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Exeter Book Riddles 68-69

Exeter Book Riddles 68 and 69 (according to the numbering of the Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records)[1] are two (or arguably one) of the Old English riddles found in the later tenth-century Exeter Book. Their interpretation has occasioned a range of scholarly investigations, but clearly has something to do with ice and one or both of the riddles are likely indeed to have the solution 'ice'.[2]

Exeter Book folio 125v, showing Riddles 68 and 69 towards the bottom of the folio. Each is presented as a separate text, like Riddle 70 which begins on the third line from the bottom.

Text edit

As the image of Exeter Book folio 125v shows, Riddles 68 and 69 are clearly presented in the manuscript as different texts.

As edited by Krapp and Dobbie in the Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records series, Riddle 68 runs

Meanwhile, in their edition, Riddle 69 is the shortest text of the Exeter Book:

However, since at least 1858, editors have discussed reading the riddles numbered by Krapp and Dobbie as 68 and 69 as one text.[5] This is inconsistent with the manuscript punctuation, but works well in terms of the otherwise observable conventions of Old English riddles' form and helps to make sense of Riddle 68:

Current scholarship is divided on this question, with recent commentators arguing both for reading 68 and 69 as discrete texts[7] or as one text.[8]

Interpretation edit

Reading riddles 68-69 as a single riddle with the solution 'Ice', Murphy argues that 'the solution snaps the text into sudden focus and reveals the great wonder of a commonplace thing'.[9]

Recordings edit

  • Michael D. C. Drout, 'Riddle 69', performed from the Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records edition (15 November 2007).

References edit

  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).
  2. ^ Patrick J. Murphy, Unriddling the Exeter Riddles (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2011), pp. 7-9.
  3. ^ 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. 231, accessed from http://ota.ox.ac.uk/desc/3009.
  4. ^ 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. 231, accessed from http://ota.ox.ac.uk/desc/3009.
  5. ^ The Riddles of the Exeter Book, ed. by Frederick Tupper (Boston: Ginn, c1910), p. 208, citing Grein's 1858 edition; cf. Tupper's own editorial choice p. 48; https://archive.org/details/riddlesofexeterb00tuppuoft.
  6. ^ 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. 231, accessed from http://ota.ox.ac.uk/desc/3009.
  7. ^ E.g. John D. Niles, Old English Enigmatic Poems and the Play of the Texts, Studies in the early Middle Ages, 13 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2006), pp. 112-13; Patrick J. Murphy, Unriddling the Exeter Riddles (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2011), p. 7.
  8. ^ The Old English Riddles of the Exeter Book, ed. by Craig Williamson (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1977), p. 335; Andy Orchard, 'Enigma Variations: The Anglo-Saxon Riddle-Tradition', in Latin Learning and English Lore: Studies in Anglo-Saxon Literature for Michael Lapidge, ed. by Andy Orchard and Katherine O’Brien O’Keeffe, 2 vols (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005), I, 284-304 (pp. 290-91).
  9. ^ Patrick J. Murphy, Unriddling the Exeter Riddles (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2011), p. 7.
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