Anglo-Saxon Riddles of the Exeter Book/Annotated/19

Tupper calls this a &ldquo;little swallow-flight of song,&rdquo; and gives Swallows as the answer; Trautmann (finally) and Mackie agree. Another guess is Gnats or Midges. The last words are ambiguous: either, as above, they have an onomatopoeic name, or &ldquo;name them yourselves.&rdquo; The former supports Mrs. von Erhardt-Siebold&rsquo;s argument for Jackdaw, in PMLA  (1947), 1–8. The jackdaw belongs to the large family of corvidae and is relatively small (13–14 inches); its &ldquo;song&rdquo; caw is certainly descriptive, but the bird itself is hardly as small as the riddle implies. Wyatt meets various guesses with a proper sense of humor. To Trautmann&rsquo;s objection that swallows do not tread and gnats do not chirp loudly, he holds that &ldquo;tread&rdquo; is not to be taken too literally. &ldquo;And, as applied to Gnats or Midges, I find it a perfectly delightful word for their up and down motion in the summer air.&rdquo; Whether they are loud &ldquo;depends entirely on the distance from your ear. At his own selected distance&hellip;.&rdquo; Still, swallow fits the text better.