Exeter Book Riddle 51

Exeter Book Riddle 51 (according to the numbering of the Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records) is one of the Old English riddles found in the later tenth-century Exeter Book. Its solution is 'quill pen and three fingers', 'whose figurative "journey" leaves a dark track of letters and words on the page' and it stands accordingly as an important literary example of the international riddle type, the Writing-riddle, whose most basic form is 'white field, black seeds'. In the reading of Helen Price, the riddle suggests that 'writing is a journey, but it is not one of a human being alone. The riddle is self consciously aware of the connected nature of human, tool, and animal'.

Text

Ic seah wrætlice wuhte feower
samed siþian; swearte wæran lastas,
swaþu swiþe blacu. Swift wæs on fore,
fuglum framra; fleag on lyfte,
deaf under yþe. Dreag unstille
winnende wiga se him wegas tæcneþ
ofer fæted gold feower eallum.

I saw four wondrous things
travelling together; their tracks were swarthy,
their footsteps were very black. It was swift on its journey,
bolder than the birds; it flew across the air,
dove under the water. Busy was the
struggling warrior, who showed all four
of them the way over plated gold.

Studies

Lees, Clare A. 2010. ‘Basil Bunting, Briggflatts, Lindisfarne, and Anglo-Saxon Interlace’, in Anglo-Saxon Culture and the Modern Imagination, ed. by David Clark and Nicholas Perkins, Medievalism, 1 (Cambridge: Brewer), pp. 111–28.

Editions

Foys, Martin et al. (eds.) Old English Poetry in Facsimile Project, (Madison, WI: Center for the History of Print and Digital Culture, 2019-). Online edition annotated and linked to digital facsimile, with a modern translation.

Recordings

Michael D. C. Drout, 'Riddle 51', performed from the Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records edition (29 October 2007).

References

↑ Dieter Bitterli, Say what I am Called: The Old English Riddles of the Exeter Book and the Anglo-Latin Riddle Tradition, Toronto Anglo-Saxon Series, 2 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009), p.146.
↑ Helen Price, ‘Human and NonHuman in Anglo-Saxon and British Postwar Poetry: Reshaping Literary Ecology’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Leeds, 2014), p. 127.
↑ Helen Price, ‘Human and NonHuman in Anglo-Saxon and British Postwar Poetry: Reshaping Literary Ecology’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Leeds, 2014), p. 126.

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[1] Dieter Bitterli, Say what I am Called: The Old English Riddles of the Exeter Book and the Anglo-Latin Riddle Tradition, Toronto Anglo-Saxon Series, 2 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009), p.146.

[2] Helen Price, ‘Human and NonHuman in Anglo-Saxon and British Postwar Poetry: Reshaping Literary Ecology’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Leeds, 2014), p. 127.

[3] Helen Price, ‘Human and NonHuman in Anglo-Saxon and British Postwar Poetry: Reshaping Literary Ecology’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Leeds, 2014), p. 126.