Anglo-Saxon Riddles of the Exeter Book/Annotated/14

The first four lines give a free and fanciful picture of a tree; then by a conventional association the tree becomes the Cross. (See also the preceding riddle.) This solution was first proposed by F. A. Blackburn in JEGP  (1900), 4–7, and has been generally accepted with reservations about cup and harp. His translation is as follows:


 * I am agile of body, I sport with the breeze; [tree] I am clothed with beauty, a comrade of the storm; [tree] I am bound on a journey, consumed by fire; [ship, tree] A blooming grove, a burning gleed, [tree, log] Full often comrades pass me from hand to hand, [harp] Where stately men and women kiss me. [cup?] When I rise up, before me bow The proud with reverence. Thus it is my part To increase for many the growth of happiness. [the cross]

In the first line &ldquo;agile of body&rdquo; is from the other text of this riddle in Exeter Book (f. 122b), where the variants add to the difficulties of translation but do little or nothing for the solution.