Erotic Old English Riddles

The numbers assigned below are those of the chief editions of the 10th century Codex Exoniensis.

Muir, Bernard J., ed. (2000). The Exeter anthology of Old English poetry: an edition of Exeter Dean and Chapter MS 3501 (2nd ed.). Exeter: University of Exeter Press. ISBN 0-85989-630-7.

Krapp, George Philip; Dobbie, Elliot Van Kirk, eds. (1936). The Exeter Book. The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records. III. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 0-231-08767-5.


     Riddles are very close to the wellsprings of poetry; art is play, after all, and figurative language a sort of riddling, while the pursuit of mysteries is commonly the business of literature. Though one sees few explicit riddles in contemporary poetry, quasi-riddling processes involving puns, double meanings, and ambiguity are common.
     Among the body of extant Old English riddles are a group with sexual themes. Since erotic topics are often described with euphemisms and indirection, their association with riddles seems altogether natural. Whereas early editors like Frederick Tupper and Alfred J. Wyatt found these texts to be an embarrassment evidencing “low” folk origins, many moderns find these pieces among the more entertaining and revealing of the hundred or so riddles extant in the Old English corpus. These poems afford rich data for the diachronic study of human social relations as well as the synchronic study of psychology. Here, however, I will provide only translations, limiting my comment to a few incidental notes. As these poems, like the others in the codex vary considerably in quality, and some bring significant textual problems, I will translate only a few of what seem to me the best.
     Modern readers may find it odd that Leofric, Exeter’s first bishop, would have donated to the cathedral library a manuscript containing poems with sexual content. Of course, the fact is that without the intentional though often idle notations of non-religious poems by those in religious life, we would lose much secular medieval poetry. While moderns are prone to consider censorship of sexual materials to be most likely, authorities have shifted their attention over the centuries. In early times religious heterodoxy was most often suppressed, whereas later political dissent became the primary target. Primarily in modern times has sexual and scatological material attracted the surveillance of church and state.
     These poems seem struck with amazement at the energy and power of sexuality. The authors ponder the marvel in particular of the male organ's erection. This simple wonder seems to me the essential theme of the poems. Poetry can often renew one’s view, providing a fresh take on a familiar sight. Here is perhaps a particular case, the easier to execute because of the powerful hold that sexuality has on the mind of our species.
     In the main I have striven to maintain something close to the Old English pattern of an alliterative three stress line with variable numbers of syllables, but these versions are rough and lack, I am afraid, the propulsive swing of the originals.


Riddle 74 (K & D 25)

I am a wonderful whatsit, bringing women such joy!
Serving all hereabout, I harm no one
in the city except a certain slayer.
Based in a high bed, my bend is up,
somewhere below I seem shaggy. Sometimes
a delightful daughter dares to seize,
licentious lady lays hold of me,
rushes my red self, wrings my head
Fixes me fast till she feels me for sure.
The wavy-haired woman, her eye grows wet.


     The ordinary view of this poem is as a double entendre, meant to suggest an obscene answer while also fitting a proper one. The latter in this case is an onion, growing planted in a bed, upward, sometimes red, and causing tears when cut. In this view the poem resembles the child’s riddle of our own time: “What does a woman do sitting down, a man does standing up, and a dog on three legs, for which the “innocent” answer is “shaking hands.” A similar contemporary riddle is “what goes in hard and dry and comes out soft and wet” for which various innocent answers – chewing gum, pasta, a sponge – are available. Some analysts argue, however, that the poem allows only the sexual answer. For me the conflation of vegetative and human fertility suggested by the possibility of the plant as an answer is attractive.


75 (K & D 44)

Sublime it swings by some man’s thigh,
covered by cloak, cloth cut in front,
rigid and robust it rests in good spot
When the youth his own tunic hoists,
lifts over his knee while that known hole
he seeks to find with the head of what hangs,
the hole has often filled with his long length.


     Here one finds bravado of “The Big Bamboo” variety. The adjective wrætlic in the opening phrase is defined as “artistic, ornamental, curious, wondrous, rare.” The figure is paralleled in a number of blues songs, including Clara Smith’s “Mean Papa, Turn in Your Key.”


76 (K & D 45)

I’ve thought of some thing that thickens in its spot,
swelling and stretching and growing so great!
When a lady lays hold of the boneless bit
with her proud hands, that prince’s daughter,
the sight of its swelling she covers with her skirt.


     Sleepy John Estes sings “Now what you going to do babe : your dough-roller gone/ Go in your kitchen/ Lord and cook until she come home.” (from “The Girl I Love, She Got Long Curly Hair”)


80 (K & D 37)

I beheld the thing, its belly was in back,
filled out so full, some fellow served it,
a powerful person, and much it passed,
when what filled it flew from its eye.
It need not die, when it has nothing left,
When it gives to another, it comes right back.
Happy to its heart, its spirit recurs.
It makes a son it is its own father.



Muir 74 (Krapp and Dobbie 25) proposed non-sexual answer: onion
Muir 75 (Krapp and Dobbie 44) proposed non-sexual answer: key
Muir 76 (Krapp and Dobbie 45) proposed non-sexual answer: bread dough
Muir 80(Krapp and Dobbie 37) proposed non-sexual answer: poker

See also Muir 77 (Krapp and Dobbie 545) proposed non-sexual answer: churn and Muir 81 (Krapp and Dobbie 87) proposed non-sexual answer: borer.