Exeter Book Riddle 61 (according to the numbering of the
Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records (ASPR) is a six-volume edition intended at the time of its publication to encompass all known Old English poetry. Despite many subsequent editions of individual poems or collections, it has remained the standard refere ...
) is one of the
Old English riddles
Anglo-Saxon riddles are a significant genre of Anglo-Saxon literature. The riddle was a major, prestigious literary form in early medieval England, and riddles were written both in Latin and Old English verse. The pre-eminent composer of Latin rid ...
found in the later tenth-century
Exeter Book. The riddle is usually solved as 'shirt', 'mailcoat' or 'helmet'. It is noted as one of a number of Old English riddles with sexual connotations and as a source for gender-relations in early medieval England.
Text
As edited by Krapp and Dobbie in the
Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records (ASPR) is a six-volume edition intended at the time of its publication to encompass all known Old English poetry. Despite many subsequent editions of individual poems or collections, it has remained the standard refere ...
series (with the addition of marking of long vowels), and translated by Megan Cavell, Riddle 61 runs:
Often a noble woman, a lady, locked me
fast in a chest, sometimes she drew me up
with her hands and gave me to her husband,
her loyal lord, as she was bid.
Then he stuck his head in the heart of me,
upward from beneath, fitted it in the tight space.
If the strength of the receiver was suitable,
something shaggy had to fill
me, the adorned one. Determine what I mean.Riddle 25 (or 23)
, trans. by Megan Cavell,
The Riddle Ages
' (10 April 2017).
References
{{reflist
Riddles
Old English literature
Old English poetry