Riddle 71. Spear or Lance. This weapon is hauled from its homeland, stripped and reshaped, and forced to battle against its will for a grim lord. Like the tree in The Dream of the Rood, it is ripped from a natural innocence and made to murder in man’s world. The riddle is a strange combination of heroic celebration and grotesque irony. Bright glory is a bit dimmed when warriors become marauders; and weapons, muggish tools for bashing brains. The unnamed one that “breaks ready for the road home” at the end of the riddle is the soul of the dying warrior whose brain-house has been burst by the spear. Other suggested solutions are Battering Ram, Beam, Bow and Incendiary Arrow, and Cross.
Riddle 72. Uncertain. This riddle has given the riddle-solvers fits. Among the proposed solutions are Ship, OE “Ac” (Oak, Ship), Ship’s Figurehead, Sun, Whooper Swan, Sea Eagle, Water Bird, Barnacle Goose, Siren, Soul, Cuttlefish, Rain, Water, Writing, and Reflection or Shadow. The quill, for example, might dip in and out of the sea of ink and fly through the air to the shore of the page; the water might soar as clouds, fly as rain, make war as ice, dive as a sea-stream, and run on the shore as a river. The ship (in many ways the most likely solution) would charge the waves like a great warrior, swoop through the air and dive through the spray, stand up on the shore as part of a beached boat.
Riddle 73. Piss. These riddles were traditionally treated as two (lines 1–2 and line 3) on paleographical grounds, but are now generally taken to be a single riddle (compare Riddle 66 for a similar situation). Solutions for the two-riddle model include, for lines 1–2, Hound, Hunting Dog, Savior, and Groom; for line 3, Hen. Other solutions for the three-line riddle are Hound and Hind and Elk-Hunter. The riddle obviously turns on one’s reading of the cryptic runes for D, N, L (or U or I?), and H. Reading them backwards and supplying missing vowels gives OE hælend (Savior) or hland (Piss). Taking D and N as code for the vowels that follow them in the alphabet gives OE eolh (elk). Reading U for N and reading backwards gives hund (hound, dog); and reading I for U gives hind (hind). For a summary of the runic possibilities, see Williamson (1977, 352–55), Muir (737), and Niles (2006, 96–100). The “piss” solution is based on the visual distinction between men’s and women’s modes of urination, a motif found occasionally in the folklore of certain primitive traditions: men shoot it out on the road while women sit quietly alone. This may be another of the bawdy riddles in the Exeter Book.
Riddle 74. Oyster. The footless, fixed creature of the sea with its bone-skin and sweet flesh is an oyster. The sea-mouth is caught, cracked, and hauled to its own door of doom (man’s mouth!). The paradox of the “eater eaten” motif echoes that of the “biter bitten” in Riddle 63.
Riddle 75. Uncertain. The clues for this greatly damaged riddle are not enough to identify the creature with any certainty. It seems to be a migratory fish or creature that kills its prey in a special way. Proposed solutions include Lamprey, Crab, Fish, and Oyster.
Riddle 76. Horn. Although this creature sounds like a cross between a musical battle-sword and a flowerpot, it is actually an animal horn that can be shaped into a war-horn or a drinking horn (compare the Horn of Riddle 12). In the battle-rush it can sing out with a clarion call. At the supper table it can bear what blooms in the wood (pollen) transformed into the bee’s delight (mead made from honey). It can both sing and reward singers with the gift of brew. Tongue in cheek, it laments because the hands of the noble lady who serves its mead are a little too honeyed. Other proposed solutions include Falcon/Hawk, Spear, and Sword. In the manuscript, line 1 appears as a separate riddle.
Riddle 77. Weathercock or Weathervane. Because Peter denied Christ three times before cockcrow, iron cocks were placed on church towers as a sign of Christ’s coming and as a call to vigilance and repentance. These apparently gave rise to the medieval weathercock. The riddler here has artfully created a Christlike cock perched on its nail, twisting in torment, bound to its fate, serving faithfully, a gift to men. Buffeted by storm, it marks the wind, and in that act of charting, rises above its fate. Its act of passion, like Christ’s, is both literally and spiritually transcendent as it swings high above men. Other suggestions include Ship and Visored Helmet.
