Exeter Book Riddle 65 (according to the numbering of the
Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records)
[George Philip Krapp and Elliott Van Kirk Dobbie (eds), ''The Exeter Book'', The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records, 3 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1936), http://ota.ox.ac.uk/desc/3009 .] is one of the
Old English
Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, Anglo ...
riddles found in the later tenth-century
Exeter Book. Suggested solutions have included Onion, Leek, and Chives, but the consensus is that the solution is Onion.
[Judy Kendall,]
Commentary for Riddle 65
, ''The Riddle Ages'' (17 August 2017).
Text and translation
As edited by Krapp and Dobbie and translated by Andrew Higl, the riddle reads:
Analogues
The riddle is frequently compared with
Exeter Book Riddle 25, also on the onion, but noted for its ''double entendre'', since in that riddle what to many readers will come first to mind as the obvious solution to the riddle is 'penis'.
Meanwhile, its analogue in the late-antique Latin riddles of
Symphosius is:
[Symphosius, ''The 'Aenigmata': An Introduction, Text, and Commentary'', ed. and trans. by T. J. Leary (London: Bloomsbury, 2014), p. 142 (no. 44).]
Editions
* Krapp, George Philip and Elliott Van Kirk Dobbie (eds),
The Exeter Book', The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records, 3 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1936), p. 230.
* Williamson, Craig (ed.), ''The Old English Riddles of the Exeter Book'' (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1977).
* Muir, Bernard J. (ed.), ''The Exeter Anthology of Old English Poetry: An Edition of Exeter Dean and Chapter MS 3501'', 2nd edn, 2 vols (Exeter: Exeter University Press, 2000).
References
{{reflist
Riddles
Old English literature
Old English poetry