Exeter Book Riddle 24 (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 one of a number to include runes as clues: they spell an anagram of the Old English word higoræ 'jay, magpie'.[2] There has, therefore, been little debate about the solution.[3]

Text and translation

As edited by Williamson and translated by Stanton, the riddle reads:[4]

It is clear for metrical reasons that the runes were supposed to be sounded by their names, which are also words in their own right, so that in a sense the translation should also be something like:

where I sit cheerful. 'Gift' name me,
also 'ash-tree' and 'ride'. 'Pagan god[?]' helps,
'hail' and 'ice'. Now I am named
as the six letters clearly signify.

Interpretation

The riddles alludes to the jay's proclivity for imitating other species, and it has been argued that the poem's soundplay also reflects this.[5]

Editions

Recordings

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. ^ Robert Stanton, 'Mimicry, Subjectivity, and the Embodied Voice in Anglo-Saxon Bird Riddles', in Voice and Voicelessness in Medieval Europe, ed. by Irit Ruth Kleiman (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), pp. 29-43 (p. 32), doi:10.1007/978-1-137-39706-5_3.
  3. ^ Though for an exception see Emma Sonke, 'Zu dem 25. Rätsel des Exeterbuches', Englische Studien 37 (1907), 313-18.
  4. ^ The Old English Riddles of the Exeter Book, ed. by Craig Williamson (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1977), p. 82; Robert Stanton, 'Mimicry, Subjectivity, and the Embodied Voice in Anglo-Saxon Bird Riddles', in Voice and Voicelessness in Medieval Europe, ed. by Irit Ruth Kleiman (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), pp. 29-43 (p. 32), doi:10.1007/978-1-137-39706-5_3.
  5. ^ Robert Stanton, 'Mimicry, Subjectivity, and the Embodied Voice in Anglo-Saxon Bird Riddles', in Voice and Voicelessness in Medieval Europe, ed. by Irit Ruth Kleiman (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), pp. 29-43 (pp. 32-33), doi:10.1007/978-1-137-39706-5_3.
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