The Sceapig Chronicles

Chapter 3

Many readers of Anglo-Saxon fiction will be aware that the Anglo-Saxons loved a good riddle. Some of them are so abstruse that scholars are unable to fathom the meaning. We are lucky to have the Exeter Book in Exeter Cathedral Library MS 3501, also known as the Codex Exoniensis, which is a (late) 10th-century book or codex of Anglo-Saxon poetry. The book was donated to the library of Exeter Cathedral by Leofric, the first bishop of Exeter in 1072. It is believed originally to have contained 130 leaves, of which the first 8 have been replaced with other leaves; the original first 8 pages are lost. The Exeter Book is the largest (and perhaps oldest) known collection of Old English poetry/literature still in existence, containing about a sixth of the Old English poetry that has come down to us.

Perceptive readers of my novel might object that the book was not compiled until the following century. However, the Anglo-Saxon oral tradition was vigorous, and it is quite possible that Riddle 95 was in circulation at the time of the youthful Aethelflaed. It is also a particularly intractable riddle whose meaning is still, today, the subject of scholarly debate. Here is the Old English text:

Ic eom indryhten ond eorlum cuð,

ond reste oft ricum ond heanum,

folcum gefræge. Fereð wide

ond me fremdes ær freondum stondeð

hiþendra hyht, gif ic habban sceal 5 blæd in burgum oþþe beorhte god.

Nu snottre men swiþast lufiaþ

midwist mine; ic monigum sceal

wisdom cyþan, no þær word sprecan

ænig ofer eorðan. Þeah nu ælda bearn 10 londbuendra lastas mine

swiþe secað, ic swaþe hwilum

mine bemiþe monna gehwylcum.

*(Krapp and Dobbie 1936: 243)

*whose excellent translation into modern English can be found in Chapter 22.

*whose excellent translation into modern English can be found in Chapter 22.For anyone wishing to follow the debate about Riddle 95, I can suggest no better source than the following paper: Exeter Book Riddle 95: ’The Sun’, a New Solution

Exeter Book Riddle 95: ’The Sun’, a New SolutionBitterli, Dieter (2019)