Black and White and Read All Over: The Exeter Book Riddles

In this short Subcast episode, I wish to engage your help!  The Anglo-Saxons loved riddles and nearly a hundred survive.  Here are four.  I'd love to hear your answers!


Often I war with waves, battle the winds,

strive against both at once, meaning to find

the ground wave-covered.

Home is estranged from me—

I am strong of struggle, if stilled.

If I fail, they are stronger than me,

and, tearing me, immediately rout,

wishing to whisk away what I must ward.

I may withstand them, if my tail is tough

and the stones allow me to hold fast

against unrelenting force. Ask what I am called. 

 __________________________________________________________

A moth ate words. It seemed to me

a strange occasion, when I inquired about that wonder,

that the worm swallowed the riddle of certain men,

a thief in the darkness, the glorious pronouncement

and its strong foundation. The stealing guest was not

one whit the wiser, for all those words he swallowed.  

 ____________________________________________________________

I saw four wondrous creatures

travelling together; dark were their tracks,

their footprints very black. Swift was their journey,

faster than birds, flying through the breeze,

diving under the waves. Restless it wrought,

a struggling warrior who points out their ways

over decorated gold, all four of them. 

__________________________________________________________ 

I am a wonderful thing, a pleasure

to women, useful to the neighbors—

I am harmless to the villagers,

except to my slayer alone.

My shaft is lofty, I stand over the bed,

shaggy below someplace or other.

Sometimes a churl’s daughter,

proud-minded woman, quite sexy,

dares to grapple me,

molesting me by the redness,

ravishing my head,

affixing me in her fastness.

She feels my forcing

right away, she who

approaches me,

a woman with braided locks.

Her eye will be wet— 

____________________________________________________________

Music: "Rejoice" (G.F. Handel) perf. Advent Chamber Orchestra
Text: Muir, Bernard James, ed. The Exeter Anthology of Old English Poetry, 1994.

Transcript

Hi and welcome once again to the Classic English Literature Podcast – a show about the history and analysis of English literature and language.  This is another bonus episode or mini-episode, call it what you will.  A sorbet to cleanse the literary palate. Today: Black and White and Read All Over: The Exeter Book Riddles.

Before we move on, let me ask you to please like, subscribe, and review the podcast on whatever podcast app you use.  It will help others find the podcast more easily and help me feel less alone.  I’m a brittle man.  There are also Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook pages you can follow to get updates and announcements.

Also, if you’ve been enjoying the show, please consider helping to defray the costs of producing it by clicking the “Support the Show” button on the website.  Anything you can give will bring tears of gratitude.

Thank you for your consideration.

So, I know I said last time that we would be moving away from the Anglo-Saxon period and into the high Middle Ages and the Norman Conquest next.  But then I thought to myself, “Self, you’ve left a pretty gloomy impression of the Anglo-Saxons.  Defeated heroes, funerals, lonely wanderers.  Surely that is not an accurate presentation of the full richness of Anglo-Saxon culture!”

Well, dear listener, I’m afraid it is.  They were – there’s no denying this, now – a lugubrious people.  Relentlessly fatalistic. The Anglo-Saxons had two major modes of poetry: 1) the heroic (which includes Beowulf and another war poem “The Battle of Maldon” – both of which are in some ways celebrations of heroic defeat).  And 2) the elegiac (“The Wanderer,” “The Seafarer,” “The Wife’s Lament”).  A critic, whose name eludes both my recall and my Googling, once said that elegies are the love poetry of a warrior society.  That sits well with me.  Romantic love or joy or any kind of pleasure at all (except for lost pleasure) is conspicuously absent from Old English poetry.  With one exception:

They loved riddles.  Yeah, word puzzles.  Like, “what’s black and white and read all over?” “A newspaper!”  Or, a zebra blushing.  Or, as one quite disturbing first grader told me: “A skunk in a blender.”  Charming little tike.

Riddling has quite a long cultural pedigree.  We see riddling games in all sorts of holy texts, folk- and fairy tales, ancient drama.  For instance, there is the famous “Riddle of the Sphinx” in the Greek Oedipus myths that serve in Sophocles’ play.  There is Samson’s riddle in the biblical Book of Judges and the Riddles of Odin in Norse mythology.  You may recall the riddling contest in The Hobbit novel or film between Bilbo Baggins and Gollum,  in which Bilbo tries to trick Gollum into showing him the way out of the caves while Gollum is trying to trick Bilbo into his belly.

