The Exeter Book Riddles - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 190463446X ISBN 13: 9781904634461

Publisher: Enitharmon Press, 2008

Synopsis

The ninety-six Anglo-Saxon riddles in the eleventh-century "Exeter Book" are poems of great charm, zest, and subtlety. Ranging from natural phenomena (such as icebergs and storms at sea) to animal and bird life, from the Christian concept of the creation to prosaic domestic objects (such as a rake and a pair of bellows), and from weaponry to the peaceful pursuits of music and writing, they are full of sharp observation, earthy humour and, above all, a sense of wonder. The main text of this volume contains Kevin Crossley-Holland's newly-revised translations of seventy-five fascinating and discursive riddles - all those not very badly damaged or impenetrably obscure - while a further sixteen are translated in the notes. These translations are very widely anthologised in Britain and the USA. Sir Arthur Bliss and William Mathias set some of them to music, Ralph Steadman has illustrated them and Michael Fairfax has incorporated them in his Riddle Sculpture.

About this title

About the Author

Kevin Crossley-Holland's deep interest in the early literature of north-west Europe is reflected in much of his writing. In addition to his Selected Poems and Moored Man, a cycle of North Norfolk poems with watercolours and etchings by Norman Ackroyd, he is the author of The Penguin Book of Norse Myths, while his anthology The Anglo-Saxon World contains his well-known translations of Beowulf and many of the shorter poems. His celebrated books for children, including the Arthur trilogy, Gatty's Tale and a retelling of Beowulf illustrated by Charles Keeping, have been translated into well over twenty languages. With the poet Lawrence Sail, Crossley-Holland has edited an colection of modern metaphorical riddles, The New Exeter Book of Riddles, and Light Unlocked, an anthology of Christmas Card poems. He is also the co-author with Ivan Cutting of The Wuffings, a play about Anglo-Saxon East Anglia, and the librettist for Nicola LeFanu of two operas based on medieval legends, The Green Children and The Wildman. Kevin Crossley-Holland is an Honorary Fellow of St. Edmund Hall, Oxford, patron of the Society for Storytelling and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

The Exeter Book Riddles

By Kevin Crossley-Holland

Enitharmon Press

Copyright © 2008 Kevin Crossley-Holland
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-904634-46-1

Contents

Introduction, 
THE RIDDLES, 
Notes, 
Bibliography, 

CHAPTER 1

    THE RIDDLES


    1
    Who is so clever and quick-witted
    as to guess who goads me on my journey
    when I get up, angry, at times awesome;
    when I roar loudly and rampage over the land,
    sometimes causing havoc; when I burn houses
    and ransack palaces? Smoke rises,
    ashen over roofs. There is a din on earth,
    men die sudden deaths when I shake the forest,
    the flourishing trees, and fell timber –
    I with my roof of water, an avenger
    driven far and wide by the powers above;
    I carry on my back what once covered
    every man, body and soul submerged
    together in the water. Say what conceals me
    or what I, who bear this burden, am called.


    2
    Sometimes I plunge through the press of waves,
    surprising men, delving to the earth,
    the ocean bed. The waters ferment,
    sea-horses foaming ?
    The whale-mere roars, fiercely rages,
    waves beat upon the shore; stones
    and sand, seaweed and saltspray, are flung
    against the dunes when, wrestling
    far beneath the waves, I disturb the earth,
    the vast depths of the sea. Nor can I escape
    my ocean bed before he permits me who is my pilot
    on every journey. Tell me, wise man:
    who separates me from the sea's embrace,
    when the waters become quiet once more,
    the waves calm which before had covered me?


    3
    Sometimes my Lord corners me;
    then He imprisons all that I am
    under fertile fields – He frustrates me,
    condemns me in my might to darkness,
    casts me into a cave where my warden, earth,
    sits on my back. I cannot break out
    of that dungeon, but I shake halls
    and houses; the gabled homes of men
    tremble and totter; walls quake,
    then overhang. Air floats above earth,
    and the face of the ocean seems still
    until I burst out from my cramped cell
    at my Lord's bidding, He who in anger
    buried me before, so shackled me that I
    could not escape my Guardian, my Guide.

    Sometimes I swoop to whip up waves, rouse
    the water, drive the flintgrey rollers
    to the shore. Spuming crests crash
    against the cliff, dark precipice looming

Edition details

• Publisher: Enitharmon Press
• Publication date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 190463446X
• ISBN 13: 9781904634461
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 120