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Riddles, Charms and Enigmaticity in Early Medieval Culture:
On the Power of the Word that Creates.

Riddles as tormentful monsters?
b unrT

b unrT

b unrT

b unrT beo unreþe "be merciful / have mercy / gimme a break!”
[etched in drypoint beside Riddle 64, Exeter Book].

Riddle 86
(translated by Craig Williamson)
Wiht cwom gongan þær weras sæton

A weird creature came to a meeting of men,

monige on mæðle, mode snottre;

Hauled itself in to the high commerce

hæfde an eage ond earan twa,

Of the wise. It lurched with one eye,

ond II fet, XII hund heafda,

Two feet, twelve hundred heads,

5 hrycg ond wombe ond honda twa,

A back and belly – two hands, arms,

earmas ond eaxle, anne sweoran

Shoulders – one neck, two sides.

ond sidan twa. Saga hwæt ic hatte.

Untwist your mind and say what I mean.

1. The monster as a riddle and vice versa:

a.

Clear evidence that reality was enigmatic to the Anglo-Saxons (e.g. the word giedd as pointing to

it).

b.

The unknown/secret/mystery as the basis for both riddles and monsters.

c.

Riddles (similarly to medieval monsters) as also composed of deformity, hybridity, superfluity

or absence.

d.

Dispensing of a monster as an act akin to solving a riddle? The moment one “understands” a

monster it ceases to be monstrous – the moment one solves a riddle it ceases to be a riddle.

e.

The form of the riddle as purely based on estrangement and as such relatable to monstrosity in

medieval visual arts.

2. Riddles: playfulness and wisdom, verbal magic and subversion of hierarchies.

a.

Their connection to the idea of verbal performative magic (as if “charming” reality into

being by means of language)

b.

The carnivalesque and estrangement in language present in riddles.

c.

Their playful and didactic uses (their jocularity, but also their appearance in didactic

dialogues)

d.

Their requirement to act (just as the monsters in literature).

Seriousness seeks to exclude play, whereas play can very well include seriousness.

Johan Huizinga, “The Play-Concept as Expressed in Language” in: Homo Ludens. A Study of the
Play Element in Culture, 1938.

The riddle is a sacred thing full of secret power, hence a dangerous thing. In its mythological or ritual
context it is nearly always what German philologists know as the Halsrätsel or ‘capital riddle’, which you
either solve or forfeit your head (sic). The player’s life is at stake. A corollary of this is that it is accounted
the highest wisdom to put a riddle nobody can answer.

Johan Huizinga, “The Play-Concept as Expressed in Language” in: Homo Ludens. A Study of the
Play Element in Culture, 1938.

It is the most adaptable of forms, a shape-changer that is at one moment a tricksy one-liner loved by young
children, and at the next an extended and sophisticated metaphor. Its subject is each and any element of

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creation, animate and inanimate; or, on occasion, creation itself. ... And the tone of the riddle: it is typically
teasing, sometimes shocking, sometimes bawdy, ruminative, mysterious, elegiac.

Kevin Crossley-Holland and Lawrence Sail, eds., The New Exeter Book of Riddles, 1999.

3. Riddles in early literatures and cultures.

a.

Present in earliest written texts: Indian Vedas, Sumerian and Egyptian texts.

b.

Present in any culture – a deeply human and humanizing form of linguistic interaction

with the world (exteriorizing it and interiorizing it; descriptive and prescriptive).

c.

A widespread form, conjoining the ideas of:

•

verbal jokes, games, laughter, reversal of reality, creativity – the idea of saga
hwaet ic hatte “say what I am” employed by the Old English riddles.

•

mystery, hidden knowledge, search for the meaning (in poetic riddles) as
frequently leading to a deeply Christian perspective, marvelling at divine
creativity.

d.

The idea of making what is common strange: estrangement as one of the roles of

literature.

Secret knowledge is deep knowledge (because only what is lying under the surface can remain unknown for
long). Thus truth becomes identified with what is not said or what is said obscurely and must be understood
beyond or beneath the surface of a text. The gods speak (today we would say: the Being is speaking)
through hieroglyphic and enigmatic messages.

Umberto Eco, “Interpretation and History,” in: Interpretation and Overinterpretation, 1992.

