Exeter Book Riddle 51
{{Short description|Old English riddle}}
Exeter Book Riddle 51 (according to the numbering of the Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records) is one of the Old English riddles found in the later tenth-century Exeter Book. Its solution is 'quill pen and three fingers', 'whose figurative "journey" leaves a dark track of letters and words on the page'Dieter Bitterli, Say what I am Called: The Old English Riddles of the Exeter Book and the Anglo-Latin Riddle Tradition, Toronto Anglo-Saxon Series, 2 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009), p.146. and it stands accordingly as an important literary example of the international riddle type, the Writing-riddle, whose most basic form is 'white field, black seeds'. In the reading of Helen Price, the riddle suggests that 'writing is a journey, but it is not one of a human being alone. The riddle is self consciously aware of the connected nature of human, tool, and animal'.Helen Price, ‘[http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/6607/ Human and NonHuman in Anglo-Saxon and British Postwar Poetry: Reshaping Literary Ecology]’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Leeds, 2014), p. 127.
Text
{{Verse translation|
{{lang|ang|Ic seah wrætlice wuhte feower
samed siþian; swearte wæran lastas,
swaþu swiþe blacu. Swift wæs on fore,
fuglum framra; fleag on lyfte,
deaf under yþe. Dreag unstille
winnende wiga se him wegas tæcneþ
ofer fæted gold feower eallum.}}
|
I saw four wondrous things
travelling together; their tracks were swarthy,
their footsteps were very black. It was swift on its journey,
bolder than the birds; it flew across the air,
dove under the water. Busy was the
struggling warrior, who showed all four
of them the way over plated gold.Helen Price, ‘[http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/6607/ Human and NonHuman in Anglo-Saxon and British Postwar Poetry: Reshaping Literary Ecology]’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Leeds, 2014), p. 126.}}
Studies
- Lees, Clare A. 2010. ‘Basil Bunting, Briggflatts, Lindisfarne, and Anglo-Saxon Interlace’, in Anglo-Saxon Culture and the Modern Imagination, ed. by David Clark and Nicholas Perkins, Medievalism, 1 (Cambridge: Brewer), pp. 111–28.
Editions
- Foys, Martin et al. (eds.) [https://oepoetryfacsimile.org/?document=10634&document=10559 Old English Poetry in Facsimile Project], (Madison, WI: Center for the History of Print and Digital Culture, 2019-). Online edition annotated and linked to digital facsimile, with a modern translation.
Recordings
- Michael D. C. Drout, '[http://mdrout.webspace.wheatoncollege.edu/2007/10/29/riddle-51/ Riddle 51]', performed from the Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records edition (29 October 2007).