Exeter Book Riddle 12
Exeter Book Riddle 12 (according to the numbering of the Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records)[1] is one of the Old English riddles found in the later tenth-century Exeter Book. Its solution is accepted to be 'ox/ox-hide' (though variations on this theme, focusing on leather objects, have been proposed).
Text and translation
As edited by Krapp and Dobbie, the riddle reads:[2]
Fotum ic fere, foldan slite, |
I travel by foot, trample the ground, |
Interpretations
The riddle is noted particularly for its rare (and unflattering) depiction of Wealas, a word which either means 'Brittonic people' or 'slaves' (or both; it is rendered in Treharne's translation above as 'Welshmen' and 'slave-girl ... from Wales').[4] It is particularly noted for its implicit portrayal of sexual desire, which is rare in Old English poetry: the riddle seems to depict a slave and/or ethnically Brittonic person fashioning an object from boiled leather, but certainly does so in ways that evoke sexual activity.[5]
There are a number of early medieval Latin riddles on oxen which stand as analogues to this one.[6]
Editions
- Krapp, George Philip and Elliott Van Kirk Dobbie (eds), The Exeter Book, The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records, 3 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1936), p. 186, https://web.archive.org/web/20181206091232/http://ota.ox.ac.uk/desc/3009.
- Williamson, Craig (ed.), The Old English Riddles of the Exeter Book (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1977).
- Muir, Bernard J. (ed.), The Exeter Anthology of Old English Poetry: An Edition of Exeter Dean and Chapter MS 3501, 2nd edn, 2 vols (Exeter: Exeter University Press, 2000).
Recordings
- Michael D. C. Drout, 'Riddle 12', performed from the Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records edition (19 October 2007).
External links
- Cameron Laird, 'Commentary for Riddle 12', The Riddle Ages (7 September 2013).
References
- ^ George Philip Krapp and Elliott Van Kirk Dobbie (eds), The Exeter Book, The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records, 3 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1936), http://ota.ox.ac.uk/desc/3009 Archived 2018-12-06 at the Wayback Machine.
- ^ George Philip Krapp and Elliott Van Kirk Dobbie (eds), The Exeter Book, The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records, 3 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1936), p. 186; http://ota.ox.ac.uk/desc/3009 Archived 2018-12-06 at the Wayback Machine.
- ^ Old and Middle English c. 890-c. 1400: An Anthology, ed. by Elaine Treharne, 2nd edn (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004), p. 69.
- ^ John W. Tanke, “Wonfeax wale: Ideology and Figuration in the Sexual Riddles of the Exeter Book”, in Class and Gender in Early English Literature, ed. by Britton J. Harwood and Gillian R. Overing (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1994), pp. 21-42.
- ^ Nina Rulon-Miller, “Sexual Humor and Fettered Desire in Exeter Book Riddle 12”, in Humour in Anglo-Saxon Literature, ed. by Jonathan Wilcox (Cambridge: Brewer, 2000), pp. 99-126.
- ^ Cameron Laird, 'Commentary for Riddle 12', The Riddle Ages (7 September 2013).