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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 October 2022
This article proposes ‘military standard’ or ‘banner’, OE segn, as the solution to the problematic Exeter Book Riddle 55 (Ic seah in healle…). The solution addresses each of the clues offered by the riddle-poet, using an object with attested sociocultural significance to the early English people. In so doing, it attempts to resolve several longstanding critical questions surrounding the riddle, and highlights some of the sociocultural insights to be gained from this riddle-solution pair.
1 See Cavell, M., Weaving Words and Binding Bodies: the Poetics of Human Experience in Old English Literature (Toronto, 2016), p. 28 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; A. Davis, ‘Agon and Gnomon: Forms and Functions of the Anglo-Saxon Riddles,’ De Gustibus: Essays for Alain Renoir, ed. J. M. Foley (New York, 1992), pp. 110–50, esp. 120–1 and 128; D. Ben-Amos, ‘Solutions to Riddles’, Jnl of Amer. Folklore 89 (1976), 249–54. See also J. Neville, ‘The Exeter Book Riddles’ Precarious Insights into Wooden Artifacts’, Trees and Timber in the Anglo-Saxon World, ed. M. D. J. Bintley and M. G. Shapland (Oxford, 2013), pp. 122–43. For sociocultural functions in performance, see R. D. Abrahams, ‘The Literary Study of the Riddle’, Texas Stud. in Lang. and Lit. 14 (1972), 177–97.
2 Abrahams, ‘Literary Study’, p. 182.
3 Ben-Amos, ‘Solutions to Riddles’, p. 253. See Davis’s observation that ‘once the answers have become as traditional as the questions, they become discourses for the confirmation of truths held in common’ (‘Agon and Gnomon’, p. 124).
4 For the complete Exeter Book Riddles, see ASPR, vol. III (1936). See also Muir, B. J., The Exeter Anthology of Old English Poetry: an Edition of Exeter Dean and Chapter MS 3501, 2 vols., 2nd ed. (Exeter, 2000)Google Scholar; and C. Williamson, The Old English Riddles of the ‘Exeter Book’ (Chapel Hill, NC, 1977); F. Tupper, The Riddles of the Exeter Book (Boston, 1910); A. J. Wyatt, Old English Riddles (Boston, 1912); F. H. Whitman, Old English Riddles, Canadian Federation for the Humanities Monograph 3 (Ottawa, 1982); P. F. Baum, Anglo-Saxon Riddles of the Exeter Book (Durham, NC, 1963); and C. Williamson, A Feast of Creatures: Anglo-Saxon Riddle Songs (Philadelphia, 1982).
5 Bintley and Shapland, introduction to Trees and Timber, pp. 1–18. See also Neville, ‘Exeter Book Riddles’ Precarious Insights’, p. 122.
6 Morgan, G. A., ‘Dualism and Mirror Imagery in Anglo-Saxon Riddles’, Jnl of the Fantastic in the Arts 5 (1992), 74–85, at 76Google Scholar. For Anglo-Saxon collective wisdom in the Exeter Riddles, see R. Boryslawski, ‘The Elements of Anglo-Saxon Wisdom Poetry in the Exeter Book Riddles’, Studia Anglica Posnaniensia 38 (2002), 35–49. For the Latin-inherited riddles as a source of Anglo-Saxon cultural insight as well, cf. E. von Erhardt-Siebold, Die lateinischen Rätsel der Angelsachsen (Heidelberg, 1925), pp. 1–3.
7 As Marijane Osborn observes, ‘the majority of these brief poems depend on a knowledge of objects and creatures familiar to the Anglo-Saxons for their answer’. M. Osborn, ‘“Skep” (beinenkorb, *beoleap) as a Culture-Specific Solution to Exeter Book Riddle 17’, ANQ 18 (2005), 8–18, at 8.
