The Anglo-Saxons loved riddles. They told each other riddles as well as listening to poems at their feasts. The riddles in this selection come from the Exeter Book. The “Exeter Book” (Exeter, Cathedral Library, 3501) is the name conventionally given to one of the major collections of Old English poetry. The contents, which are both secular and religious, provide a remarkable survey of later Anglo-Saxon poetic culture, and include several of the best-known anthology pieces (The Wanderer, The Seafarer, The Wife’s Lament), as well as other texts.
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Can you guess the solution to these bawdy riddles?
Riddle 44
A curiosity hangs by the thigh of a man, under its master's cloak. It is pierced through in the front; it is stiff and hard and it has a good standing-place. When the man pulls up his own robe above his knee, he means to poke with the head of his hanging thing that familiar hole of matching length which he has often filled before.
Riddle 25
I am a wondrous creature: to women a thing of joyful expectation, to close-lying companions serviceable. I harm no city-dweller excepting my slayer alone. My stem is erect and tall--I stand up in bed--and whiskery somewhere down below. Sometimes a countryman's quite comely daughter will venture, bumptious girl, to get a grip on me. She assaults my red self and seizes my head and clenches me in a cramped place. She will soon feel the effect of her encounter with me, this curl-locked woman who squeezes me. Her eye will be wet.
Riddle 45
I have heard of a something-or-other, growing in its nook, swelling and rising, pushing up its covering. Upon that boneless thing a cocky-minded young woman took a grip with her hands; with her apron a lord's daughter covered the tumescent thing.
I won't participate because I have the answers in my book, but anyway, I loved this riddles in my British Lit. Class
They are really witty! Thanks for not spoiling the fun for my BritLit students! BTW, the answers are online, but please no cheating, all right guys?
For some unknown reason, it looks like Riddle 44 had more clues to me than Riddle 25 & 45, but there goes nothing! Taking a wild guess, 25 is a veggy (Red onnion?)and 45 is a slug!
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