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Exeter Book Riddle 57 (55) – a double solution?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Audrey L. Meaney
Audrey L. Meaney
Affiliation:
Cambridge, England
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Extract

To offer a solution to Riddle 57 must seem to many like a fool rushing swiftly in where others have swallowed gnats – and raindrops, hailstones, thunderclouds, musical notes, bees and more. Yet for a long time I have been convinced that everyone else had got it wrong, and that the answer could only be ‘swifts’. On further investigation, it turned out that some scholars, indeed, had had the same idea – it was Moritz Trautmann's final solution, and Cyril Brett thought of swifts but rejected them in favour of starlings – and that it was only (as it were) half-right. However, it still seems worthwhile attempting to demonstrate that, at least on the literal level, swifts are the only possible answer. I shall therefore dissect Riddle 57, discussing the identity of its subject under four headings: appearance, locomotion, habitat and call. Though initially ignoring the riddle's last half-line, I shall not forget it.

Type
Research Article
Information
Anglo-Saxon England , Volume 25 , December 1996 , pp. 187 - 200
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1996

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References

1 References are to The Exeter Book, ed. Krapp, G. P. and Dobbie, E. V. K., ASPR 3 (New York, 1936); Riddle 57 is on p. 209, with notes on pp. 350–1.Google Scholar In Craig Williamson, The Old English Riddles of the Exeter Book (Chapel Hill, NC, 1977), Krapp and Dobbie's first three riddles are combined into one, and the rest are then numbered two in advance; the riddle discussed is therefore Williamson's no. 55; in other editions its number varies from 55 to 58.Google Scholar

2 For a list of all solutions to Riddle 57, up to 1981, see Fry, D. K., ‘Exeter Book Riddle Solutions’, OEN 15.1 (1981), 22–33, at 24.Google ScholarPulsiano, P. and Wolf, K., in ‘Exeter Book Riddle 57: those Damned Souls, Again’, Germanic Notes 22 (1991), 2–5, point out an error in Fry's reference to bees; it should be dk (Garvin), not ak (Blackburn).Google Scholar

3 Trautmann, M., Die altenglischen Rätsel (Heidelberg, 1915), pp. 116–17.Google Scholar

4 Brett, C., ‘Notes on Old and Middle English: Exeter Book, Riddle 58 (eds. of Tupper, , and Wyatt, )’, MLR 22 (1927), 257–8.Google Scholar

5 Discussion of the vocabulary of the Riddle depends on An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, ed. Bosworth, J. and Toller, T. N. (London, 1898)Google Scholar; Supplement, ed. Toller, T. N., rev. Campbell, A. (Oxford, 1972)Google Scholar; Healey, A. di Paolo and Venezky, R. L., The Microfiche Concordance to Old English (Toronto, 1980)Google Scholar, and Dictionary of Old English, ed. Amos, A. C. et al. (Toronto, 1987–); fascicles A, Æ, B and C were available to me.Google Scholar

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8 Ælfric has a very similar passage in his Hexameron, lines 137–8Google Scholar: ‘On ðære [lyfte] fleoð fugelas ac heora fiðera ne mihton na hwider hi aberan gif hi ne abære seo lyft’ (‘In the air fly birds, but their wings could not support them if the air did not support them’): Exameron Anglice, ed. Crawford, S. J., Bibliothek der angelsächsischen Prosa 10 (Hamburg, 1921), 44.Google Scholar

9 Riddle 7, lines 3–6Google Scholar, The Exeter Book, ed. Krapp, and Dobbie, , pp. 184–5Google Scholar: ‘At times my apparel and this high air lift me over the dwellings of heroes, and then the strength of clouds carries me far over the people.’ Incidentally, it seems to me that the answer to this riddle is not (contra Williamson, The Old English Riddles, pp. 151–3Google Scholar and A Feast of Creatures (London, 1982), pp. 165–6)Google Scholar either the whooper swan (Cygnus cygnus) or Bewick's (sometimes called the whisding) swan (Cygnus columbianus), which are both winter migrants and do not nest in Britain (as the riddle indicates its subject does). It must be the native Mute Swan (Cygnus olor), which is mostly silent (except for some grunting in the breeding season) but whose wings do indeed make a loud rhythmic and even melodious sound. This is observable, not a conceit. (This comment was written well before the publication of, and my acquaintance with, Peter Kitson's paper ‘Swans and Geese in Old English Riddles’, ASSAH 7 (1994), 79–84Google Scholar, in which he makes the same argument, though he does not accept that wic buge means ‘occupy a nest’, as I do.) In what follows, bird descriptions are taken from Keith, S. and Gooders, J., Collins Bird Guide (London, 1980), on swans see pp. 353–5, as well as from personal observation.Google Scholar