Riddle 78. Harrow. This riddle is so severely damaged that it is difficult to arrive at a solution. The creature seems to devour dirt and be without skin or flesh. This suggests that the ground-gobbler may be a harrow. The Anglo-Saxon harrow pictured in the Bayeux Tapestry was a sharp-toothed implement dragged across a field after the initial plowing to break up clods of soil. The harrow “eats” clods, drawing them through its teeth to deposit them back on the ground as fine soil. A spade might also swallow dirt, but it would have only one foot.
Riddle 79. Gold. This riddle deals with the origin and outcome of some metal used in the making of artifacts and coins, probably gold. Other forms of this solution include Ore, Metal, Coins, and Money. The ore is ripped from its homeland, smelted, wrought by a legendary smith (probably Tubal Cain), and shaped to bear man’s icons and inscriptions. Its wounds are many, yet paradoxically its power is great. Unable to defy miner, smelter, artisan—it reaps revenge on the collective shaper, man. Separated from its family in the ground, it separates and enthralls the family of man.
Riddle 80. Water. This mother of many creatures is allied with the generative power of God. From the womb of water the myriad shapes of creation issue forth. Water bears and sustains, soothes and punishes. Herself a shape-shifter—ice, snow, rain, hail, stream, lake, sea—she dies and is born again, both mother and child (compare this motif in iceberg Riddle 31). The riddle shares certain motifs with Latin riddles by Aldhelm and Eusebius.
Riddle 81. Fish and River. This riddle is based on a fifth-century Latin riddle of Symphosius:
This house echoes with a loud, clear sound
On earth, resounds while its guest is silent.
Bound together, guest and home course and run.
The Old English riddle draws upon the Latin motif of the loud house with its quiet creature, then elaborates on a theme of common and contrastive movement. It concludes with a vital paradox: separated from its house, the creature dies.
Riddle 82. One-Eyed Seller of Garlic. This riddle, like the previous one, is based on a fifth-century Latin riddle by Symphosius:
Step up and see what you won’t believe:
A one-eyed man with a thousand heads.
He sells what he has. Can he buy what he lacks?
This sort of riddle is commonly known as a neck-riddle since in some traditions a condemned man could save his neck by asking such an unsolvable riddle.
Riddle 83. Bellows. This is a plain treatment of the subject—its bawdier cousin is at Riddle 35. The creature is seized by a strong servant, muscled and pumped so that the cold wind, the “tooth of heaven” (a kenning), sings through its eye. Like a hysterical prima donna, the creature continues to puff up and pass out, reviving on air to repeat its monstrously ocular song. Another proposed solution is Cask and Cooper.
Riddle 84. Inkhorn. This is the first of two inkhorn riddles in the collection—the other is Riddle 89. Both riddles trace the horn’s history from its natural home on the stag’s head through its capture and cutting by a craftsman to its place of suffering on the scribe’s desk. Although both riddles are a lament for things past, this riddle seems more properly elegiac with its shifting timeframes, its brooding sense of memory, its contrast between past glory and present suffering, its focus upon the separation of brothers (the two horns), and the resulting sense of isolation and loss.
Riddle 85. Uncertain. This damaged riddle does not offer enough clues to lead to a solution. Proposed solutions include Bellows and Leather Bottle or Flask.
