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Oaks, ships, riddles and the Old English Rune Poem

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Paul Sorrell
Paul Sorrell
Affiliation:
University of Otago, New Zealand
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Extract

The Holme Riddles are a collection of 144 English riddles preserved in London, British Library, Harley 1960. Although the manuscript dates from the mid-seventeenth century, some of these riddles are apparently rooted in ancient Germanic tradition. One of these, an ancient ‘world-riddle’ according to the editor, is a version of the ‘oak-ship’ riddle:

Q. wn j lived j fed the liveing now j am dead j beare the live[in]g & with swift speed j walk our the liveing

A. a ship mad[e] of oake groweing feeds hogs with acorns now b[e]ars men & swims our fishes.

Type
Research Article
Information
Anglo-Saxon England , Volume 19 , December 1990 , pp. 103 - 116
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1990

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References

1 Tupper, F., ‘The Holme Riddles (MS. Harl. I960)’, PMLA 18 (1903), 211–72, at 222CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Cited as no. 828h in Taylor, A., English Riddles from Oral Tradition (Berkeley, CA, 1951), p. 311.Google Scholar

2 See Taylor, Ibid. pp. 309–11 and Tupper, Ibid. p. 250.

3 See Tupper, F., The Riddles of the Exeter Book (Boston, 1910), pp. xvii–xviii.Google Scholar

4 Reusner, N., Aenigmatographia sive Sylloge Aenigmatum et Griphorum Convivalium, 2 vols. (Frankfurt, 1601–2) I, 281Google Scholar: ‘While I was alive, I fed living bodies, and I produced foods in endless fertility. More obliging now dead, I carry the living, and I travel on my curved stomach over the living’. (Unless otherwise indicated, all translations of quoted texts are my own.)

5 Cited in Tupper, , ‘The Holme Riddles’, p. 250.Google Scholar

6 Wossidlo, R., Mecklenburgische Volksüberlieferungen, 3 vols. (Wismar, 1897–1906) 1, 46 and 282.Google Scholar

7 Wossidlo, Ibid. 1, 46: ‘When I was small, the large ones nourished me, but when I was large, I fed the small ones; and when I was dead, I drew the living right over the living’.

8 Tupper, , The Riddles, p. xlviiGoogle Scholar. See also Variae Collectiones Acnigmatum Merovingicae Aetatis, ed. Glorie, F., 2 vols., CCSL 133-133A (Turnhout, 1968), 149 and 544–5Google Scholar; and Taylor, A., The Literary Riddle Before 1600 (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA, 1948), pp. 58–9.Google Scholar

9 ‘Variae Collectiones, ed. Glorie, , p. 557Google Scholar: ‘Dead, I bear a greater labour than when living. When I lie dead I preserve many; if I remain standing, few. If my insides are exposed, pulled away outside, I bring life to all and collect sustenance for many. No beast or bird bites me when I am dead, and running along loaded down, I do not mark the way with my foot’.

10 Taylor, , English Riddles, p. 309.Google Scholar

11 Published and discussed by Pettengill, R. W., ‘Zu den Rätseln im Apollonius des Heinrich von Neustadt’, JEGP 12 (1913), 248–51.Google Scholar

12 Noted by Pettengill, Ibid. p. 248. See also Riese, A., Historia Apollonii Regis Tyri, 2nd ed. (Leipzig, 1893), p. 91Google Scholar. For the text given here see Variae Collectiones, ed. Glorie, , p. 634Google Scholar: ‘I am carried, long and swift, daughter of the beautiful forest. Packed together with countless bands of companions I pass over many ways, leaving no tracks behind’.

13 On the Old English text, see Ker, N.R., Catalogue of Manuscripts containing Anglo-Saxon(Oxford, 1957), p. 89Google Scholar. According to Ker, the Old English translates the type of Latin text found in a group of manuscripts of English provenance. These are discussed by Raith, J., Die alt- und mittelenglischen Apollonius-Bruchstücke, mil dem Text der Historia Apollonii nach der englischen Handschriftengruppe (Munich, 1956), pp. 87–91Google Scholar. Raith also published an edition of the Latin source nearest to the Old English version, Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 318, fols. 477–509 (Raith, Ibid. pp. 92–119). This manuscript includes the ‘ship’ riddle of Symphosius (Raith, Ibid. p. 113).