10 The Old English Pastoral Care (ch. 46) compares unsociable humans unfavourably with birds and animals: ‘Hu ða fuglas, ðe him gelice beoð, 7 anes cynnes beoð, hu gesibsumlice hie farað, 7 hu seldon hie willað forlætan hiera geferrædenne, 7 eac ða dumban nietenu, hu hie [hie] gadriað heapmælum, 7 hie ætsomne fedaæ’ (‘How the birds, who are like each other, and are of one kind, how sociably they behave, and how seldom they will abandon their family; and also the dumb cattle, how they gather in herds, and feed together’): King Alfred's West-Saxon Version of Gregory's Pastoral Care, ed. Sweet, H., EETS os 45 (London, 1871), 349.Google Scholar

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19 The Canterbury Tales, fragment I, lines 3257–8Google Scholar, The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, ed. Robinson, F. N. (London, 1957), p. 49.Google Scholar

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25 Ibid. pp. 25–6. See also Douglas-Home, H., The Birdman (London, 1977), p. 118.Google Scholar

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27 Ibid. pp. 46–7.

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33 Epist. x, in Epistolae Merowingici et Karolini Aevi I, ed. Dümmler, E., MGH, Epist. 3 (Berlin, 1892), 252–7, at 254.Google Scholar There is a rather free translation (omitting the word ‘flying’) in Emerton, E., The Letters of St Boniface (New York, 1940), pp. 25–31, at 27–8.Google Scholar

34 Sisam, K., ‘An Old English Translation of a Letter from Wynfrith to Eadburga (A.D. 716–7) in Cotton MS Otho C 1’, MLR 18 (1923), 253–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar; repr. in his Studies in the History of Old English Literature (Oxford, 1953), pp. 199–224, at 217–18: ‘He saw flying among the fiery flame the wretched ghosts, who were in the likeness of black birds, and they were lamenting their own deserts with human voice, and weeping and gnashing their teeth.’Google Scholar

35 Pulsiano, and Wolf, , ‘Exeter Book Riddle 57’, p. 4.Google Scholar

36 The Old English Version of Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People, ed. Miller, T. M., 4 vols., EETS os 95, 96, 110 and 111 (London, 1890) II, 426–8Google Scholar; Schipper, J., König Alfreds Übersetzung von Bedas Kirchengeschichte, Bibliothek der angelsächsischen Prosa 4 (Leipzig, 1899), 617 and 620–1.Google Scholar

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38 Das angelsächsische Prosa-Leben des hl. Guthlac, ed. Gonser, , p. 139 (ch. 8)Google Scholar:‘like swine's grunting, and wolves' howling, and ravens' croaking and the whistling of various birds’. This corresponds to Felix, Vita S. Cuthlaci, ch. 36, which mentions noises made by boar, wolf, horse, stag, serpent, ox and raven, but not ‘the whistling of various birds’ (ed. Colgrave, , pp. 114–15).Google Scholar

39 ‘Exeter Book Riddle 57’, p 4.Google Scholar

40 Doane, A. N., ‘Three Old English Implement Riddles: Reconsiderations of Numbers 4,49, and 73’, MP 84 (1987), 243–57, at 244: ‘Everything indicated about this thing is true.’Google Scholar

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42 Gatch, M. McC., ‘Eschatology in the Anonymous Old English Homilies’, Traditio 21 (1965), 117–65, at 124–8, 146 and 159–65.Google Scholar

43 Appendix II in Byrhtferth's Manual, ed. Crawford, S. J., EETS os 177 (London, 1929), 247–50, at 249Google Scholar: ‘All this air is full of hellish devils which wander through all the earth and too often deceive virtuous men, so that they do what is hateful to God.’ See also Wulfstan, ed. Napier, A. (Berlin, 1883), pp. 246–50, at 250 (no. XLVIII).Google Scholar

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45 Wulfstan, ed. Napier, , pp. 232–42, at 235 (no. XLVI): ‘St Paul the Apostle was speaking and said that God's angel showed him a certain impious and very sinful soul leaving the wretched body, and he saw that there was a great multitude of angels and devils, and the angels and devils fought with all their might about the wretched soul, and the devils took it from the angels.’Google Scholar

46 Malcolm Godden has pointed out to me (pers. comm.) that in Gregory's Dialogues ‘the tempter’ appeared to St Benedict in the form of ‘a very dark little bird which in the vernacular is called a “throstle” (prostle)’, which persistently fluttered in his face until he made the sign of the cross (Bischofs Wœrferth von Worcester Ubersetzung der Dialoge Gregors des Grossen, ed. Hecht, H., Bibliothek der angelsächsischen Prosa 5 (Leipzig, 1900), 100)Google Scholar. A similar passage is found in Ælfric's Catholic Homilies: the Second Series. Text, EETS ss 5 (London, 1979), 93.Google Scholar The Latin text (Grégoire le Grand, Dialogues, ed. de Vogüé, A., 3 vols., Sources chrétiennes 251, 260 and 265 (Paris, 1978–1980) II, 136)Google Scholar has merola, and there can be no doubt that the bird intended is the common or garden blackbird (Turdus meruld), closely related to the thrushes, and in which this kind of behaviour would not be altogether out of character (see, for example, Cramp, S. – et al., Handbook of the Birds of Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, 9 vols. (Oxford, 1977–1994) VGoogle Scholar: The Birds of the Western Palearctic, 949–64Google Scholar). This may illustrate a tendency to see any black bird as devilish, but may well record a real incident, and has no relevance to the identification of the birds of Riddle 57.

