In Unriddling the Exeter Riddles Patrick J. Murphy takes an uncommon approach to analyzing the Old English riddles collected in the Exeter Book. Because the ninety-five riddles in the manuscript are recorded without their answers, much scholarship has been devoted to finding them; some have been more or less definitively solved, while others are still the subject of scholarly debate. Murphy, however, is less interested in proposing new solutions to the “propositions” or questions of the riddles than in understanding what those answers do. He argues that in order to understand the riddles, one must also consider what he calls the “focus” or underlying metaphor of each riddle.
Murphy outlines this argument in the introduction where he also provides a brief history of medieval riddles and of scholarship on the Exeter riddles in particular. He contends that many of the riddles were likely in oral circulation at the time the manuscript was written, which may help to explain why so many similar riddles are recorded elsewhere in years preceding and following the creation of the Exeter manuscript. In the first chapter he provides a survey of scholarship on riddling in general, drawing from medievalists and literary scholars as well as folklorists such as Archer Taylor. For Murphy, unriddling these texts means understanding the specific interplay between proposition, focus, and solution in each individual riddle.
The second chapter focuses specifically on Riddle 57, which describes little black creatures borne on the air that travel in groups and name themselves. While many scholars have concluded the riddle is about birds and debated at length what particular species is being described, Murphy believes that birds are the metaphor or focus of the riddle, but not the answer. Instead, he contends that the birds are used to represent letters on a page. To support his argument, he provides a detailed examination of the medieval concept of the letter, which differs slightly from the contemporary one, showing how that concept is key to understanding the metaphors used in the riddle. While the chapter is focused on Riddle 57, Murphy does incorporate other riddles both from the Exeter book and from other riddle collections to argue that understanding common metaphors and strategies of riddling will help to shed light on individual riddles.
In chapter 3 he furthers his argument that to correctly answer the riddles one must understand the medieval Anglo-Saxon worldview and the forms of learning that were available to the people of medieval England. For example, he argues that the eleven horses in Riddle 22 is unlikely to reference the eleven stars in the constellation Canes Venatici, since that constellation is an Early Modern creation not widely recognized as a constellation. He also demonstrates that these riddles are about more than just their answers, showing that riddles such as 22 and 29, which point to celestial answers, also describe Christ’s victory over Satan. The influence of Christian tradition on the riddles is demonstrated again in chapter 4 which proposes Riddle 17 as a variant of Samson’s Riddle from the Old Testament book of Judges. Since Samson’s Riddle about a beehive in a lion’s carcass was one of the best known in Medieval England, Murphy finds it surprising that other scholars have found no analogs in the Exeter manuscript. Murphy’s proposed answer of “leo” and “beo” (“lion” and “bee”) would also explain the runes L and B written in the margins near the riddle.
Chapter 5 focuses on a handful of suggestive riddles that Murphy calls “sex riddles,” rejecting the common term “obscene riddles,” based on his belief that the intended audience may not have found these riddles as obscene as modern audiences. Though they contain obvious allusions to sex acts and genitalia, Murphy argues that many of them are written in a way that highlights the proper relationship of the body and soul according to early Medieval Christian thought. His main argument in this chapter, however, is that widespread analogs of these riddles in other collections and in contemporary circulation indicate that the Exeter riddles document an oral tradition of riddling and are not simply the creations of the manuscript’s scribe. The sixth and final chapter provides a close reading of one of these sex riddles, Riddle 25, claiming that while previous scholars are correct in finding the riddle’s roots in the Latin riddles of Symphosius, the riddle also draws from oral tradition. For example, Murphy shows oral corollaries of specific images used in the riddle, such as braided-hair, which refers both to the onion which is the answer to the riddle and to the woman who picks it.
While Murphy effectively argues for specific answers to many of the riddles, the strength of this book is in his approach, rather than in the answers he advocates. He successfully integrates folklore scholarship on contemporary riddles with literary and medievalist scholarship on early Medieval riddling to show that the Exeter riddles grew out of a vibrant tradition and were not created in isolation. Folklorists will find value in the way the book highlights the constant interplay between elite, popular, and vernacular culture. Most importantly, this book demonstrates why intertextual analysis of such texts is essential to understanding their surface answers and deeper cultural meaning.
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[Review length: 870 words • Review posted on September 10, 2014]