14 Hickes, G., Linguarum Veterum Septentrionalium Thesaurus Grammatico-Criticus et Archaeologicus, 3 vols. (Oxford, 1703–1705) I, 135Google Scholar. For a discussion of the textual background of RP, see now Halsall, M., The Old English Rune Poem: a Critical Edition (Toronto, 1981), pp. 21–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

15 See below, pp. 112–13.

16 ‘The oak on the earth is food for flesh for the children of men. It often travels over the gannet's bath; the ocean tests whether the oak has a noble faith’. Unless otherwise indicated, all citations and quotations of Old English poems are from ASPR; RP is in ASPR 6 (The Anglo-Saxon Minor Poems), 28–30.

17 See, e.g., The Dream of the Rood, ed. Cook, A.S. (Oxford, 1905), pp. xlvii–li and 22Google Scholar; Cherniss, M.D., ‘The Cross as Christ's Weapon: the Influence of Heroic Literary Tradition on The Dream of the Rood’, ASE 2 (1973), 246–51Google Scholar; Gardner, H., ‘The Dream of the Rood: an Exercise in Verse-Translation’, Essays and Poems Presented to Lord David Cecil, ed. Robson, W.W. (London, 1970), pp. 18–36, at 27–30Google Scholar; Bennett, J. A. W., Poetry of the Passion: Studies in Twelve Centuries of English Verse (Oxford, 1982), pp. 6, 13 and 18Google Scholar. See also my ‘Studies in the Treatment of Theme and its Sources in Some Old English Narrative Poems’ (unpubl. Ph.D dissertation, Cambridge Univ., 1979), pp. 131–43.Google Scholar

18 ‘A particular man shall fall without wings from a tall tree in the wood; all the same he is in flight, he soars through the air until the height of the tree is no longer there.’ Lacan is used of the flight of birds in The Phoenix 315b–16 (cf. The Metres of Boethius 24.1, 9a); Maxims II 38b–9a (cf. Beowulf 2832); Azarias 143b–4 and Daniel 386b–7a. Riddles (and quasi-riddles) occur in a less unexpected context in the esoteric verse-dialogue Solomon and Saturn II; see esp. 210b–ll, 230–7, 282–91, 332–3 and 339b.

19 The Old English Riddles of the Exeter Book, ed. illiamson, C. W (Chapel Hill, NC, 1977), pp. 186–7Google Scholar and 325–6. Neither these two riddles nor two others solved as ‘ship’, riddles 32 (‘wheel’?, ‘wagon’?) and 36, contain the ‘oak-ship’ motif.

20 ‘I saw a creature in the towns of men, one that feeds cattle. It has many teeth. Its beak is useful to it, it travels pointing downwards, it plunders according to instructions and comes home again, roams about right up to the walls, seeking plants. It always finds those that are not firm; it leaves the healthy ones, fast by their roots, standing fixed in their plot, shining brightly, blooming and growing.’

21 Taylor, , The Literary Riddle, pp. 1–3.Google Scholar

22 Taylor, A., ‘The Varieties of Riddles’, Philologica: the Malone Anniversary Studies, ed. Kirby, T. A. and Woolf, H.B. (Baltimore, MD, 1949), pp. 3–4Google Scholar. Compare the definition in Georges, R.A. and Dundes, A., ‘Toward a Structural Definition of the Riddle’, Jnl of American Folklore 76 (1963), 111–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. 113. For a summary of research, see Scott, C.T., ‘Some Approaches to the Study of the Riddle’, Studies in Language, Literature, and Culture of the Middle Ages and Later, ed. Atwood, E.B. and Hill, A. A. (Austin, TX, 1969), pp. 111–27Google Scholar. For an anthropologist's view, see Barley, N.F., ‘Structural Aspects of the Anglo-Saxon Riddle’, Semiotica 10 (1974), 143–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

23 Tupper, , The Riddles, pp. xxiii–xxiv.Google Scholar

24 See Williamson, The Old English Riddles, p. 219.

25 The same motif is found in riddle 83 of Aldhelm (‘luvencus’) and riddle 37 of Eusebius (‘De Vitulo’); see Williamson, Ibid. p. 255.

