Exeter Book Riddle 69

Exeter Book Riddle 69 (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 interpretation has occasioned a range of scholarly investigations, but clearly has something to do with ice and is likely indeed to have the solution 'ice'.[2]

Text

As edited by Krapp and Dobbie in the Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records series, Riddle 69 is the shortest text of the Exeter Book:

Wundor wearð on wege; wæter wearð to bane.[1]

  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), p. 231, accessed from http://ota.ox.ac.uk/desc/3009.
  

A marvel occurred on the road: water turned to bone.

However, since at least 1858, editors have discussed reading the riddles numbered by Krapp and Dobbie as 68 and 69 as one text.[3] 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:

Ic þa wiht geseah on weg feran;
heo wæs wrætlice wundrum gegierwed.
Wundor wearð on wege; wæter wearð to bane.[1]

  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), p. 231, accessed from http://ota.ox.ac.uk/desc/3009.
  

I saw a being travelling on its way;
it was adorned amazingly beautifully.
A marvell occurred on the road: water turned to bone.

Current scholarship is divided on this question, with recent commentators arguing both for reading 68 and 69 as discrete texts[4] or as one text.[5]

Interpretation

Reading the riddle as 'Ice', Murphy argues that 'the solution snaps the text into sudden focus and reveals the great wonder of a commonplace thing'.[6]

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).
  2. ↑ Patrick J. Murphy, Unriddling the Exeter Riddles (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2011), pp. 7-9.
  3. ↑ 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.
  4. ↑ 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.
  5. ↑ 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).
  6. ↑ Patrick J. Murphy, Unriddling the Exeter Riddles (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2011), p. 7.
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