47 See, for example, Brett, , ‘Notes’, pp. 257–8Google Scholar; von Erhardt-Siebold, E., ‘Old English Riddle No. 57: OE *Ca “Jackdaw”’, PMLA 42 (1947), 1–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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50 Ornithologiœ Libri Tres, p. 156, pl. 14.Google Scholar

51 Ornithology, p. 214.Google Scholar

52 Elyot, T., Bibliotheca Eliotœ (London, 1542) [no pagination]. Under Apus,-odis, Elyot has ‘a byrde lyke a swalowe, but he hath larger wynges, and is moste commonly about the sea costes, where alwaye he eyther flyeth or houereth in the ayre, and bredeth in a rocke’.Google Scholar

53 Welsh, A., ‘Swallows Name Themselves: Exeter Book Riddle 55’ ANQ ns 3 (1990), 90–3.Google Scholar

54 Birch, W. de G., Cartularium Saxonicum, 3 vols. (London, 1883–1893) II, 59–60 (no. 466)Google Scholar; Sawyer, P. H., Anglo-Saxon Charters (London, 1968), no. 202Google Scholar; Grundy, G. B., Saxon Charters and Field Names of Gloucestershire ([Gloucester], 1935–1936), p. 57Google Scholar; Smith, A. H., The Place-Names of Gloucestershire, 4 vols. EPNS 38–41 (Cambridge, 1964–1965) 1, 150.Google Scholar

55 Birch, , Cartularium Saxonicum II, 160–1 (no. 541)Google Scholar; Sawyer, , Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 216Google Scholar; Grundy, G. B., ‘Saxon Charters of Worcestershire [Part II]’, Birmingham Archaeol. Soc. Trans. and Proc. 43 (1928), 18–131Google Scholar; Birch, , no. 541 is discussed on pp. 23–5Google Scholar, and swalawa baerh at p. 25., nos. 9–10 (Grundy interprets baerh and berhge as burh, ‘camp’).Google Scholar

56 [Wilson, John], The Recreations of Christopher North, 3 vols. (Edinburgh, 1842) 1, 12.Google Scholar

57 John Clare's Birds, ed. Robinson, E. and Fitter, R. (Oxford, 1982), p. 64.Google Scholar

58 Gregor, W., ‘Some Folk-Lore on Trees, Animals, and River-Fishing, from the North-East of Scodand’, Folk-Lorejnl 7 (1889), 41–4, at 44.Google Scholar Folklore references are conveniently gathered in I. Opie and Tatem, M., A Dictionary of Superstitions (Oxford, 1989), p. 388Google Scholar, sub ‘swift’. There is one reference to swifts as ‘God's gifts’ in Armstrong, E. A., The Folklore of Birds (London, 1958), p. 168, but this appears to be anomalous, and perhaps simply due to the convenient rhyme.Google Scholar

59 A. A., ‘Thanet Notes: Swift: Swallow’, N&Q 3rd ser. 12 (1867), 203–4.Google Scholar

60 J. S., Jun [sic], ‘Swallow and Swift’, ibid., 273.

61 MacCullough, E., ‘The Cuckoo and the Swift’, Folk-Lore Jnl 1 (1883), 394.Google Scholar

62 ‘The Vikings: Traces of their Folklore in Marshland’, SBVS 3 (1903), 35–62, at 41.Google ScholarSimilar beliefs concerning other birds are described by Armstrong, Folklore of Birds, pp. 211–24.Google Scholar

63 E. and Radford, M. R., Encyclopaedia of Superstitions, rev. C. Hole (London, 1961), p. 334, sub ‘swifts’.Google Scholar

64 Barley, N. (‘Structural Aspects of the Anglo-Saxon Riddle’, Semiotica 10 (1974), 143–75, at 169)CrossRefGoogle Scholar considered Riddle 57 to be a ‘Riddle of Generalisation’, because so little information is given that ‘the number of possible solutions becomes huge. Even when a solution meets the requirements of fitting the facts it can never give the sense of satisfying neatness provided by riddles operating at lower levels of classification.’ Since Riddle 57 has turned out to provide precise information, one wonders how many others of those in the Exeter Book which look ‘generalizing’ in fact provide clues that modern researchers have not yet recognized.