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The Old English Hunt Riddles

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Erika von Erhardt-Siebold
Erika von Erhardt-Siebold*
Affiliation:
Vassar College
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Extract

Wyatt wished this riddle at the bottom of the Bay of Portugal. All earlier solutions (among which we find a sow pregnant with five pigs) have in common that, far from explaining the number paradox in the first part of the poem, they even offend against it. But when in a riddle we hit upon a paradox, we may be sure that it has something to do with the solution.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 63 , Issue 1: Issue 1 part 1 , March 1948 , pp. 3 - 6
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1948

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References

1 A. J. Wyatt, Old English Riddles (Boston and London, 1912), p. 93.

2 G. Ph. Krapp and V. Dobbie, The Exeter Book (New York, 1936), p. 341. The corrupt line 5 is discussed by Wyatt, and by F. Tupper, The Riddles of the Exeter Book (London and Boston, 1910), p. 156. The line almost certainly means: man, homo, woman, mulier, horse, equus. The MS.—cf. facs. edition of R. W. Chambers, M. Förster, R. Flower (London, 1933)—using a widely practiced secret writing, replaces the vowels in the Latin words by the consonants following them in the Roman alphabet. But the scribe made several mistakes corrected in my text by the letters in parentheses. The silly character of this line is obvious.

3 Tupper, loc. cit.

4 Tupper, loc. cit.

5 The demarcation between the two parts induced some earlier commentators to regard these parts as two independent riddles erroneously combined into one. Separate solutions for the two parts have therefore been proposed. See Tupper.

6 Yömearh, brimhœngest, sundhengest, merehengest, sœmearh are known kennings for boat or ship.

7 W. S. Mackie, The Exeter Book, Part ii (London, 1934), p. 205. Cf. Tupper, p. 206.

8 For the close association between horse and boat in some Samoan riddles see A. G. Brodeur and A. Taylor, “The Man, the Horse, and the Canary,” California Folklore Quarterly, ii (1943), 278.