“ I’m a wonderful thing; I vary my voice:
I bark like a dog, I bleat like a goat,
I quack like a goose, I shriek like a hawk;
I imitate the eagle, the gray one, the cry
Of the fighting bird; sometimes the kite’s voice
is familiar to my mouth, or the sea-mew’s song,
where I happily sit. ”

“ THE ninety-odd riddles in Anglo-Saxon which have come down to us in a single manuscript are naturally a miscellaneous collection of varying merit. A few of them are poetical in the best sense of Anglo-Saxon poetic style, as good as anything outside the heroic style of the Beowulf. Many of them are interesting as riddles: intentional ambiguities to be solved by the reader or hearer. Some of them are learned, turning on the interpretation of runic letters or dealing with subjects only the monkish mind would care about. Some of them are neat and clever and well versified; others are not so good. ”

“ I was the boast of brown [things] , a tree in the forest,
a fine living thing and a fruit of the field,
a foundation of joy, a woman’s message,
gold in the homes. Now I am a warrior’s
happy weapon with a ring ... ”

“ Clearly I call, keeping the melody, An old evening-singer unceasing in song, To earls in their houses I bring great bliss; When I chant my carols in varying strains, Men sit in their dwellings silent and still. Say what I’m called who mimic so clearly The songs of a jester, and sing to the world Many a melody welcome to men. ”

“ What good man is so learned and so clever
that he can say who drives me forth on my way?
When I rise up strong at times furious,
I thunder mightily and again with havoc
I sweep over the land, burn the great hall,
ravage the buildings. Smoke mounts on high
dark over the rooftops. Clamor is everywhere,
sudden death among men. When I shake the forest,
the trees proud in their fruit, I fell the boles. ”

“ When the riddle is put into verse there is the increment of poetical language to heighten the ambiguity, or, on the other hand, the language may be strained to satisfy metrical requirements.
In quite another fashion the Anglo-Saxon riddler has an advantage over us, in that he knows the language better than we do and is familiar with many things which we are obliged to get up—as in the description of a primitive plow or weaver’s loom. ”

“ I am greater than all this world is,
less than the handworm, brighter than the moon,
swifter than the sun. All seas and waters
are in my embraces, and the bosom of earth
and the green fields. I reach to the ground,
I descend below hell, I rise above the heavens,
the land of glory. ”

“ Of old a nighttime singer I bring joy to the gentles who dwell in towns. When I raise my voice with many modulations they listen reverently. What am I called who cry out so clearly with bright imitation of professional entertainers and bring with my singing notes of welcome to mortal man? ”

“ For a folk riddle may be taken over by the learned and dressed accordingly, or vice versa, a learned riddle may pass to the folk and suffer modification to fit popular taste. Our Anglo-Saxon riddles illustrate both movements. No positive distinctions can be made, but in general the longer and more poetic may safely be called learned, notably the Storm riddles, but also for a different reason those containing runes; and the shorter (and metrically inferior ones) must be regarded as popular, notably those on simple domestic themes and the so-called obscene riddles. ”

“ It is dear to the prosperous, to the poor soothing,
goodly, excellent; boldest and strongest,
greediest and eagerest— treads over the ground—
of all that is grown up underneath the sky
and that the sons of men ever saw with their eyes.
So that glory weaves the might of mortals,
although wise of mind . . . . .
a man more knowing of heart, a crowd of wonders.
Than earth it is harder, than heroes older,
than gifts readier, than gems dearer;
beautifies the world; increases in fruits ”

“ Trautmann, for example, has the following: “A man and his wife are seated on a horse; the man has a bird in his hand, the woman a dog on her arm and an unborn child inside her (or the man has the dog and the woman has the bird) . The four feet are the horse’s; the eight on its back are the child’s, the bird’s, and the dog’s. The feet of the man and wife are not counted since they are neither underneath nor up above. The six heads and twelve eyes are those of the man, woman, child, dog, bird, horse.” ”

“ But the riddler has a good answer. He has loaded his lines with epic compounds—six of them hapaxes—evidently to create an atmosphere of heroic battle. When the badger gets into the open he fights the dog as man to man. ”

“ Sometimes my Lord constrains me close
and forces me under the broad bosom
of the fertile fields and holds me there,
drives me into darkness, where hard on my back
the earth sits heavy. There is no escape
from all that torment ”

“ Eternal is the Creator who controls this earth now
on its foundations ... [and] holds the world.
Strong is the Ruler and King by right,
mighty over all. The earth and the heavens
He holds and wields as He encircles them about. ”

“ Some strange solutions have been proposed, but the correct one is no doubt the monthly contest of Sun and Moon. The plunder is the old moon in the new moon’s arms. The moon would like to make itself a home in the heavens, but the familiar sun comes up and the moon is routed. ”

