Old English Riddles

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.}THE OLD ENGLISH RIDDLES:A CARNIVAL OF THE UNCANNYA4*,4 6,nu-tWendy BowerEnglish JP - SpringMay 1, 1988Seth Lerer

The Old English riddles of the Exeter Book, a collection of 95-odd vernacularpoems compiled in the 1lth century, present ordinary items from Anglo-Saxon lifedisguised as fantastic creatures. Keys, pokers, books, onions, rakes and sweaters comealive in the riddles and speak to the reader as if physically present. Demanding that wegive them names, the hidden voices put us to a test, playfully challenging our verbalagility and mental acuity. "Say what I am called," commands the speaker in riddle 24(line 26b) after describing its magical transformation from a living animal into awonderful work of gold. "I have heard of something that waxes in the comer," teasesthe voice in line 1 of riddle 43, referring to a mysterious shape bulging beneath acloth.lRiddles present the 'uncanny' in raw form. Obfuscating once-familiar things anddisplacing them into new categories, they make us pause to ponder as we experienceprecisely the "uncertainty" which Freud says accompanies the apprehension of "nothingnew or foreign, but something familiar and old-established in the mind." 2 The riddlesdraw a blinder before the eyes, forcing the reader to squint at what appears to be analien thing. By withholding the name of the object, and offering only oblique glimpsesof its shadowy form, riddles force the solver to confront a situation where perceptualstructures have momentarily collapsed, where the old laws of nature and logic cease tohold.One way the Anglo-Saxon riddles evoke fantastic scenarios is by using techniquesthat convey the admission of subconscious forces and the subsequent defiance ofacceptable social behavior. Double entendre operates in riddles 23,43 and2 to play onprecisely those libidinal forces which F'reud says are most "familiar." Like the Freudiandream-work, the riddles admit "psychological activities which do not express themselvesin waking life." 3 The speakers in the obscene riddles uncover shockingly obsceneforms and threaten to bring them into direct light, often using clever innuendos anddouble-meanings. For example, in riddle 23 the onion describes itself as wifum onhyte, (1b) detailing how a young woman "grabs" it from the bed and "ravages" its "red1 A llst of the riddles discussed can be found in the appendix, along with my translations.The numeration is Williamson's.2 Sigmund Freud, "The Uncanny," in Collected Papers of Sigmund Freud, trans. JamesStrachey (London: the Hogarth Press Ltd., 19S3), p. 394.3 Sigmund Freud, The lnterpretation of Dreams, lrans. James Strachey (New York:W.W. Norton and Co., 1960), p.82.1'iln

head." (7b-8b) Similarly, the voice in riddle 43 tells us about a tumescent thing puffingand popping in the dark comer, which a woman "grips proud-handed" (4a) and concealsunder her skirt, which is described as a "cloth." (5a) Riddle 2, one of the mostenigmatic in the collection, provides strong suggestions for an obscene reading with itsreferences to a "bed," (3a) a "sleepweary" feeling, (6a) and a "warm limb" that "bursts"through a "bound ring." (7b-8b)Some of the obscene riddles also imply gender-role reversal. In riddle 23,forexample, the woman ursu{ps the masculine role of a "slayer," while the helpless onion,symbolizing a disembodied male organ, cannot escape from her. Likewise, riddle 43shows a woman in an unnaturally aggresive role (by medieval standards) while themasculine element is a soft, malleable thing - a banlese. (4a) Riddle 2 suggests notonly gender ambiguity but also class role confusion. The bell "eagerly obey(s)" its$rgnr. (Za-b) brgnr,literally "thane," can refer to either a servant or a master.4Beyond this, the servant or master, (presumably the bell-ringer at a monastery or anunnery), may be either a man or a woman - trrg od$, meowle. (5b) Whether thereis just onefiegne or a group of different male and female bell-ringers remains unclear.Equally ambiguous is the origin of the wearm lim which pops up suddenly in line 8b.The "warm limb" could refer either to the arm of the bell-ringer, to the friction-heatedwooden handle attached to the bell's clapper, or to a phallus. Gebundenne baeg hwilumbersteT (8a-b) also lends itself to several interpretations. The "bursting of the .ing"could mean at least three things: the bell's auditory ".ing" breaking through the silence,the bell's circular metallic ring cracking from impact, or perhaps, in another instance ofdouble entendre, to an anatomical opening. The speaker, we recall, says in line 10b thatboth he and the servant derive pleasure from the bursting of the ring, as indicated by thephrase *rfiou sylf, "to me as we11." Ambiguous lexical structure in the bell riddleheightens the mixing of roles. For example, the adjective slaepwerigne (6a) couldmodify either the bell (weary from too much sleep because it had not rung for a longtime) or else the secg oful, meowle, who, weary from too little sleep, comes to ring itearly in the moming or late at night. The blurring of the distinction between the twogenders during the symbolic sexual act may even suggest a homoerotic encounter, whichmight have been common in religious communities.4 U.W. Bright, Bright's Old English Grammar and Reader, ed. Cassidy and Ringler (NewYork: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, lnc., 1971), p.478.2N

The onion riddle relates an especially graphic instance of physical inversion andgender role reversal. Engaged in a struggle with a female aggressor who usurps themasculine role, the onion strives to assert its power over the modwlonc meowle. (7a)Anatomical poles reverse, as the creature's bulbous "head" emerges from below while itsanterior part, the "foundation," stands high - sta$ol min is steapheah.@a) The girl'shead, too, occupies an inverted position, as indicated by the parallel references to theruh nathwaer (5a) andwif wundenlocc. (1la) Beyond suggesting the reversal ofsexual position and power relations, riddles 23 and 43 also hint at incest - nnsthglperversion of natural relations. Both riddles alternately describe the female grabber asboth a "wife" or a "bride" and also as a "daughter" -wif(l1a) and ceorles dohtor(6b) in riddle 23, byrd (3b) and $eodnes dohtor (5b) in riddle 43. Riddle 43 alsomakes an etymological pun on the words "lord" and "lady" - which literally