Page:Anglo-Saxon Riddles of the Exeter Book (1963).djvu/81

 was the owner&rsquo;s joy; H and A very strong. TH and E; the F and A rejoiced; flew over EA S and F  of the people themselves.

W and I is for wicg, &lsquo;horse&rsquo;: B E for beorn, &lsquo;man&rsquo;; H and A for haofoc, &lsquo;hawk&rsquo;; TH for &thorn;eow, &lsquo;slave,&rsquo; or &thorn;egn, &lsquo;thane&rsquo;; F and AE possibly for f&aelig;lca, &lsquo;falcon&rsquo;; EA for ear, &lsquo;ground&rsquo; or ea, &lsquo;water&rsquo;; S and P for spere, &lsquo;spear.&rsquo; In brief: &ldquo;I saw a man riding along on horseback with a hawk which was his joy (and pride). They were all happy, the man, the horse, the servant, and the hawk also; it flew over the water (or the ground).&rdquo; F in the last line must be a mistake for P.


 * 1) s72 ##

This riddle is somewhat related to the above, having a sort of secret writing instead of runes.

I saw a thing moving over the wave [or ways]. It was gorgeously, wondrously arrayed. It had four feet beneath its belly [and eight man hwm wiif mxlkfw f horse qxxs&mdash;up on its back.] It had two wings and twelve eyes and six heads. Tell what it was. It moved over the water; nor was it a bird alone, but there was a likeness of each of these: a horse and a man, a dog and a bird, and also the shape of a woman. You know how to say, if you can, who know the truth, just how the nature of the thing may go.

This looks at first like two different riddles; for it is not usual to solicit the answer twice. The two bracketed lines (4–5) are doubtless an interpolation by some overzealous copyist, to make everything more difficult. He used the simple old code of representing vowels by the alphabetically following consonants. Thus hwm (miscopied) is for homo, &lsquo;man,&rsquo; repeating man; mxlkfw f (also miscopied) is for mulier,