“ Christ, the commander, the true lord of victories,
ordained me for conflict. I burn the living,
unnumbered mortals, over all the earth.
I afflict them with pain, yet never I touch them,
whenever my lord bids me to battle. ”

“ And when there is no generally accepted solution, one must guard against slanting the translation toward one’s own guess. Moreover, the riddles vary in merit. For the best of them one does one’s best; for the others one tries not to make them appear better than the original. The result is, therefore, a series of compromises in the hope of achieving “the best possible failure.” Finally, there is the question of metrical form. Modern imitations of the Anglo-Saxon long line of four main stresses, with two, often three, alliterating syllables to the line, have usually been unsatisfactory. ”

“ Not silent is my hall, nor I myself am loud
. . . for us two the Lord ordained
our ways together. I am swifter than he
and at times stronger; he is more enduring.
Often I rest; he must run on.
With him is my home all my life long. ”

“ In those first days my father and mother
left me for dead: there was no life yet,
no life within me. Then a kindly kinswoman
faithfully covered me with her own clothing,
held me and cherished, kept me warmly,
even as gently as her own children—
until beneath her, as my destiny willed,
I waxed into life with my alien fellows. ”

“ In some dozen and a half others there are fainter connections with the Latin riddles, different editors holding different views. But the point is that these two hundred Latin enigmas must have suggested the composition of vernacular riddles, most of them probably by clerics, in that transitional middle-world between pagan and Christian, when those men who were sufficiently trained to write English verse could look both ways and feel no hesitation in mingling the sacred and profane. ”

“ In this last there may be an echo of Matt. 8:24–27 (Christ calming the waves) , and in the shipwreck picture a notion of divine retribution at the Last Judgment.
(k-d 3, 36–66)
Sometimes I rush through the wan wet clouds
that ride on my back, scatter them wide
with their streaming water. Sometimes I allow them
to glide together. Great is the din,
uproar over houses, and loudest of crashes,
when fiercely comes cloud against cloud
like sword against sword. Darkling spirits,
swift over mortals, sweat with fire,
with gleaming flame and fearful noises. ”

“ For the present purpose of a non-scholarly edition, I have ventured, though with some misgiving, to bring together those of the riddles which are related by theme or subject, leaving a number which can only be classed as miscellaneous. To attempt a division according to merit would be risky, and by the distinction of learned and popular equally so. Even a grouping by subject is fraught with difficulties, partly because there is bound to be much overlapping and partly because of the variety of answers proposed by various scholars ”

“ I may do him no harm,
but I raise up captivity from time to time,
the wide world over. I have many glories,
no little strength in all the land,
but I must conceal from every man
the secret power of precious skill
and the path I follow. Tell what my name is. ”

“ I have heard of a splendid thing,
of the Lord of peoples, a word of incantation ...
Several defective lines and then the conclusion:
I have become
a teacher of peoples, live an eternal life
in many lands, while men inhabit
the bosom of earth. ”

“ I have no winding wefts nor any warp in me;
nor with strong rods does the thread resound for me,
nor the whirring shuttle move across me,
nor the weaver’s rods anywhere smite me.
Worms do not weave me with fatal wiles
which fairly adorn the fine yellow web.
Yet nevertheless the wide world over
one will call me a joyful garment for heroes. ”

“ Obscene is a troublesome word for both legal and lay minds, but there is nothing uncertain about these few Anglo-Saxon riddles which go under that name. Most of the editors have been shy about their double meanings. ”

“ For example, compare the opening lines of the Latin:
The Creator, who established the ages on eternal pillars, the Ruler of kingdoms, who bridles the lightnings by his law, while the heights of the widespreading universe are swaying to and fro into space, formed me in various shapes, when in the beginning he founded the world. (Wyatt’s translation.) The Anglo-Saxon translator omitted most of the classical allusions, except Vulcan (l. 56) and Zephyrus (l. 68) , but retained the word pernix (Aldhelm l. 35) , which he obviously did not understand. ”

“ Loud I sing with notes ever changing with professional skill always at evening long familiar to all good men. They welcome my song. I bring them bliss as they sit listening at home with heads bowed in reverence. ”

“ The Storm riddles have pride of place not only because they stand first in the Exeter Book, but also because they outrank all the rest in poetic merit. After much discussion, the consensus now is that 1 is a separate riddle and 2 and 3 are a single riddle by a different author, in four parts and a conclusion. ”

“ Soul and Body. The guest is the soul; the servant, and brother, the body; they will both be harmed when they leave the earth. The mother and sister are the earth: mother since the body is dust, and sister since body and soul have the same father, God. This is a rather ambitious one, but metrically inferior. More often than is usually the case the word-order is determined by the alliteration. In l. 12 the guest is called “comer,” apparently for the alliteration; in the last lines the alliteration falls on the weak words “or,” “of.” ”

