Page:Anglo-Saxon Riddles of the Exeter Book (1963).djvu/82

 repeating wiif, &lsquo;woman&rsquo;; qxxs is for equus, &lsquo;horse.&rsquo; For the rest, interpretations vary. Trautmann, for example, has the following: &ldquo;A man and his wife are seated on a horse; the man has a bird in his hand, the woman a dog on her arm and an unborn child inside her (or the man has the dog and the woman has the bird). The four feet are the horse&rsquo;s; the eight on its back are the child&rsquo;s, the bird&rsquo;s, and the dog&rsquo;s. The feet of the man and wife are not counted since they are neither underneath nor up above. The six heads and twelve eyes are those of the man, woman, child, dog, bird, horse.&rdquo; But he admits that difficulties remain. Another guess sees a boat with four oars and eight rowers and on board a horse, a man, a woman, a bird, and a dog. Or no bird, the wings being sails. A more elaborate interpretation is proposed by Erika von Erhardt-Siebold (PMLA [1948], 3–6). A party of hunters is returning home in a boat with two dogs and the game. The boat had four feet underneath (four oars) and eight above (four oarsmen); the boat had two wings (bird being a conventional metaphor for ship). The twelve eyes were those of the four oarsmen, the dog, and the bird which had been killed. Besides this there was the likeness of a horse (now the boat itself) and a man (as on horseback), and a dog and bird literally. The form of a woman is probably an ornamental design or figurehead of the boat. Thus Mrs. von Erhardt-Siebold with slight changes.


 * 1) s73 ##

Another one consists of two lines, the first of which says

I saw a swift one going along the path

and the second consists of four runes: D N L H, which have been interpreted as H&aelig;LeND or Savior; or with one emendation, D N U H, i.e., hund, dog. (Note the other one-line riddle, 28 (K-D 76) and also 7 (K-D 68, 69).