Abstract
THE large collection of verse riddles in the Exeter Book provides a reader alternately with poetical excitement, casual amusement, and sheer agonized bewilderment. Sometimes the bewilderment is attributable to the artful deceptions of the riddler and the fact that the compiler has not supplied us with solutions. Sometimes, however, a collaborator in the game of deception is no other than that unceremonious destroyer of men's works known to the Anglo-Saxons as Wyrd seo mcare. A freshly detected instance of her malice in its relatively playful aspect is the occasion for this paper. The edition of the Exeter Book by Krapp and Dobbie offers, as Riddle 70, the following six lines of verse: Wiht is wraetlic ]am be hyre wisan ne conn. Singer ]urh sidan. Is se sweora woh, orsoncum geworht; hafa] eaxle tua scearp on gescyldrum. His gesceapo [dreoget]S be swa wraetlice be wege stonde heah ond hleortorht haele]um to nytte.2
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