8 Neville, ‘Exeter Book Riddles’ Precarious Insights’, pp. 122–5.
9 As Davis puts it, ‘There is an explicit confrontational element, or agon, in the surface conventions of the riddle, and certainly in the act of riddling, involving as it does at least two parties, one of whom has something the other wants (the answer) and is making trouble about giving it up’ (‘Agon and Gnomon’, p. 128). For obfuscation and misdirection as characteristics of the Anglo-Saxon riddles, see S. A. Mitchell, ‘Ambiguity and Germanic Imagery in OE Riddle 1: “Army”’, SN 54 (1982), 39–52, esp. 39; M. Salvador-Bello, Isidorean Perceptions of Order: the Exeter Book Riddles and Medieval Latin Enigmata, Med. European Stud. 17 (Morgantown, WV, 2015), 17; and Tigges, W., ‘Signs and Solutions: a Semiotic Approach to the Exeter Book Riddles’, This Noble Craft…: Proceedings of the Xth Research Symposium of the Dutch and Belgian University Teachers of Old and Middle English and Historical Linguistics, Utrech, 19–20 January, 1989, ed. Kooper, E., Costerus ns 80 (Amsterdam, 1991), 59–82, esp. 79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
10 Williamson, Feast of Creatures, p. 196; and K. Taylor, ‘Mazers, Mead, and the Wolf’s-Head Tree: a Reconsideration of Old English “Riddle 55”’, JEGP 94 (1995), 497–512, esp. 512. Numbering based on ASPR III, 208. Alternatively identified as Riddle 53 by Williamson, Old English Riddles; and as Riddle 13 by Baum, Anglo-Saxon Riddles. For more on the difficulty of this particular riddle, see also Williamson, Old English Riddles, p. 300; J. D. Niles, Old English Enigmatic Poems and the Play of the Texts, Stud, in the Early Middle Ages 13 (Turnhout, 2006), 61–2; and Murphy, P. J., Unriddling the Exeter Riddles (University Park, PA, 2011), p. 61.Google Scholar
11 As found in ASPR III, 208. For my proposed translation, see below, p. 69.
12 Shield/scabbard: F. Dietrich and S. A. Brooke, cited in Tupper, Riddles of the Exeter Book, p. 188; and Wyatt, Old English Riddles, p. 106. Scabbard: ‘richly decorated (lines 3, 4), and divided into quarters by a cross’ (ibid.); also cited in Williamson, Old English Riddles, p. 301. Cross: Tupper, Riddles of the Exeter Book, p. 189; and H. Pinsker and W. Ziegler, Die altenglischen Rätsel des Exeterbuchs: Text mit deutscher Übersetzung und Kommentar (Heidelberg, 1985), pp. 275–6. Murphy insists that ‘whether Riddle 55’s solution is scabbard, sword box, or weapon rack, then, surely the metaphorical focus is on the cross’ (Unriddling, p. 63). See also D. Bitterli, Say What I Am Called: the Old English Riddles of the Exeter Book and the Anglo-Latin Riddle Tradition (Toronto, 2009), p. 129. Gallows (or sword-rack): F. Liebermann, cited in Williamson, Old English Riddles, pp. 301–2; Tupper, Riddles of the Exeter Book, pp. 188–9; and Murphy, Unriddling, p. 67. Drinking bowl and barrel: Taylor, ‘Mazers, Mead, and the Wolf’s-Head Tree’. Harp: M. Trautmann, cited in Tupper, Riddles of the Exeter Book, p. 188; and Williamson, Old English Riddles, p. 301. Reliquary (scrin): Neville, ‘Exeter Book Riddles’ Precarious Insights’, p. 125. Tetraktys: G. K. Jember, The Old English Riddles: a New Translation (Denver, CO, 1976), appendix, n.p.
13 See, for example, Williamson, Old English Riddles, pp. 301–2; Niles, Old English Enigmatic Poems, pp. 61–9 and 75–81; and Murphy, Unriddling, pp. 62–3.
14 Niles, Old English Enigmatic Poems, p. 30.
15 A. N. Doane, ‘Three Old English Riddles: Reconsiderations of Numbers 4, 49, and 73’, MP 84 (1987), 244–57. See also Whitman, Old English Riddles, p. 15.
