is misplaced” (Wyatt, 93). There is also what appears to be in the middle of line 3, a non-metrical, scribal interpolation in Latin and OE of an earlier marginalic, cryptic note: monn . homo . wiif . mulier . hors . equus (indicating “man, woman, and horse”—some scribe’s guess as to the meaning of the “eight feet”). Some editors try to include this in their solutions; others treat it as an interpolation and ignore it, as I do. Some editors read the literal clues as the solution, positing some odd combination of a man, woman, child, dog, and hawk riding on a horse. I take the four feet below to be the oars in the water; the eight feet above to be those of the oarsmen. The wings are sails; the twelve eyes and six heads belong to the four oarsmen and two headlike prows. The likeness of the dog and the face of the woman may describe the figureheads such as those seen on ships in the Bayeux Tapestry and in some manuscript representations of Noah’s Ark. The boat leaves one track. The shape of the horse is the sea-horse or ship with its birdlike sail (a motif in Riddles 17 and 62). Not all of the details can be completely explained, but Ship seems a better solution than the others, which include Sow with a Litter of Five Pigs, Waterfowl Hunt, Family on the Go, and (in two parts) A Boat/A Pregnant Horse with Two Pregnant Women on Its Back.
Riddle 35. Bellows. This is the bawdy bellows riddle; the plain one is Riddle 83. Here the hard-muscled man labors over air at the forge fire, while his double struggles with the pump of love. The creature fills, gorges, spills, dies, and rises with another “breath.” It sires a son—air or child—and fathers a newly engorged self.
The Complete Old English Poems Page 125
