Exeter Book Riddle 60
{{Short description|Old English riddle}}
Exeter Book Riddle 60 (according to the numbering of the Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records)George Philip Krapp and Elliott Van Kirk Dobbie (eds), The Exeter Book, The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records, 3 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1936). is one of the Old English riddles found in the later tenth-century Exeter Book. The riddle is usually solved as 'reed pen', although such pens were not in use in Anglo-Saxon times, rather being Roman technology; but it can also be understood as 'reed pipe'.Patrick J. Murphy, Unriddling the Exeter Riddles (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2011), pp. 140-41; Dieter Bitterli, Say What I am Called: The Old English Riddles of the Exeter Book and the Anglo-Latin Riddle Tradition (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009), pp. 8, 137.
Text
As edited by Krapp and Dobbie in the Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records series, Riddle 60 runs:
{{lang|ang|Ic wæs be sonde, sæwealle neah,
æt merefaroþe, minum gewunade
frumstaþole fæst; fea ænig wæs
monna cynnes, þæt minne þær
on anæde eard beheolde,
ac mec uhtna gehwam yð sio brune
lagufæðme beleolc. Lyt ic wende
þæt ic ær oþþe sið æfre sceolde
ofer meodubence muðleas sprecan,
wordum wrixlan. Þæt is wundres dæl,
on sefan searolic þam þe swylc ne conn,
hu mec seaxes ord ond seo swiþre hond,
eorles ingeþonc ond ord somod,
þingum geþydan, þæt ic wiþ þe sceolde
for unc anum twam ærendspræce
abeodan bealdlice, swa hit beorna ma
uncre wordcwidas widdor ne mænden.}}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. 225, accessed from http://ota.ox.ac.uk/desc/3009 {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181206091232/http://ota.ox.ac.uk/desc/3009 |date=2018-12-06 }}.
I was along the sand, near the seawall, beside the sea-surge; [I] dwelled firmly rooted in my original place. Few were any of the race of men that beheld my dwelling place in wilderness, for every dawn the dark sea surrounded me with its enveloping waves. Little did I expect that I, sooner or later, ever would speak mouthless over mead-benches, exchange words. It is somewhat a wonder, complex in the mind, for him who cannot understand such, how the point of the knife and the right hand, man’s intention and the blade, worked me with purpose, so that I would boldly disclose a verbal message for us two alone, so that other men will not know the meaning of our conversation far and wide.Helen Price, 'Human and NonHuman in Anglo-Saxon and British Postwar Poetry: Reshaping Literary Ecology' (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Leeds, 2014), p. 92; http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/6607/; https://www.academia.edu/6827866.
There has been some debate as to whether Riddle 60 is a text in its own right: it is followed by the poem The Husband's Message and has been read as the opening to that.E.g. Ralph W. V. Elliott, 'The Runes in "The Husband's Message" ', The Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 54 (1955), 1-8; {{JSTOR|27706516}} Most scholars agree, however, that the two texts are separate.E.g. Roy F. Leslie, 'The Integrity of Riddle 60', The Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 67 (1968), 451-57; {{JSTOR|27705568}}
Sources
The text is usually thought to have been inspired by the second riddle in Symphosius's collection, whose answer is 'harundo' ('reed').E.g. F. H. Whitman, 'Riddle 60 and Its Source', Philological Quarterly, 50 (1971), 108-15. The same riddle also occurs in the Latin romance of Apollonius of Tyre:Dieter Bitterli, Say What I am Called: The Old English Riddles of the Exeter Book and the Anglo-Latin Riddle Tradition'' (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009), p. 137.
{{Verse translation|
{{lang|ang|Dulcis amica ripae, semper uicina profundis,
Suaue cano Musis; nigro perfusa colore,
Nuntia sum linguae digitis signata magistris.}}
|
Sweet darling of the banks, always close to the depths,
sweetly I sing for the Muses; when drenched with black,
I am the tongue’s messenger by guiding fingers pressed.Fr. Glorie (ed.), Variae collectiones aenignmatvm Merovingicae aetatis (pars altera), Corpvs Christianorvm, Series Latina, 133a (Turnholt: Brepols, 1968), p. 623.}}
Interpretation
Riddle 60 is generally read alongside other Anglo-Saxon riddles about writing implements, as giving an insight into Anglo-Saxon attitudes to the craft of writing generally.E.g. Dieter Bitterli, Say What I am Called: The Old English Riddles of the Exeter Book and the Anglo-Latin Riddle Tradition (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009), pp. 135-50; Patrick J. Murphy, Unriddling the Exeter Riddles (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2011), pp. 109-52. However, it also provides interesting links to the language and style of the so-called Old English elegies,E.g. Roy F. Leslie, 'The Integrity of Riddle 60', The Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 67 (1968), 451-57; {{JSTOR|27705568}} and has recently been read as a case-study in ecocritical readings of Old English poetry, as it explores complex interactions of different assemblages of species and processes of crafting.Helen Price, 'Human and NonHuman in Anglo-Saxon and British Postwar Poetry: Reshaping Literary Ecology' (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Leeds, 2014), p. 92; http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/6607/; https://www.academia.edu/6827866
Digital Facsimile Edition and Translation
Foys, Martin and Smith, Kyle (eds.) [https://oepoetryfacsimile.org/?document=10696&document=10694 Old English Poetry in Facsimile Project] (Center for the History of Print and Digital Culture, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2019-).
Recordings
- Michael D. C. Drout, '[http://mdrout.webspace.wheatoncollege.edu/2007/11/09/riddle-60/ Riddle 60]', performed from the Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records edition (9 November 2007).