“ Two facts, however, have given rise to an uncertainty; for references, see notes in Krapp–Dobbie. First, it is unusual for a riddle to carry a secret message “for us two alone”; and second, this riddle is followed immediately in the manuscript by a poem of fifty-five lines called The Lover’s Message, which begins: “Now I will speak to you apart,” and goes on to tell how he was driven into exile and now is waiting for her to join him in the spring, when they can renew their vows of love. ”

“ It is a splendid thing when one knows not its ways.
It sings through its sides. Its neck is curved.
and cunningly wrought. It has two shoulders,
which are sharp, on its back. It follows its fate,
when it stands by the road, so handsomely there,
tall and bright-hued; useful to good men. ”

“ I’m a wonderful thing, a joy to women,
to neighbors useful. I injure no one
who lives in a village save only my slayer.
I stand up high and steep over the bed;
underneath I’m shaggy. Sometimes ventures
a young and handsome peasant’s daughter,
a maiden proud, to lay hold on me. ”

“ I through my throat the thronging melodies Delicately devising in divers moods, Let my little breath lavishly chime, Still the bestower of unstinted song. Of old to all men my evening enchantment Brings blissful ease ”

“ I was alive but said nothing; even so I die.
Back I came before I was. Everyone plunders me,
keeps me confined, and shears my head,
bites my bare body, breaks my sprouts.
No man I bite unless he bites me ”

“ A warrior is wondrously brought into the world
for the use of lords by two dumb things;
brightly extracted, which for his hurt
foe bears against foe. Strong though he is
a woman binds him. He obeys them well,
serves them quietly, if maids and men
tend him duly, feed him fairly. ”

“ After us two large ones, our kin will now follow us,
younger brothers will drive us from our home.
I am unique in the world. My back itself
is dark and wonderful. I stand on the wood,
at the end of the board. ”

“ Now, putting the pieces together, we have for the solution a bird which sings in the evening with great skill and various tunes, and also impresses the noble listeners with its serious music yet at the same time with something which is comic if not quite naughty. ”

“ Silent is my garment when I tread the earth
or dwell in the towns or stir the waters.
Sometimes my trappings lift me up over
the habitations of heroes and this high air,
and the might of the welkin bears me afar
above mankind. ”

“ The “striving thing” is the web still in the loom; it is injured by the needle or shuttle passing through it. The spears or darts “must be the teeth of the batten penetrating through the warp.” “The two feet can only be the weighted ends of the two rows of warp threads.” The tree with leaves is a distaff, with flax on it; and the standing warp explains the metaphor of feet. ”

“ My limbs are as one assigns to them a meaning, This they will reveal when the meaning gathers itself together. That is to say that the parts of the riddle may receive different names, but when they are juxtaposed the true meaning will be apparent: the riddle is a charade. Leo then finds that cyn or cyne may be represented by cēne, by cœ̄n, or by cēn. And wæl (h) rēowe = cēne (bold) ; so too wuda = cēn (a torch) which is made of split wood. A woman speaks in this poem; woman = cwēn or in Northumbrian cœ̄n (a more than doubtful form) . The word wulf occurs frequently in the poem. ”

“ The difficulties of translating Anglo-Saxon poetry are well known; the attempt to translate the Anglo-Saxon riddles faces several peculiar difficulties. The text is in many places corrupt, and while excellent scholars have worked it over they are often at variance even as to the literal meaning and they have sometimes emended in the interest of a favored solution. The words themselves can be deceptive. ”

“ He revived, with the utmost confidence, the theory that the quondam First Riddle is a cryptogram, giving the name of Cynewulf in the form Cynwulf (as in the Crist and the Fates of the Apostles) . Apparently the quodnam First Riddle is a combination of acrostic and charade after “the Icelandic method.” Runes are employed, not the runes themselves but their names, or if not their names synonyms for their names, with a little further rectification when necessary. Everything means something else. ”

“ The Exeter Book poem more commonly known as “Wulf and Eadwacer” was once widely thought to be one of the riddles, appearing directly before the first riddle in the manuscript. Baum briefly mentions it in his bibliographical note, referring to it by Wyatt’s designation as the Quondam First Riddle. A navigational link to this appears on the page for Riddle 1 (k-d 1) . The page itself is excerpted from Wyatt’s Old English Riddles, including his own admittedly flawed translation and a fascinating history of its interpretation. ”

“ The piece is thus one half a transparent riddle and then a kind of heroic lay in the best tradition, in which the sword speaks as a follower who has somehow killed a friend of his master (or so I understand it) and is banished. He cannot marry, but he involves himself with a scolding woman. There is some disorder in the manuscript, the gatherings indicating the loss of a whole folio, which contained the conclusion of this riddle and perhaps other riddles. ”