Page:Anglo-Saxon Riddles of the Exeter Book (1963).djvu/78

 (Medium &AElig;vum [1946], 48–54), comparing Frag. 117 of Empedocles:


 * Once I was a young man, maiden,

plant, bird, and mute fish cast ashore.

This, of course, is not a riddle, but an expression of cyclic metamorphosis. Just how an Anglo-Saxon came to know Empedocles is not clear.


 * 1) s67 ##

This, the last riddle in the Exeter book, is unhappily the most difficult. The text is complete but almost certainly corrupt, and any attempt to translate it is only a desperate hope, even after the experts have done their best with emendations.

I am a lordly, thing known to nobles, and often I rest, famous among peoples, the mighty and the lowly; I travel widely and to me first a stranger remains to my friends the delight of plunderers, if I am to have success in the cities or bright reward. Now wise men exceedingly love my presence. To many I shall declare wisdom. There they speak not, none the world over. Though now the sons of men who live on the earth eagerly seek the tracks that I make. I sometimes conceal those paths of mine from all mankind.

Perhaps Moon, perhaps Wandering Minstrel, perhaps Riddle. If the last, this is &ldquo;a kind of monkish colophon to the collection&rdquo; (Wyatt). Mrs. von Earhardt-Siebold (MLN [1947], 558–59), taking &ldquo;the delight of plunders&rdquo; as a kenning for Quill-pen, would make that a clue to the solution.