Tucked away in the Rare Book archives on the second floor of Beeghly Library is a facsimile of a rare, handwritten manuscript over 1,000 years old known as the Exeter Book. The original manuscript, dating from the late tenth century and owned by the Exeter Cathedral Library, holds the greatest treasures of English literature including the earliest surviving poems, such as The Husband’s Message, a poignant tale of two lovers separated by an ocean and trying to reunite; the saint’s life, Juliana; an allegorical poem, The Phoenix; and some 90 riddles. Whether these riddles were first composed orally, they certainly seem to suggest a syncretic practice, bringing together literate Latin composition practices and vernacular traditions of riddling that in-spired Tolkien in his novel, The Hobbit.
Riddles betray a delight in word play, enigma and paradox. Their metaphors (in Old English called ‘kennings’ when they assume a particularly condensed form) are ingenious. As the Anglo-Saxon scholar, Fred Robinson once commented, Anglo-Saxon riddles engage us in “artful ambiguities,” and as Swarthmore Professor, Craig Williamson, explains (Williamson worked as advisor for the Hollywood production of the Hobbit), such ambiguities sharpen our wits. Williamson offers an instructive comparison: “A charm is a strategy for action in a sick or unfruitful world. It is a man using metaphor like a knife. A riddle is a matching of wits, a game of disguises. It is a man playing with metaphor like a lens…The riddler shows us our eyes alter-ing, our minds manipulating, our words reshaping that other world” (A Feast of Creatures: Anglo-Saxon Riddle Songs, 35). Like most poetry, riddles heighten our appreciation of the nuances of language and defamiliarize our sense of the simplest, everyday practices, helping us to see our world with fresh eyes.
While many of the Exeter Book riddles remain un-solvedāand even more remain contested by scholarsāthe solutions to the following riddle is discernable to anyone with a little knowledge about Anglo-Saxon writing practices.
A moth ate words. I thought that wonderfully
Strange — a miracle — when they told me a crawling
Insect had swallowed noble songs,
A night-time thief had stolen writing
So famous, so weighty. The thieving guest
Was no whit the wiser for the words it ate.
Anglo-Saxon riddles provide scholars insight into cultural practices of which scholars lack evidence other-wise, and studying the Exeter Book riddles reveals much about the world that produced masterpieces such as Beowulf, whether the mundane bookworm, the marvelous dragon or the miraculous Christ.
Feeling tricky? Up for a game? Those with interests in Tolkien and his riddles should look at the modern riddles at http://apps.warner bros.com/thehobbit/riddles/us/. Try to solve one!
