Recitation: Calling All Riddlers!

Your Mission:

1. To match your wits with medieval riddlers and modern scholars
2. To collectively create a riddle in the style of early English riddles.

Preparation:

You have two conversation-starters to prepare for this week’s recitation:

1. After trying your hand at Riddles 1, 2, and 3 in the “Kickin’ Back” section of this bundle, pick one riddle and write your best guess at its solution.  Accompany your guess with a short (no more than 100 words) paragraph explaining how you deciphered the hints, and what (if anything) about the riddle stymied you.  (If you’d prefer, you can talk us through your thought process in a short–no more than 3 minute–video).  Don’t worry if you haven’t a clue–if you don’t have an answer, write about what puzzled you.
2. Your engagement with Old English riddles will have given you a sense of some of the conventions of riddling in early England.  How would you go about writing a riddle about the sun in the manner of an Old English riddle?  Write two lines that capture some essential feature of the sun and that might form part of such a riddle.

   Recitation:

Compare and discuss your answers to the riddles and share your lines on the sun.

Posters: Please look out for each other by making sure that everybody’s post has a reply.

Report:

1. Report your original posts.
2. Did the discussion change your answer? Summarize what you talked about.  Did you all agree?  If not, what were the points of contention?  What facets of the riddles were easiest and hardest to decipher?
3. Drawing both on your own lines about the sun and on the contributions of your colleagues, write a riddle of anywhere between 6 and 12 lines about the sun (you don’t have to use everybody’s lines, but do name in your report the colleagues whose work you used as your co-authors).

CAUTION: SPOILERS AHEAD.  Proceed after your Recitation!

After you’ve discussed the Old English riddles and taken a stab at solving them and after you’ve created your sun riddle you may proceed!  At the very end of this page, we’ll reveal what scholars of Old English literatures determined to be the solutions to the three riddles (you needn’t agree with them).  We’ll also share how an Old English riddler construed the sun, which, of course, was as much a part of their world as of ours.

The Sun Riddle

Translated by Paull F. Baum [link]

Mec gesette soð     sigora waldend

crist to compe     oft ic cwice bærne

unrimu cyn     eorþan getenge

næte mid niþe     swa ic him no hrine ·

þōn mec min frea     feohtan hateþ

hwilum ic monigra     mod arete

hwilum ic frefre     þa ic ær winne · ōn

feorran swiþe     hi þæs felað þeah

swylce þæs oþres     þonne ic eft hyra

ofer deop gedreag     drohtað betan

Christ, the commander,     the true lord of victories,

ordained me for conflict.     I burn the living,

unnumbered mortals,     over all the earth.

I afflict them with pain,     yet never I touch them,

whenever my lord     bids me to battle.

Sometimes I gladden     the minds of many;

sometimes I comfort     those I make war on,

even from afar.     They feel it, nonetheless,

the hurt and the healing,     when now and again,

over deep tribulation,     I better their fortunes.

Below you can highlight to reveal the (proposed) answers to the Old English riddles found earlier in the bundle!  And yes, one of them has an obscene as well as a “respectable” answer.  We figure you don’t need to be told the “obscene” solution!

Riddle 1:

Wine

Riddle 2:

Onion; penis

Riddle 3:

Shield