Good riddles do, in general, provide us with satisfactory metaphors: for metaphors imply riddles, and
therefore a good riddle can furnish a good metaphor. … Most smart sayings are derived from metaphor,
and also from misleading the hearer beforehand. For it becomes more evident to him that he has learnt
something, when the conclusion turns out contrary to his expectations, and the mind seems to say,
‘How true it is! But I missed it.’ … And clever riddles are agreeable for the same reason; for something is
learnt, and the expressions is also metaphorical.

Aristotle, The Art of Rhetoric, Book III, Chapter IX, John Henry Freese trans., 1967 [4th c. BC].

Some etymologies of Indo-European terms associated with riddles.

Germanic languages
*rad – common Germanic root
OE rædelle, rædelse; from ræd “counsel, opinion, conjecture, riddle;” Old Saxon rædislo; Frisian riedsel;
Old High German râdisle, (German Rätsel, Rat “counsel” and erraten “to guess”); Dutch raadsel (Dutch
raden meaning both “to counsel” and “to solve [a riddle]”); (cf. Latin ratio and Polish rada).
Old Norse gáta; Norse gåte; Danish gåde; Swedish gåta

cf. OE giedd/gyd “song, lay, poem, speech, tale, sermon, proverb, riddle”; German Gedanke “thought”.

Romance languages
*divin – common root
French devinette, Italian indovinelli, Spanish adivinanza – from Latin divinus “divine, prophetic,”
divinatio “divination,” divinare “to worship, to divine, to guess.” Cf. Polish dziw.

Slavonic languages
*gad/had – common root (cf. OE giedd/gyd, ON gáta)
Old Church Slavonic/Russian gadanye [гадания] , “divination, guessing, riddle;” Polish (za)gadać, “to
speak” or “to speak in riddles,” gadka, “speech, saying, riddle;” Czech hadati, “to guess, to prophesy;”
Russian gadat’, gadivat’ [(до)гадывать(ся)], “to guess” and gadatyel’ [гадатель], “diviner.”

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4. Old English riddles.

a.

The influence of 7th/8th c. Anglo-Latin tradition – Latin riddles by bishop Aldhelm (639?-

709).
Latin poetic riddles, frequently referring to etymologies, refined Latin poetic forms.

b.

Some 90 riddles recorded in the Exeter Book (10th/11th c.).

c.

Mysterious, unclear until now solutions to some of them.

d.

Multiplicity of themes and solutions – from serious (Creation riddle), existential (Shield

riddle), religious (Bible riddle) to jocular and erotic (double entendre riddles).

e.

Runic alphabet and runic signs as also employed by some riddles.

Limpida dictanti metrorum carmina praesul
Munera nunc largire, rudis quo pandere rerum
Versibus enigmata quem clandistina fatu:
Sic, Deus, indignis tua gratis dona rependis.

Patron of him who songs in flowing verse
Composes, now bestow thy gifts on me,
That I with my rude lines may bare in speech
The secret riddles of created things -
To the unworthy thus thou giv’st thy gifts.
Aldhelm, Praefatio to his Aenigmata


Omnis mundi creatura quasi liber et pictura nobis est et speculum

Every creature in the world is, for us, like a book and a picture and a mirror as well.

From: De Planctu Naturae (Complaint of Nature) by Alain de Lille, a 12th c. theologian and
philosopher

5. An example of an interrelated solution and a self-referential riddle composed across several other
riddles from the Exeter Book.

Riddle 45
Ic on wincle gefrægn weaxan nathwæt,

I heard of something rising in a corner,

þindan ond þunian, þecene hebban;

Swelling and standing up, lifting its cover.

on þæt banlease bryd grapode,

The proud-hearted bride grabbed at the boneless

hygewlonc hondum, hrægle þeahte

Wonder with her hands; the prince’s daughter

5 þrindende þing þeodnes dohtor.

Covered that swelling thing with a swirl of cloth.

Riddle 46
Wer sæt æt wine mid his wifum twam

A man sat down to feast with his two wives,

ond his twegen suno ond his twa dohtor,

Drank wine with two daughters, supped with two sons

swase gesweostor, ond hyra suno twegen,

The daughters were sisters with their own two sons,

freolico frumbearn; fæder wæs þær inne

Each son a favoured, first-born prince.