26 The Old English riddles of this type in the Exeter Book are riddles 26, 28, 53, 73, 83, 88 and 93; cf. 9, 12, 14, 27, 74 and 77. For a brief discussion of the Old English ‘transformation’ riddles, see Tupper, , The Riddles, p. 186.Google Scholar

27 ‘My clothing is darkly shimmering, bright with adornment, red and shining with respect to my garment.’

28 For puns and wordplay in riddle 47, see Robinson, F.C., ‘Artful Ambiguities in the Old English “Book-Moth” Riddle’, Anglo-Saxon Poetry: Essays in Appreciation, ed. Nicholson, L. and Frese, D.W. (Notre Dame, IN, 1975), pp. 355–62.Google Scholar

29 On this aspect of the riddles see Tupper, The Riddles, p. lxxxviii.

30 Halsall, (The Old English Rune Poem, pp. 40–2)Google Scholarnotes some general similarities, as does Tupper, , The Riddles, p. xivGoogle Scholar. Tupper also (Ibid. p. 191) compares the ‘oak-ship’ riddle of RP with one of the German examples (no. 78) collected by Wossidlo (see above, p. 104, n. 6).

31 Clemoes, P., ‘Action in Beowulf and our Perception of it’, Old English Poetry: Essays on Style, ed. Calder, D.G. (Berkeley, CA, 1979), pp. 147–68, at 153.Google Scholar

32 For a useful classification of Old English verse-gnomes, see H. M., and Chadwick, N. K., The Growth of Literature. 1. The Ancient Literatures of Europe (Cambridge, 1932), pp. 377–8.Google Scholar

33 Clemoes, , ‘Action in Beowulf’, p. 156.Google Scholar

34 For this theme in RP, see especially 32–4 and 48–50. For a discussion of the theme in Beowulf and other poems, see Greenfield, S. B., ‘The Authenticating Voice in Beowulf’, ASE 5 (1976), 51–62, at 55–6Google Scholar; and Clemoes, P., ‘De quelques articulations entre présent et passé dans la technique narrative vieil-anglaise’, Actes du colloque de I'Association des médiévistes anglicistes de l'enseignement supérieur sur les techniques narratives au moyen âge, ed. Crépin, A. (Amiens, 1974), pp. 5–21Google Scholar, at 15–19. Cf. also the section on the creation of the world in Genesis A (92–186), which contains several references to the continuity and stability of natural processes (see esp. 140b–3a, 152b–3 and 157b–60a).

35 ‘Iar, ior is a riverfish, and yet it always takes its food on land; it has a pleasant home surrounded by water, where it lives happily.’ Iar, ior is usually interpreted as ‘eel’ or ‘newt’ (see Halsall, , The Old English Rune Poem, p. 157)Google Scholar. However, riddle 53 of Eusebius (‘Deypotamo pisce’) uses the same antithesis in its closing lines (5–6): ‘Rorifluo cunctos degens in gurgite phoebos,/Rura per umbriferas depascor florida noctes’ (‘All the sunny days I spend in rushing waters,/in the dusky nights I graze the verdant countryside’ – editor's trans.; Variae Collectiones, ed. Glorie, p. 263). The iar-rune is a late, non-epigraphic rune, and in a learned context an exotic referent such as ‘hippopotamus’ would not be out of place.

