Exeter Book Riddle 12
Exeter Book Riddle 12 is one of the Old English riddles found in the later tenth-century Exeter Book. Its solution is accepted to be 'ox/ox-hide'. The riddle has been described as 'rather a cause celebre in the realm of Old English poetic scholarship, thanks to the combination of its apparently sensational, and salacious, subject matter with critical issues of class, sex, and gender'. The riddle is also of interest because of its reference to an enslaved person, possibly ethnically British.
Text and translation
As edited by Krapp and Dobbie, the riddle reads:Interpretations
The riddle is noted particularly for its rare depiction of Wealas, a word which either means 'Brittonic people' or 'slaves', or both ; the precise meanings here have occasioned extensive discussion.The riddle is also noted for its implicit portrayal of sexual desire, which is rare in Old English poetry: the riddle seems to depict a slave and/or ethnically Brittonic person fashioning an object from boiled leather, but certainly does so in ways that evoke sexual activity.
There are a number of early medieval Latin riddles on oxen which stand as analogues to this one.
Editions
- Krapp, George Philip and Elliott Van Kirk Dobbie, The Exeter Book, The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records, 3, p. 186, https://web.archive.org/web/20181206091232/http://ota.ox.ac.uk/desc/3009.
- Williamson, Craig, The Old English Riddles of the Exeter Book.
- Muir, Bernard J., The Exeter Anthology of Old English Poetry: An Edition of Exeter Dean and Chapter MS 3501, 2nd edn, 2 vols.
- Foys, Martin et al.,. Online edition annotated and linked to digital facsimile, with a modern translation.
Recordings
- Michael D. C. Drout, '', performed from the Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records edition.