5 þara æþelinga æghwæðres mid,

The father of each prince sat with his son,

eam ond nefa. Ealra wæron fife

Also the uncle and nephew of each.

eorla ond idesa insittendra.

In that room’s reach was a family of five!

Riddle 47

Moððe word fræt. Me þæt þuhte

A moth ate songs – wolfed words!

wrætlicu wyrd, þa ic þæt wundor gefrægn,

That seemed a weird dish – that a worm

þæt se wyrm forswealg wera gied sumes,

Should swallow, dumb thief in the dark,

þeof in þystro, þrymfæstne cwide

The songs of a man, his chants of glory,

5 ond þæs strangan staþol. Stælgiest ne wæs

Their place of strength. That thief-guest

wihte þy gleawra, þe he þam wordum swealg. Was no wiser for having swallowed words.

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6. Verbal magic – charms and riddles:

a.

Possible affinities between the riddlic form and charms: charms, present in Old English literary

culture, are instances of verbal magic: Bronisław Malinowski (influential cultural anthropologist)
stated that “the essence of verbal magic [...] consists in a statement which is untrue and which
stands in direct opposition to the context of reality...,”
This definition can also find application in the discussion of riddles.

b.

Northrop Frye (influential mid-20th c. literary and cultural critic) spoke of an affinity between

riddles and charms in cultures:

The riddle is essentially a charm in reverse

: it represents the revolt of intelligence against the

hypnotic power of commanding words

. In the riddle a verbal trap is set, but if one can “guess,”

that is, point to an outside object to which the verbal construct can be related, the something
outside destroys it as a charm, and we have sprung the trap without being caught in it. […]
Charms and riddles […] are psychologically very close together, as the unguessed or
unguessable riddle is or may be a charm.

[…] Hence riddles often imply some kind of enmity-

situation or contest, where you will lose a great deal, perhaps your life, if you don’t know the
answer. The reversal of a charm can be cleverly seen in such contests.

c.

Although riddles are not primarily performative by nature, they do not lack the performative

element – they enforce an action of perspective-shifting on their audience.

7. Naming – similarity between verbal magic associated with power and control (as understood by

Malinowski who argued for a connection between the word/name and the object/person it signifies: to
know the name of a thing is to get hold on it.)

The example of Landnámabók, the Icelandic book of settlements telling the story of land-taking, its
title literally means “the book of taking (and naming) the land.”

Verbal magic and magic thinking in the Old English double entendre riddles.
a.

The motifs of food and growing in the double entendre riddles, the status which women present

throughout these riddles appears to be high (related to the perception of the land as a feminine
construct and to the reverence showed to it – remnant of the early oral culture).

b.

It is, however, also an instance of carnivalesque reversal of magic and verbal games and jokes

performed on the power of natural and feminine fertility, in order to domesticate the astounding
power it possesses.

8. A selection of late 20th c. poetic riddles from The New Exeter Book of Riddles (London:
Enitharmon Press, 1999), a collection edited by Kevin Crossley-Holland and commemorating the
millennium of the Exeter Book.

1
I offer you four things
if you will but look:
that which is as great as breath
and greater than food;
the larger part of your cells;
gold from the shadowy depths
(slow-blooded but quicksilver flashing);
and rich thick silt in which
to grow your lotus.
Roselle Angwin

6
Like the tides I rise and fall.
Like a rock I am unmoved.

33
Two spiral stairs we climb to bed together.
Each step creaks a different who-goes-there.
Each taps the morse that codes us to each other,
ringing through the walls of cells we share.
The twisted zip ripped open in the fumbling
of life’s yes! to life. Can this be all it means:
after the quick thrill the roulette wheel tumble,
each slips back into other’s crumpled genes?
Philip Gross

35
My skin shimmers with all the colours
of a rainbow, and you hold me like a feather,
so gently, afraid to smear my shine with

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Travellers – I take you closer to the stars
But beware lest you stumble.
Patricia Bishop

11
I have no substance and no form
I am surrounded by what you rid me of
an diminished by what you return
until at last I am fulfilled
and vanish from your sight
Nigel Cameron

your fingertips, reading me closely, spinning
me in your mind, gently placing me
in the black box where I whirr
contentedly, singing with my silver tongue.
Charles Hadfield

66
Through frost and snow and sunlight,
through rain and night and day
I go back to where I come from.
I pass all things, yet stay.
Brian Patten