Exeter Book Riddles 68-69

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Exeter Book folio 125v, showing Riddles 68 and 69 towards the bottom of the folio. Each is presented as a separate text, like Riddle 70 which begins on the third line from the bottom.

Exeter Book Riddles 68 and 69 (according to the numbering of the Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records)[1] are two (or arguably one) of the Old English riddles found in the later tenth-century Exeter Book. Their interpretation has occasioned a range of scholarly investigations, but clearly has something to do with ice and one or both of the riddles are likely indeed to have the solution 'ice'.[2]

Text[edit]

As the image of Exeter Book folio 125v shows, Riddles 68 and 69 are clearly presented in the manuscript as different texts.

As edited by Krapp and Dobbie in the Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records series, Riddle 68 runs

Meanwhile, in their edition, Riddle 69 is the shortest text of the Exeter Book:

However, since at least 1858, editors have discussed reading the riddles numbered by Krapp and Dobbie as 68 and 69 as one text.[5] This is inconsistent with the manuscript punctuation, but works well in terms of the otherwise observable conventions of Old English riddles' form and helps to make sense of Riddle 68:

Current scholarship is divided on this question, with recent commentators arguing both for reading 68 and 69 as discrete texts[7] or as one text.[8]

Interpretation[edit]

Reading riddles 68-69 as a single riddle with the solution 'Ice', Murphy argues that 'the solution snaps the text into sudden focus and reveals the great wonder of a commonplace thing'.[9]

Recordings[edit]

  • Michael D. C. Drout, 'Riddle 69', performed from the Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records edition (15 November 2007).

References[edit]

  1. ^ George Philip Krapp and Elliott Van Kirk Dobbie (eds), The Exeter Book, The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records, 3 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1936).
  2. ^ Patrick J. Murphy, Unriddling the Exeter Riddles (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2011), pp. 7-9.
  3. ^ 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. 231, accessed from http://ota.ox.ac.uk/desc/3009.
  4. ^ 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. 231, accessed from http://ota.ox.ac.uk/desc/3009.
  5. ^ The Riddles of the Exeter Book, ed. by Frederick Tupper (Boston: Ginn, c1910), p. 208, citing Grein's 1858 edition; cf. Tupper's own editorial choice p. 48; https://archive.org/details/riddlesofexeterb00tuppuoft.
  6. ^ 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. 231, accessed from http://ota.ox.ac.uk/desc/3009.
  7. ^ E.g. John D. Niles, Old English Enigmatic Poems and the Play of the Texts, Studies in the early Middle Ages, 13 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2006), pp. 112-13; Patrick J. Murphy, Unriddling the Exeter Riddles (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2011), p. 7.
  8. ^ The Old English Riddles of the Exeter Book, ed. by Craig Williamson (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1977), p. 335; Andy Orchard, 'Enigma Variations: The Anglo-Saxon Riddle-Tradition', in Latin Learning and English Lore: Studies in Anglo-Saxon Literature for Michael Lapidge, ed. by Andy Orchard and Katherine O’Brien O’Keeffe, 2 vols (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005), I, 284-304 (pp. 290-91).
  9. ^ Patrick J. Murphy, Unriddling the Exeter Riddles (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2011), p. 7.
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