36 Compare the series of four gnomes in Solomon and Saturn II 312–13, beginning ‘Nieht bið wedera ðiestrosc’ (312a). For folk ‘riddles’ of the superlative and the comparative, see Thompson, S., Motif-Index of Folk-Literature 3 (Copenhagen, 1956), 436–40Google Scholar. Latin question-and-answer dialogues such as Alcuin's, Disputatio regalis et nobilissimi iuvenis Pippini cum Albino scholastico (ed. Daly, L. W. and Suchier, W., Altercatio Hadriani Augusti et Epicteti Philosophi, Illinois Stud, in Lang, and Lit. 24.1 (Urbana, IL, 1939), 137–43)Google Scholar offer short definitions of objects and concepts that take the form of metaphorical periphrasis, paradoxical statements (‘riddles-in-reverse’), similes and literal descriptions which, like some of the Old English verse-riddles, have a subjective, anthropocentric bias.

37 Chadwick and Chadwick, The Growth of Literature I, 415, characterize RP in this way.

38 Shippey, T. A., Poems of Wisdom and Learning in Old English (Cambridge and Totowa, NJ, 1976), p. 20.Google Scholar

39 ‘The sea seems endless to men, if they should venture out in a tossing boat, and the sea-waves terrify them, and the sea-horse does not respond to its bridle.’

40 Halsall, , The Old English Rune Poem, pp. 24–6Google Scholar; cf. Shippey, , Poems, p. 81.Google Scholar

41 ‘The ash is very tall, valuable to men; strong in its position, it keeps its proper place, even though many men attack it.’

42 The ‘rad’ section describes an activity that is comfortable (sefte) in the hall, but very energetic (swiphwat) for someone on horseback. A similar concept of ‘riding’ underlies the fourth of the Bern riddles, ‘De scamno’, in which a seat is described in terms of a horse:

Mollibus horresco semper consistere iocis,

Vngula nam mihi firma, si caute ponatur.

Nullum, iter agens, sessorem dorso requiro,

Plures fero libens, meo dum stabulo uersor.

Nolo frena mihi mansueto iuueni pendas,

Calcibus et senem nolo me uerberes ullis.

(Variae Collections, ed. Glorie, , p. 550Google Scholar: ‘I am always terrified of standing in soft places, but my hoof is stable if placed on a rock (?carefully). Making a journey, I need no sitter on my back. Willing, I carry many while I live in my stable. I do not want you to rein me in while I am a tame youth, nor do I want you to beat me with your heels when I am old’.)

43 ‘The poplar has no fruit, but just the same it puts out suckers without fertile seed’ (trans. Shippey, , Poems, p. 83; see also his n. 11).Google Scholar

44 See above, p. 109.

45 Tupper, , The Riddles, p. 212Google Scholar. Dobbie (ASPR 6,159) also finds a possible ‘double reference’ to the ash as tree (81–2a) and as spear (82b–3).

46 See Clemoes, , ‘Action in Beowulf, p. 156Google Scholar for a discussion of the related haôstapa. Morstapa is a compound unique to RP.

47 ‘A bow(?) is a joy and mark of distinction for every prince and noble; it looks fine on a horse, secure in its journeying, a particular piece of battle-gear.’

48 As does Shippey, , Poems, p. 85Google Scholar; see also his n. 13.

49 ‘Ice is very cold, extremely slippery; it shines clear as glass, very like jewels, a floor made by the frost, beautiful to look at.’

50 See Stewart, A. H., ‘Kenning and Riddle in Old English’, Papers on Lang. and Lit. 15.2 (1979), 115–36.Google Scholar

51 Similar phrases are found throughout the poem, usually in the second verse of each stanza, e.g. lb, 7b, 13b, 27b, 55b, 71b, 74b, 81b and 90b.

52 See also Howe, N., ‘Aldhelm's Enigmata and Isidorian Etymology’, ASE 14 (1985), 37–59Google Scholar, at 37 and 45.

53 An early version of this paper was presented to the eighth Annual Conference of the Australian and New Zealand Association for Medieval and Renaissance Studies held in Christchurch, NZ, on 21–6 August 1979.