Page:Anglo-Saxon Riddles of the Exeter Book (1963).djvu/19

 are not riddles. Finally he received a set of thirty-five riddles and added them. That the scribe simply copied down what came to him without thought of unity or coherence is apparent from the separation of the two monologues, The Wife&rsquo;s Lament and The Lover&rsquo;s Message, which are of the same type and possibly parts of the same story. It is apparent also that the riddles copied by the Exeter scribe were not a single collection of one hundred (matching the count of the Latin &AElig;nigmata of Aldheim and Tatwine–Eusebius); and this fact, along with the uncertainty in the editorial numbering of several and the inclusion of a Latin riddle, makes it hazardous to assume that there were originally one hundred Anglo-Saxon riddles.

The difficulties of translating Anglo-Saxon poetry are well known; the attempt to translate the Anglo-Saxon riddles faces several peculiar difficulties. The text is in many places corrupt, and while excellent scholars have worked it over they are often at variance even as to the literal meaning and they have sometimes emended in the interest of a favored solution. The words themselves can be deceptive. Such a simple word as &ldquo;plow,&rdquo; for example, represents an object different from the modern reader&rsquo;s picture. Since it is the nature of a riddle to deal in ambiguities, a translator must somehow hold the line between revealing too much and preserving a necessary obscurity. And when there is no generally accepted solution, one must guard against slanting the translation toward one&rsquo;s own guess. Moreover, the riddles vary in merit. For the best of them one does one&rsquo;s best; for the others one tries not to make them appear better than the original. The result is, therefore, a series of compromises in the hope of achieving &ldquo;the best possible failure.&rdquo; Finally, there is the question of metrical form. Modern imitations of the Anglo-Saxon long line of four main stresses, with two, often three, alliterating syllables to the line, have usually been unsatisfactory. Hence in the following versions I have settled for a loose line, generally of four stresses, with as much alliteration as comes without forcing&mdash;a middle ground between strict meter and rhythmic prose, avoiding, or at least diminishing, the iambic movement