The Exeter Book riddles are a fragmentary collection of verse

riddles A riddle is a statement, question or phrase having a double or veiled meaning, put forth as a puzzle to be solved. Riddles are of two types: ''enigmas'', which are problems generally expressed in metaphorical or allegorical language that requir ...

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 ...

found in the later tenth-century anthology of

Old English poetry Old English literature refers to poetry and prose written in Old English in early medieval England, from the 7th century to the decades after the Norman Conquest of 1066, a period often termed Anglo-Saxon England. The 7th-century work ''Cædmon ...

known as the

Exeter Book The Exeter Book, also known as the Codex Exoniensis or Exeter Cathedral Library MS 3501, is a large codex of Old English poetry, believed to have been produced in the late tenth century AD. It is one of the four major manuscripts of Old Engli ...

. Today standing at around ninety-four (scholars debate precisely how many there are because divisions between poems are not always clear), the Exeter Book riddles account for almost all the riddles attested in Old English, and a major component of the otherwise mostly Latin corpus of riddles from early medieval England.

Sources

One riddle, known as Exeter Book riddle 30 is found twice in the Exeter Book (with some textual variation), indicating that the Exeter Book was compiled from more than one pre-existing manuscript collection of Old English riddles. Considerable scholarly effort has gone into reconstructing what these exemplars may have been like. Four of the riddles originate as translations from the Latin riddles of Aldhelm, emphasising that the Exeter Book riddles were at least partly influenced by Latin riddling in early medieval England: riddles 35 (mailcoat, also found in an eighth-century version in a ninth-century manuscript), and 40, 66, and 94 (all derived from Aldhelm's hundredth riddle, ''

De creatura ''De creatura'' ('On Creation') is an 83-line Latin polystichic poem by the seventh- to eighth-century Anglo-Saxon poet Aldhelm and an important text among Anglo-Saxon riddles. The poem seeks to express the wondrous diversity of creation, usually ...

''). Some riddles seem to have come directly from vernacular tradition.

Form and style

The riddles are all written in

alliterative verse In prosody, alliterative verse is a form of verse that uses alliteration as the principal ornamental device to help indicate the underlying metrical structure, as opposed to other devices such as rhyme. The most commonly studied traditions of ...

, and frequently end with an injunction to 'say what I am called', suggesting that they were recited as oral entertainment.Carol Lind, 'Riddling in the Voices of Others: The Old English Exeter Book Riddles and a Pedagogy of the Anonymous' (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Illinois State University, 2007). Like other Old English poetry, the riddles make extensive use of compound nouns and adjectives. When metaphorical, these compounds become what could be considered riddles within the riddle itself, and the audience must be attentive to any double meanings or "hinge words" in order to discover the answer to the riddle. The riddles offer a new perspective on the mundane world and often poetically personify their subject.Rios, Alberto
Anglo-Saxon Prosody, "Forms of Verse".
Fall, 2000. In this respect, they can be situated within a wider tradition of 'speaking objects' in Anglo-Saxon culture and have much in common with poems such as ''

The Dream of the Rood ''The'' ''Dream of the Rood'' is one of the Christian poems in the corpus of Old English literature and an example of the genre of dream poetry. Like most Old English poetry, it is written in alliterative verse. ''Rood'' is from the Old English ...

'' and ''

The Husband's Message "The Husband's Message" is an anonymous Old English poem, 53 lines long and found only on folio 123 of the Exeter Book. The poem is cast as the private address of an unknown first-person speaker to a wife, challenging the reader to discover the sp ...

'' and with artefacts such as the

Franks Casket The Franks Casket (or the Auzon Casket) is a small Anglo-Saxon whale's bone (not "whalebone" in the sense of baleen) chest from the early 8th century, now in the British Museum. The casket is densely decorated with knife-cut narrative scenes in ...

Alfred Jewel The Alfred Jewel is a piece of Anglo-Saxon goldsmithing work made of enamel and quartz enclosed in gold. It was discovered in 1693, in North Petherton, Somerset, England and is now one of the most popular exhibits at the Ashmolean Museum in Ox ...

, and Brussels Cross, which endow inanimate things with first-person voices. Unlike the Latin riddles from early medieval England, the Old English ones tend not to rely on intellectual obscurity to make the riddle more difficult for the reader, rather focusing on describing processes of manufacture and transformation. And again in contrast to manuscripts of the Latin riddles, the Exeter Book does not state the solutions to its riddles. The search for their solutions has been addressed at length by Patrick J. Murphy, focusing on thought patterns of the period, but there is still no unanimous agreement on some of them.Patrick J. Murphy. 2011. ''Unriddling the Exeter Riddles''. University Park: Penn State University Press.

