Exeter Book Riddle 61 Explained
Exeter Book Riddle 61 (according to the numbering of the Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records)[1] is one of the Old English riddles found in the later tenth-century Exeter Book. The riddle is usually solved as 'shirt', 'mailcoat' or 'helmet'. It is noted as one of a number of Old English riddles with sexual connotations[2] and as a source for gender-relations in early medieval England.[3]
Text
As edited by Krapp and Dobbie in the Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records series (with the addition of marking of long vowels), and translated by Megan Cavell, Riddle 61 runs:
English, Old (ca.450-1100);: Oft mec fæste bilēac frēolicu mēowle,
ides on earce, hwīlum up atēah
folmum sīnum ond frēan sealde,
holdum þēodne, swā hīo hāten wæs.
Siðþan mē on hreþre heafod sticade,
nioþan upweardne, on nearo fēgde.
Gif þæs ondfengan ellen dohte,
mec frætwedne fyllan sceolde
rūwes nāthwæt. Rǣd hwæt ic mǣne.[4] Often a noble woman, a lady, locked mefast in a chest, sometimes she drew me upwith her hands and gave me to her husband,her loyal lord, as she was bid.Then he stuck his head in the heart of me,upward from beneath, fitted it in the tight space.If the strength of the receiver was suitable,something shaggy had to fillme, the adorned one. Determine what I mean.[5]
Notes and References
- George Philip Krapp and Elliott Van Kirk Dobbie (eds), The Exeter Book, The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records, 3 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1936).
- Jacqueline Fay, ‘Becoming an Onion: The Extra-Human Nature of Genital Difference in the Old English Riddling and Medical Traditions’, English Studies, 101 (2020), 60-78 (p. 64); .
- Melanie Heyworth, 'Perceptions of Marriage in Exeter Book Riddles 20 and 61', Studia Neophilologica, 79 (2007), 171-84.
- George Philip Krapp and Elliott Van Kirk Dobbie (eds), The Exeter Book, The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records, 3 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1936), p. 229, accessed from http://ota.ox.ac.uk/desc/3009 .
- 'Riddle 25 (or 23)', trans. by Megan Cavell, The Riddle Ages (10 April 2017).