Riddle 86. Uncertain. This is the only Latin riddle in the Exeter Book; it is included in this edition because its solution may depend upon OE wordplay. The reasons for its inclusion in the collection remain uncertain. Tentative solutions have seemed as surreal as the riddle itself. One solver argues that the various meanings of Latin lupus (wolf, p
ike, hops) are the subject of the riddle. Another sees in the combination of OE ewu and wulf (ewe and wolf) a reference to the final letters in the name Cynewulf, a possible but unlikely riddle poet. Another word-player suggests that OE wulf (wolf) and flys (fleece) together render wulflys or (fleece of wool), referring to the woolen web on an Anglo-Saxon vertical loom. The three wolves would then represent the odd and even sides of the warp, tormenting the weft; the four feet would combine the two of the loom with the two of the warp (also called “feet” in Riddle 54); the seven eyes might be pairs of ring-shaped, clay loom weights. Another solver sees in the riddle the Lamb of God who destroys the wolflike Devil, who stands with the Trinity on Calvary (or as seems more likely, with the wolfish thieves), whose feet are the four Gospels, and whose eyes are the seven eyes of the apocalyptic Lamp or the seven Spirits of God sent forth in Revelation. Another pair of riddle-solvers take the four feet to belong to two spiritual men who see with the seven eyes of revelation; the solvers then manipulate the words lupus and agnus into auguslinus, which resembles Augustinus, and twist tertium into tertullium, which suggests Tertullianus—thus arriving at the solution, Augustine and Tertullian (Davis and Schlueter). Finally, it seems that every proposed solution to the riddle has to work so hard to twist the clues that none of the suggestions (including my own wulflys) works. Bitterli wisely concludes that “the insurmountable obstacle of the riddle lies in its numerical scheme, which is both conspicuous and utterly incomprehensible” (79).
Riddle 87. Key. This is the second of two key riddles in the Exeter Book; a lustier version occurs at Riddle 42. This key begins its history with hammer and forge then leaps to its tongue-in-cheek confrontation with a sensuous brass foe. The conjunction of lock and key recalls the sexual entendre of Riddle 42, but in a more subtle fashion. Does the treasure at the end of the riddle refer to gold of the lord’s hoard or the bedroom gifts of a gold-adorned woman waiting for him to claim the riches she offers? Or does the mixture imply a riddlic world in which gold is as sensual as delight is rich? Other suggested solutions to the riddle are Keyhole and Sickle.
Riddle 88. Beech/Book (OE Boc). The OE boc can mean “beech” (as a tree or as beechwood) or “book.” The various meanings are brought into play in this riddle. The “’boast of brown snufflers” is beech mast, fodder for pigs. The opening lines celebrate the tree in the wood. In the middle of line 3, the image shifts, probably referring to a secret love letter on a strip of bark or perhaps the wooden boards in the gold-adorned binding of a book. The weapon may be a wooden shield adorned with a ring. Other proposed solutions include Beechwood Shield and Beech Battering Ram.
Riddle 89. Inkhorn. This is the second of two inkhorn riddles; the other is Riddle 84. While the earlier riddle is highly elegiac, this riddle has its heroic elements. The horn speaks first not of its present suffering but of the former glory of its lord. It suffers its fate of cutting, scraping, shaping, swallowing wood and stained water (ink made from hawthorn bark), and the darting birdlike quill with stoic equanimity. The battle-companion of the wolf in line 20 is probably the raven whose quill now plunders ink from the horn’s belly.
Riddle 90. Creation. The language of this riddle fragment resembles that of the Creation or Nature Riddles 38 and 64.
Riddle 91. Book. This much debated riddle is the last one in the riddle collection in the Exeter Book. Its creature claims to be well known and often in the keeping of men, but it has yet to be identified to the satisfaction of all. Proposed solutions include Book, Dream, Thought, Moon, Riddle, Soul, Wandering Singer, Quill Pen, Beech, and Prostitute. Is the “plunderers’ joy” (a kenning and inset miniature riddle) the book’s gold ornaments, the pen’s ink, the moon’s treasure of light, the singer’s studded lyre, the prostitute’s favors, the riddler’s mystery, the spirit’s quickness, or the splendors of dream? These questions continue to haunt the solvers. The creature seems so near—yet still strangely undiscovered. Guess what it is!
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