A Feast of Creatures: Anglo-Saxon Riddle-Songs

Notes and Commentary

N O T E S A N D C O M M E N T A R Y The Commentary contains a discussion of individual riddles, their probable and possible solutions, their sources and analogues if any, their literary play, and the critical and cultural contexts in which they may usefully be viewed. In sketching both medieval and postmedieval literary treatments of riddle subjects, themes, and techniques, I have tried to indicate how the riddles may be seen as an important and integral part of a continuing literary tradition. Unless otherwise noted, all translations from the Latin and Old English in the Commentary are my own. Most of the original passages from which the translations are taken may be found in the Commentary of my earlier language-text edition of The Old English Riddles of the Exeter Book under the appropriate riddle numbers. There the reader will also find a fuller critical apparatus including a history of proposed solutions and variant readings for each riddle. Translations of the medieval Latin riddles are based on the various texts gathered together under the title Variae Collectiones Aenigmatum Merovingicae Aetatis, in volumes 133 and i3jA of the Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina, edited by Fr. Glorie. Translations from Pliny's Natural History are based on the Loeb Library texts edited by H. Rackham and W. S. Jones (in making my own translations of Pliny, I have frequently found the editors' suggestions helpful). Translations from Beowulf are based on the edition by Fr. Klaeber. Riddle translations in both text and notes are taken from my language-text edition of The Old English Riddles of the Exeter Book. All other translations of Old Notes and Commentary 157 English poems are based on The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records, edited by George PhilipKrappand Elliott Van Kirk Dobbie. In quoting postmedieval, premodern poetry in the Notes and Commentary, I have exercised the editor's normal prerogative of modernizing spellings and of choosing between alternate punctuations in an attempt to bring the most easily readable texts before an audience of nonspecialists. Normally in making such editorial judgments I have consulted previous readings and renderings before making my own and have followed a tradition of common editorial judgment where possible. Modern poems quoted in the Notes and Commentary remain editorially untouched. Line references are normally given for passages from longer poems, but not for the shorter poems where the passages may easily be found. Citations in this section have been kept brief to keep from piling notes upon notes. Fuller references may be found in the bibliography which concludes the section or in the language-text edition cited above. My aim here has been to create a commentary accessible to the general reader which reflects back upon the text of the riddles like a proper mirror and thus to keep the scholarlyglass from turning needlessly and opaquely upon itself. R I D D L E 1 This creature seems at first glance an odd parcel of storms and natural disasters. It begins with a windstorm wreaking havoc upon the land (lines 1-13), then shifts to a submarine earthquake and resulting sea storm (1427 ); a landlocked earthquake follows (28-4i), destroyinghorn-gabled halls and whole cities. Back at sea, the wind drives the flint-gray flood against cliff walls and doomed ships(42-57). A great thunderstorm follows,driving fire-spirits with their light-sharp swords against men (58-78). The several storms are summed up at lines 79-84. To a modern reader this pack of storms may seem a clutch of creatures (and sometimes the riddle is edited into separate storm riddles), but the weight of medieval cosmological evidence suggests that the Anglo-Saxons considered all these natural disturbances , from cloudburst to earthquake, part of the dread atmospheric power of the wind. In their characterization of the wind as the source of storms and other natural disasters, medieval cosmologistsfollowed a GrecoA Feast of Creatures 158 Roman, later patristic, tradition stretching from Plato to Bede. Pliny, for example, in book z of his Natural History (2.38),says that most natural storms the world is heir to come from the sublunar region that he calls the "realm of the winds": From the vaporous region below the moon come clouds, thunderclaps , lightning bolts, hail, Frost, rain, storms, and whirlwindsmost of mortals' misfortunes and the great wars OF nature. . ..Rains Fall,clouds rise, rivers dry up, hailstorms sweepdown, the sun...