The Exeter Book riddles are varied in theme, but they are all used to engage and challenge the readers mentally. By representing the familiar, material world from an oblique angle, many not only draw on but also complicate or challenge social norms such as martial masculinity, patriarchal attitudes to women, lords' dominance over their servants, and humans' over animals. Thirteen, for example, have as their solution an implement, which speaks of itself through the riddle as a servant to its lord; but these sometimes also suggest the power of the servant to define the master. The majority of the riddles have religious themes and answers. Some of the religious contexts within the riddles are "manuscript book (or Bible)," "soul and body," "fish and river" (fish are often used to symbolize Christ).Black, Joseph, et al., eds. ''The Broadview Anthology of British Literature: Volume 1: The Medieval Period''. 2nd ed. Ontario, Canada: Broadview Press,2009. Print. The riddles also were written about common objects, and even animals were used as inspiration for some of the riddles. One example of a typical, religious riddle is Riddle 41, which describes the soul and body: :A noble guest of great lineage dwells :In the house of man. Grim hunger :Cannot harm him, nor feverish thirst, :Nor age, nor illness. If the servant :Of the guest who rules, serves well :On the journey, they will find together :Bliss and well-being, a feast of fate; :If the slave will not as a brother be ruled :By a lord he should fear and follow :Then both will suffer and sire a family :Of sorrows when, springing from the world, :They leave the bright bosom of one kinswoman, :Mother and sister, who nourished them. :Let the man who knows noble words :Say what the guest and servant are called. :^{Trans. by Craig Williamson, ''A Feast of Creatures: Anglo-Saxon Riddle-Songs'' (1982)} While the Exeter Book was found in a cathedral library, and while it is clear that religious scribes worked on the riddles, not all of the riddles in the book are religiously themed. Many of the answers to the riddles are everyday, common objects. There are also many double entendres, which can lead to an answer that is obscene. One example of this is Riddle 23/25: :I am wonderful help to women, :The hope of something to come. I harm :No citizen except my slayer. :Rooted I stand on a high bed. :I am shaggy below. Sometimes the beautiful :Peasant's daughter, an eager-armed, :Proud woman grabs my body, :Rushes my red skin, holds me hard, :Claims my head. The curly-haired :Woman who catches me fast will feel :Our meeting. Her eye will be wet. :^{Trans. by Craig Williamson, ''A Feast of Creatures: Anglo-Saxon Riddle-Songs'' (1982)} One of the first answers that readers might think of would be an onion. If the reader pays close attention to the wording in the latter half of the riddle, however, he or she may be led to believe that the answer is a man's penis. Both of these answers are perfectly legitimate answers to this riddle, but one is very innocent where the other is obscene. Riddles in which such double entendre is thought to be prominent in the Exeter Book are: 2 (ox and hide), 20 (sword), 25 (onion), 37 (bellows), 42 (cock and hen), 44 (key and lock), 45 (dough), 54 (churn and butter), 61 (mailshirt or helmet), 62 (poker), 63 (glass beaker), 64 (

Lot Lot or LOT or The Lot or ''similar'' may refer to: Common meanings Areas * Land lot, an area of land * Parking lot, for automobiles *Backlot, in movie production Sets of items *Lot number, in batch production *Lot, a set of goods for sale togethe ...

and his family), 65 (onion), 91 (key). Even though some of the riddles contained obscene meanings, that is not to say that the majority of riddles in the Exeter Book were obscene. There were more religious and animalistic riddles than obscene riddles. Since the riddles were crammed into the pages of the manuscript with hardly any organization, many of the riddles vary in structure. The boundaries between riddles were often unclear. In fact, some remain unanswered to this day, such as 95: :I am noble, known to rest in the quiet :Keeping of many men, humble and high born. :The plunderers’ joy, hauled far from friends, :Rides richly on me, shines signifying power, :Whether I proclaim the grandeur of halls, :The wealth of cities, or the glory of God. :Now wise men love most my strange way :Of offering wisdom to many without voice. :Though the children of earth eagerly seek :To trace my trail, sometimes my tracks are dim. :^{Trans. by Craig Williamson, ''A Feast of Creatures: Anglo-Saxon Riddle-Songs'' (1982)}

List of Exeter Book Riddles

The Exeter Book Riddles have the following solutions (according to the Riddle Ages blog and Paull F. Baum), and numbered according to the edition by Krapp and Dobbie.''Anglo-Saxon Riddles of the Exeter Book'', trans. by Paull F. Baum (Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1963), https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Anglo-Saxon_Riddles_of_the_Exeter_Book; George Philip Krapp and Elliott Van Kirk Dobbie (eds), ''The Exeter Book'', The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records, 3 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1936).

Editions and translations

* Andy Orchard (ed. and trans.), ''The Old English and Anglo-Latin Riddle Tradition'', Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 69 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2021); accompanied by Andy Orchard, ''A Commentary on the Old English and Anglo-Latin Riddle Tradition'', Supplements to the Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 2021). *
The Riddle Ages: Early Medieval Riddles, Translations and Commentaries
', ed. by Megan Cavell and others, 2nd edn (Birmingham: University of Birmingham, 2020–). * Martin Foys, ''et al.'' (eds
''Old English Poetry in Facsimile Project''
(Madison, WI: Center for the History of Print and Digital Culture, 2019-), with translations from th
''Old English Poetry Project''
Aaron Hostetter (trans.).

Edition only

*''The Riddles of the Exeter Book'', ed. by Frederick Tupper (Boston: Ginn, c1910),

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*Elliott van Kirk Dobbie and George Philip Krapp (eds), ''The Exeter Book'', Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records 3 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1936), digitised at https://web.archive.org/web/20181206091232/http://ota.ox.ac.uk/desc/3009 * Craig Williamson (ed),
The Old English Riddles of the Exeter Book
' (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1977) * Bernard J. Muir (ed), ''The Exeter Anthology of Old English Poetry: An Edition of Exeter Dean and Chapter MS 3501'', 2nd edn, 2 vols (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2000)

Translation only

* Paull F. Baum, ''Anglo-Saxon Riddles of the Exeter Book'' (Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1963), https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Anglo-Saxon_Riddles_of_the_Exeter_Book * Kevin Crossley-Holland (trans), ''The Exeter Book Riddles'', revised edition (London: Enitharmon Press, 2008) * Greg Delanty, Seamus Heaney and Michael Matto, ''The Word Exchange: Anglo-Saxon Poems in Translation'' (New York: Norton, 2010) * F. H. Whitman (ed and trans), ''Old English Riddles'' (Ottawa: Canadian Federation for the Humanities, 1982) * Craig Williamson (trans),

' (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982)

References

{{reflist Riddles Old English poetry