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Anglo-Saxon Riddles of the Exeter Book

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Anglo-Saxon Riddles of the Exeter Book (1963)
translated by Paull Franklin Baum

An annotated version of this text is available.

3420694Anglo-Saxon Riddles of the Exeter Book1963Paull Franklin Baum


ANGLO-SAXON RIDDLES OF THE EXETER BOOK

Anglo-Saxon Riddles
of the Exeter Book


translated by
PAULL F. BAUM


DUKE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Durham, North Carolina
1963

© 1963, Duke University Press
Library of Congress Catalogue Card number 63-21168
Cambridge University Press, London, N. W. 1, England


Printed in the United States of America
by the Seeman Printery, Inc., Durham, N. C.

PREFACE

THE ninety-odd riddles in Anglo-Saxon which have come down to us in a single manuscript are naturally a miscellaneous collection of varying merit. A few of them are poetical in the best sense of Anglo-Saxon poetic style, as good as anything outside the heroic style of the Beowulf. Many of them are interesting as riddles: intentional ambiguities to be solved by reader or hearer. Some of them are learned, turning on the interpretation of runic letters or dealing with subjects only the monkish mind would care about. Some of them are neat and clever and well versified; others are not so good.

In the manuscript the riddles appear in no particular order. The following translations have been grouped according to subject. It was not feasible to arrange them by types, because the typical forms of the riddle are not clearly fixed and the Anglo-Saxon riddles are too few to illustrate many types.

The language of the Anglo-Saxon riddles is often difficult, and even those who are fairly familiar with Old English cannot read them readily. Though some of the best have been translated in scattered places, and there is a prose line-for-line translation in the E.E.T.S. edition of the Exeter Book, not readily accessible to the common reader, it has seemed worthwhile to render them all in similar verse form, with brief explanations, for any who may be interested in the riddles as such and for the glimpses they afford of monkish diversion and of daily life in England of the eighth and ninth centuries—in modern terms, for their psychological and sociological values.

I am deeply indebted to Professor Elliott V. K. Dobbie for reading my manuscript with great care and suggesting many improvements.

P.F.B.

CONTENTS


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Original:

This work was published before January 1, 1929, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.

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Translation:

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Works published in 1963 could have had their copyright renewed in 1990 or 1991, i.e. between January 1st of the 27th year after publication or registration and December 31st of the 28th year. As this work's copyright was not renewed, it entered the public domain on January 1st, 1992.


The longest-living author of this work died in 1964, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 59 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.

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