16 For an overview of the primary objection(s) to each solution offered to date, see especially Williamson, Feast of Creatures, pp. 196–7; Taylor, ‘Mazers, Mead, and the Wolf’s-Head Tree’, pp. 497–8; and Niles, Old English Enigmatic Poems, pp. 61–2 and 68–73.
17 Williamson, Old English Riddles, p. 303; see also Muir, Exeter Anthology II, 651–2; and ASPR III, 350. Cf. Salvador-Bello, Isidorean Perceptions of Order, p. 371, for sword as dedicatory offering to a church (i.e. to the Cross). Pinsker-Ziegler suggest instead that the Cross (their chosen solution) ‘served’ its lord Christ ‘as a weapon’ (Die altenglischen Rätsel des Exeterbuchs, p. 275).
18 As Williamson observes, ‘a composition of four woods would be neither stable nor strong’ (A Feast of Creatures, p. 196) and, elsewhere, ‘the structural weakness of such an hybrid should be obvious’ (The Old English Riddles, p. 301). Similar objections could also be raised regarding the gallows.
19 Both objects were made of wood. In fact, patristic tradition held that the Cross was made of four types of wood – but not of the four types listed in the riddle (see also Murphy, Unriddling, pp. 63–4). For example, in Pseudo-Bede, Collectanea, no. 372, the woods listed are cypress, cedar, pine and boxwood (in Collectanea Pseudo-Bede, ed. M. Bayless and M. Lapidge, Scriptores Latini Hiberniae 14 (Dublin, 1998), 179). See also Williamson, Old English Riddles, pp. 303 and 301.
20 Cf. Niles’s assertion that ‘the solution is likely to win few adherents because of the obvious difference between a bowl or barrel and the gallows’ (Old English Enigmatic Poems, p. 69).
21 As Williamson himself admits, ‘The connection between such an ornamental swordchest and the rood or gallows of lines 7b–12a is obscure at best’ (Old English Riddles, p. 302). See also Williamson, Feast of Creatures, p. 197; and Niles, Old English Enigmatic Poems, p. 69.
22 Williamson, Old English Riddles, p. 302; also, ‘there was no Anglo-Saxon sword rack, as far as we know’ (Williamson, Feast of Creatures, pp. 196–7).
23 Niles, Old English Enigmatic Poems, p. 75; see also pp. 73 (literature or archaeology) and 78 (artistic depiction). Nor is there mention of sword boxes, although, per Williamson, ‘swords must have been kept somewhere at some times when they were not in use’ (Williamson, Old English Riddles, p. 302).
24 See, for example, Niles, Old English Enigmatic Poems, p. 78; and Williamson, Old English Riddles, p. 302. Moreover, as Williamson points out, ‘One might suppose that swords would be set aside in the pleasure of good company, but a number of Anglo-Saxon laws make it clear that men wore their swords even while drinking at table’ (ibid.).
25 Beowulf, in Klaeber’s Beowulf and The Fight at Finnsburgh, ed. R. D. Fulk, R. E. Bjork and J. D. Niles, 4th ed. (Toronto, 2008), lines 325–6 and 1243b–1250a. All subsequent citations of Beowulf refer to this edition, unless otherwise stated.
26 Beowulf 671–4.
27 For other Old English terms used for the same type of object, and an overview of the scholarship, see M. W. Hennequin, ‘Anglo-Saxon Banners and Beowulf’, Medieval Clothing and Textiles, vol. 16, ed. M. L. Wright, R. Netherton and G. R. Owen-Crocker (Woodbridge, 2020), pp. 1–29. My thanks to Professor Hennequin for providing me with an early draft of this article.
28 See Niles, Old English Enigmatic Poems, p. 68.
29 See Tupper, Riddles of the Exeter Book, p. 190.
30 Or else ‘of Him who raised us up to the heavens by that ladder’ (Williamson, Old English Riddles, p. 303).
31 Niles calls this translation of hlin (i.e. hlyn) ‘an educated guess’ (Old English Enigmatic Poems, p. 66).
32 A crux; see above, n. 17, and below, pp. 88–90.
33 ‘carried out onto the floor, in the hall where men drank’.
