Page:Anglo-Saxon Riddles of the Exeter Book (1963).djvu/57

 My home is over men. I suffer much whenever he moves me who stirs the forest, and rains and hard hail beat on me as I stand, and frost freezes and snow falls on me, hollow-bellied. . ..

Weathercock.


 * 1) s37 ##

I was in there where I saw something, a thing of wood, wound a striving thing, the moving beam &mdash;it received battle wounds, deep injuries; spears caused the hurts of this thing; and the wood was fast bound cunningly. One of its feet was stable, fixed; the other worked busily, played in the air, sometimes near the ground. A tree was nearby, that stood there hung with bright leaves. I saw the leavings of the arrow-work brought to my lord where heroes sat over their drinks.

The favored solution is Weaver&rsquo;s Loom. The &ldquo;striving thing&rdquo; is the web still in the loom; it is injured by the needle or shuttle passing through it. The spears or darts &ldquo;must be the teeth of the batten penetrating through the warp.&rdquo; &ldquo;The two feet can only be the weighted ends of the two rows of warp threads.&rdquo; The tree with leaves is a distaff, with flax on it; and the standing warp explains the metaphor of feet. On this see the learned and well-documented article by Erika von Erhardt-Siebold, &ldquo;The Old English Loom Riddles,&rdquo; Philologica, Malone Anniversary Studies, Baltimore, 1949, pp. 9–17. Mrs. von Erhardt-Siebold includes with the Loom Riddles 50 (K-D 35), Coat of Mail, which is related insofar as chain mail resembles weaving; and 45 (K-D 70), which is usually solved as Reed Pipe (p. 37 below).