Exeter Book Riddle 12

Exeter Book Riddle 12 (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. Its solution is accepted to be 'ox/ox-hide' (though variations on this theme, focusing on leather objects, have been proposed).

Text and translation

As edited by Krapp and Dobbie, the riddle reads:[2]

Fotum ic fere, foldan slite,
grene wongas, þenden ic gæst bere.
Gif me feorh losað, fæste binde
swearte Wealas, hwilum sellan men.
Hwilum ic deorum drincan selle
beorne of bosme, hwilum mec bryd triedeð
felawlonc fotum, hwilum feorran broht
wonfeax Wale wegeð ond þyð,
dol druncmennen deorcum nihtum,
wæteð in wætre, wyrmeð hwilum
fægre to fyre; me on fæðme sticaþ
hygegalan hond, hwyrfeð geneahhe,
swifeð me geond sweartne. Saga hwæt ic hatte,
þe ic lifgende lond reafige
ond æfter deaþe dryhtum þeowige.

I travel by foot, trample the ground,
the green fields, as long as I carry a spirit [i.e. as long as I am living].
If I lose my life, I bind fast
dark Welshmen; sometimes better men.
On occasion, I give a brave warrior drink
from within me, sometimes a very stately bride treads
her foot on me; sometimes a dark-haired slave-girl
brought far from Wales shakes and presses me,
some stupid, drunken maidservant, on dark nights
she moistens with water, she warms for a while
by the pleasant fire; on my breast she thrusts
a wanton hand and moves about frequently,
then sweeps me within the blackness. Say what I am called
who, living ravages the land,
and after death, serves the multitudes.[3]

Interpretations

The riddle is noted particularly for its rare (and unflattering) depiction of Wealas, a word which either means 'Brittonic people' or 'slaves' (or both; it is rendered in Treharne's translation above as 'Welshmen' and 'slave-girl ... from Wales').[4] It is particularly noted for its implicit portrayal of sexual desire, which is rare in Old English poetry: the riddle seems to depict a slave and/or ethnically Brittonic person fashioning an object from boiled leather, but certainly does so in ways that evoke sexual activity.[5]

There are a number of early medieval Latin riddles on oxen which stand as analogues to this one.[6]

Editions
  • Krapp, George Philip and Elliott Van Kirk Dobbie (eds), The Exeter Book, The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records, 3 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1936), p. 186, https://web.archive.org/web/20181206091232/http://ota.ox.ac.uk/desc/3009.
  • Williamson, Craig (ed.), The Old English Riddles of the Exeter Book (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1977).
  • Muir, Bernard J. (ed.), The Exeter Anthology of Old English Poetry: An Edition of Exeter Dean and Chapter MS 3501, 2nd edn, 2 vols (Exeter: Exeter University Press, 2000).

Recordings
  • Michael D. C. Drout, 'Riddle 12', performed from the Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records edition (19 October 2007).

References
  1. George Philip Krapp and Elliott Van Kirk Dobbie (eds), The Exeter Book, The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records, 3 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1936), http://ota.ox.ac.uk/desc/3009 Archived 2018-12-06 at the Wayback Machine.
  2. 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. 186; http://ota.ox.ac.uk/desc/3009 Archived 2018-12-06 at the Wayback Machine.
  3. Old and Middle English c. 890-c. 1400: An Anthology, ed. by Elaine Treharne, 2nd edn (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004), p. 69.
  4. John W. Tanke, “Wonfeax wale: Ideology and Figuration in the Sexual Riddles of the Exeter Book”, in Class and Gender in Early English Literature, ed. by Britton J. Harwood and Gillian R. Overing (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1994), pp. 21-42.
  5. Nina Rulon-Miller, “Sexual Humor and Fettered Desire in Exeter Book Riddle 12”, in Humour in Anglo-Saxon Literature, ed. by Jonathan Wilcox (Cambridge: Brewer, 2000), pp. 99-126.
  6. Cameron Laird, 'Commentary for Riddle 12', The Riddle Ages (7 September 2013).
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