34 Cavell, Weaving Words, p. 45.
35
36 The complete final lines of Riddle 56 read: Ic lafe geseah / minum hlaforde, þær hæleð druncon, / þara flana geweorc, on flet beran (10b–12, ASPR III, 208). Niles suggests that ‘the compiler of this part of the Exeter Book seems to have conceived of these two riddles as a pair’ (Old English Enigmatic Poems, p. 81). See also Salvador-Bello, Isidorean Perceptions of Order, pp. 374–5; and Cavell, Weaving Words, pp. 44–5.
37 In relation to Riddle 55, see Cavell, Weaving Words, pp. 44–5. For laf, see also Portnoy, P., ‘ Laf-Craft in Five Old English Riddles (K-D 5, 20, 56, 71, 91)’, Neophilologus 97 (2013), 555–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
38 Cavell, Weaving Words, pp. 45–6.
39 Ibid. pp. 26–7.
40 ‘a thing of four kinds’ (Whitman, Old English Riddles, p. 203); or ‘four kinds of thing’ (Niles, Old English Enigmatic Poems, p. 64). Cf. Taylor’s assertion that the riddle describes four separate objects but is concerned only with the identity of the wooden one (‘Mazers, Mead, and the Wolf’s-Head Tree’, p. 500).
41 See Deanesly, M., ‘Roman Traditionalist Influence among the Anglo-Saxons’, EHR 58 (1943), 129–46, esp. 131 and 138CrossRefGoogle Scholar; also M. Rostovtzeff, ‘Vexillum and Victory’, Jnl of Roman Stud. 32 (1942), 92–106, esp. 93; and V. Maxfield, ‘Military Standards, Roman’, The Encyclopedia of Ancient History, ed. R. S. Bagnall, K. Brodersen, C. B. Champion, A. Erskine and S. R. Huebner (Hoboken, NJ, 2013), p. 4504.
42 See Bruce-Mitford, R. L. S., ‘The Sutton Hoo Ship-Burial: Recent Theories and Some Comments on General Interpretation’, Proc. of the Suffolk Inst. of Archaeol. and Nat. Hist. 23 (1950), 1–78, esp. 17.Google Scholar
43 Beam (7b) reinforces the impression that the wooden (part of the) object is ‘a large one’ (Niles, Old English Enigmatic Poems, p. 65).
44 ‘a golden ensign high overhead’.
45 ‘Greatest of hand-wonders, woven by arts of song [by magic]’. See An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary based on the Manuscript Collections of the late Joseph Bosworth, ed. T. N. Toller (Oxford, 1898), with Toller, T. N., An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary based on the Manuscript Collections of Joseph Bosworth: Supplement (Oxford, 1921)Google Scholar and A. Campbell, An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary based on the Manuscript Collections of Joseph Bosworth: Enlarged Addenda and Corrigenda to the Supplement by T. Northcote Toller (Oxford, 1972), cited hereafter as Bosworth-Toller, Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, s.v. ‘ge-lucan’. See also the description of Satan’s ‘excessively golden’ banner in his rebellion against God, in the Prose Dialogue of Solomon and Saturn (cited in Hennequin, ‘Anglo-Saxon Banners’, p. 7); and B. Raw, ‘Royal Power and Royal Symbols in Beowulf’, The Age of Sutton Hoo: the Seventh Century in North-Western Europe, ed. M. O. H. Carver (Woodbridge, 1992), pp. 166–74, esp. 172.
