Exeter Riddle 38

MEGANCAVELL

Date: Wed 27 May 2015
Matching Commentaries: Commentary for Exeter Riddle 38
Original text:

Ic þa wiht geseah     wæpnedcynnes,
geoguðmyrþe grædig;     him on gafol forlet
ferðfriþende      feower wellan
scire sceotan,     on gesceap þeotan.
5     Mon maþelade,     se þe me gesægde:
“Seo wiht, gif hio gedygeð,     duna briceð;
gif he tobirsteð,      bindeð cwice.”

Translation:

I saw a creature of the weaponed kind/male sex,
greedy with youthful joy; as tribute for him
the life-saving one let four springs
shoot forth brightly, murmur to his delight.
5     Someone spoke, the one who said to me:
“That creature, if she survives, breaks the hills;
if he dies, binds the living.”

Click to show riddle solution?
(Young) Ox, Bullock


Notes:

This riddle appears on folio 109v of The Exeter Book.

The above Old English text is based on this edition: Elliott van Kirk Dobbie and George Philip Krapp, eds, The Exeter Book, Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records 3 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1936), page 199.

Note that this edition numbers the text Riddle 36: Craig Williamson, ed., The Old English Riddles of the Exeter Book (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1977), page 90.



Tags: anglo saxon  exeter book  riddles  old english  solutions  riddle 38 

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