Three Old English Implement Riddles: Reconsiderations of Numbers 4, 49, and 73

Abstract

The appearance a few years ago of Craig Williamson's edition, Old English Riddles of the Exeter Book,' afforded a reminder that much good work can still be done on early medieval riddle traditions in general and on the Old English riddles in particular; not least are we reminded that a number of the Old English riddles still lack even tentative solutions that may be taken seriously. Williamson himself has contributed several new answers that seem to be improvements on the old ones.2 Some of these make it clear that, at least in the cases of riddles dealing with man-made objects, the best clues may come from archaeological data used with philological precision and common sense. Since archaeology is the only field of Anglo-Saxon studies constantly adding material, it follows that the riddles must be reviewed from time to time to see if any of the standard solutions should be revised in the light of new archaeological knowledge. In this article I am proposing new or modified solutions to three riddles, two of which have more or less accepted answers that are not, in fact, very satisfactory and one that has no accepted answer at all. All three appear to be implement riddles. There are a few general principles that must be kept in mind for the solution of this type of riddle. First, implement riddles tend to present the object in a dynamic state, concentrating not on its visual makeup or total formal/ structural aspect but on its use, from the point of view of the user and the thing used, and in such a way that only part of its essential nature is evident and part, often the most obvious or important part, is deliberately hidden. Second, the effect of concentrating on the dynamic aspect is that the object is almost invariably personified and animated, and the solver is sent off on a jolly hunt for a more prosaic realization of the object than the riddle offers: inarticulate things speak, passive objects fight, inorganic devices eat, stable things rest, and so forth. This tends to be the chief method of obfuscation, at the same time that it often constitutes one or more of the most essential clues for solution. Third, the trick in solving these riddles is not only to note what is revealed but also to account for the deliberate tendencies of the obfuscation and to discount certain features in just the right amount. Too little discount and we see no other object than the fictional creature that is given; too much and we go for the wrong object altogether. Consider, for example, Williamson's splendid new solution of riddle number 28, Yew-horn (the old John Barleycorn) and let us assume for the sake of the argument that that is what the ancient riddler had in mind; if we did not discount the literal level we would see some creature that speaks only after death; however, we know to discount the living and dead attributes as figures standing for some concept such as before and after manufacture because of the common occurrence of these features in this type of riddle. But if we discount too