I know I reference JRR Tolkien and his work fairly regularly, but I do so because his work has entered the popular culture to such an extent, between the novels and Peter Jackson’s films and (at the time of this writing) a new series on a very well-known streaming service.  And his Middle-Earth has so many points of connection to Anglo-Saxon culture: the horse riders of Rohan, the Rohirrim, are generally recognized as the seafaring Anglo-Saxons relocated to the plains.  The vengeful dragon who kills Beowulf is the original for the hoarding Smaug in The Hobbit.  SoTolkien’s a useful analogue.

Riddles usually come in two flavors: enigmas and conundrums. Enigmatic riddles involve describing the solution metaphorically, allegorically, or analogously.  For instance, Bilbo’s riddle, “A box without hinges, key, or lid, / Yet golden treasure inside is hid” is an enigma because it describes the solution (an egg) as a box.  Conundrums rely on punning, like “What’s black and white and read all over” relies on the pun “read” (the verb) and “red” (the color adjective) for its solution.

So the pleasure of riddles relies upon solving the “blocks”: those elements of our common everyday thinking that prevent us from seeing the other ambiguous possibilities inherent in the language.  We need to be able to sort what language is figurative and what is literal.  We need to recognize the possibility of homophones (words that sound alike but mean different things).  And what about good old innuendo – intentional, usually a bit naughty, misdirection?  Oh, the Anglo-Saxons loved a good innuendo.

In The Exeter Book, that trustiest of tomes, we find 94 or 95 riddles.  We reckon there was supposed to be a hundred, but that some got lost, or that someone was quite poor at counting.  They are written in the traditional Old English alliterative style and probably began as part of an oral culture before being compiled by English clerics in the 10th century.  The other texts are  often religious, but these devotional poems sit alongside riddles about nature and the weather, kitchen work, tools, everyday life stuff.  

And these were not just shallow pastimes, like our Sudoku or Wordle fads, these were considered as seriously as any other poetry.  Because approaching everyday life from oblique angles forces a reconsideration of cultural norms.  When the language one uses to describe the world meaningfully can be wrenched from its normal or expected contexts, when its inherent ambiguities can be exploited, even in wordplay, we are compelled to re-evaluate what the world itself means. We can interrogate social relations, gender hierarchies, religious or political beliefs, economic relationships. . . anything.  If language is the means by which we make the world meaningful to us, and we realize that that meaning was made under specific circumstances, perhaps that meaning can be unmade or remade. 

Anyway.  They’re also just a bit of fun.

This is the audience participation part of the show.  I’m going to read you several riddles from the Exeter Book.  While the text itself does not provide solutions, scholars have a general consensus. What I’d like you all to do is send me your answers to the riddles.  Just pop them on the back of a $20 bill and send it to me here in the Clubhouse.  Please.  Alternatively, you can post them on the Instatwitbook pages or email them to me: classicenglishliterature@gmail.com.

Now, I trust that no one will be a treacherous weasel and Google the answers.  That wouldn’t be quite cricket, would it?

I will award points for incorrect, but wildly funny. answers.

Here goes:

Often I war with waves, battle the winds,

strive against both at once, meaning to find

the ground wave-covered.

Home is estranged from me—

I am strong of struggle, if stilled.

If I fail, they are stronger than me,

and, tearing me, immediately rout,

wishing to whisk away what I must ward.

I may withstand them, if my tail is tough

and the stones allow me to hold fast

against unrelenting force. Ask what I am called.  (ANCHOR)

A moth ate words. It seemed to me

a strange occasion, when I inquired about that wonder,

that the worm swallowed the riddle of certain men,

a thief in the darkness, the glorious pronouncement

and its strong foundation. The stealing guest was not

one whit the wiser, for all those words he swallowed.  (BOOKWORM)

I saw four wondrous creatures

travelling together; dark were their tracks,

their footprints very black. Swift was their journey,

faster than birds, flying through the breeze,

diving under the waves. Restless it wrought,

a struggling warrior who points out their ways

over decorated gold, all four of them. (A HAND WRITING)

I am a wonderful thing, a pleasure

to women, useful to the neighbors—

I am harmless to the villagers,

except to my slayer alone.

My shaft is lofty, I stand over the bed,

shaggy below someplace or other.

Sometimes a churl’s daughter,

proud-minded woman, quite sexy,

dares to grapple me,

molesting me by the redness,

ravishing my head,

affixing me in her fastness.

She feels my forcing

right away, she who

approaches me,

a woman with braided locks.

Her eye will be wet—  (ONION)

OK, there you go.  Please send me your answers – I’d love to hear them.

I’ll be back next time with the Norman Conquest and all that.  Please like, subscribe, and review. Please consider supporting the show if you like what you hear.  Thanks for dropping in. Do take care.