46 This banner was taken as spoils of war by William I, after Harold’s defeat at the Battle of Hastings (see below n. 94). William of Malmesbury: ‘That same standard […] bore the figure of a warrior, richly embroidered with gold and gems’. William of Malmesbury, Gesta regum [hereafter WM, GR] iii. 241, in William of Malmesbury: Gesta Regum Anglorum / ‘The History of the English Kings’ I, ed. and trans. R. A. B. Mynors with R. M. Thomson and M. Winterbottom (Oxford, 1998), 454. See also William of Poitiers ii. 31: ‘vexillum Heraldi, hominis armati imaginem intextam habens ex auro purissimo’ (‘Harold’s banner, in which the image of an armed warrior was woven in pure gold’), in Gesta Guillelmi ducis Normannorum et regis Anglorum, ed. and trans. R. H. C. Davis and M. Chibnall (Oxford, 1998), pp.152–3, quoted in R. M. Thomson with M. Winterbottom, William of Malmesbury: Gesta Regum Anglorum / ‘The History of the English Kings’ II: General Introduction and Commentary (Oxford, 1999), p. 233; and Jones, R. W., Bloodied Banners: Martial Display on the Medieval Battlefield, Warfare in History (Woodbridge, 2010), pp. 33–4.Google Scholar
47 Rostovtzeff, ‘Vexillum and Victory’, p. 95. For the Anglo-Saxons as much as for the Romans, conspicuous display of luxury textiles was a sign of wealth and, especially, political power. See S. Marzinzik, ‘Expressions of Power: Luxury Textiles from Early Medieval Northern Europe’, Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings (2008), https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/tsaconf/113, pp. 1–10, esp. 3 and 7–10. On the in-weaving and embroidery of gold, see also G. R. Owen-Crocker, Dress in Anglo-Saxon England, 2nd ed. (Woodbridge, 2004), pp. 285–6. With reference to battle standards, see Hyer, M. Clegg and Owen-Crocker, G. R., ‘Woven Works: Making and Using Textiles’, The Material Culture of Daily Living in the Anglo-Saxon World, ed. Clegg Hyer, M. and Owen-Crocker, G. R. (Exeter, 2011), pp. 157–84, esp. 178.Google Scholar
48 See especially von Erhardt-Siebold, E., ‘The Old English Loom Riddles’, Philologica: Malone Anniversary Studies, ed. Kirby, T. A. and Woolf, H. B. (Baltimore, 1949), pp. 9–17 Google Scholar; and Cavell, Weaving Words, pp. 27–46 and 56. For associations in Riddle 56 between weaving and heroic violence, see M. Cavell, ‘Looming Danger and Dangerous Looms: Violence and Weaving in Exeter Book Riddle 56’, Leeds Stud. in Eng. ns 42 (2011), 29–42, esp. 30 and 42. Niles likewise notes the shared phrasing between Riddles K-D 55 and 56; accordingly, he places them both in the ‘“wooden object” group that consists of Riddles 52–56’ (Old English Enigmatic Poems, pp. 81 and 83). See also Salvador-Bello, Isidorean Perceptions of Order, pp. 374–5. However, since it is the laf, the textile, that is carried in Riddle 56, and not the loom, I suggest that the cloth, not (just) the wood, connects the two texts.
49 See, for example, Jonathan Coulston’s claim that ‘The gem-encrusted staff described by Ammianus on Constantinus II’s standard reflected the decoration current on other classes of 4th century military equipment’. Coulston, J. C. N., ‘The Draco Standard’, Jnl of Roman Military Equipment Stud. 2 (1991), 101–14, at 109Google Scholar. The staffs were also ‘gilded’ (ibid. p. 101).
50 Deanesly, ‘Roman Traditionalist Influence’, p. 137, emphasis added. See also Bruce-Mitford, ‘Sutton Hoo Ship-Burial’, pp. 17–18.
51 Thus, he contends, ‘Whatever object is alluded to by the phrase rōde tācn (5a), it ought to look or function like a cross without actually being one’ (Niles, Old English Enigmatic Poems, p. 69). Compare S. A. Mitchell: ‘By its very nature, then, a riddle is unlikely to be satisfactorily solved if the suggested answer is the object most obviously described in the riddle’ (‘Ambiguity and Germanic Imagery’, p. 39).
52 Bruce-Mitford, ‘Sutton Hoo Ship-Burial’, pp. 14 and 17. The resemblance is especially clear according to Tupper’s interpretation of rode tacn: ‘It bears the form of the Cross (in the older broader meaning for which only a vertical pole with a cross-piece is necessary)’ (Riddles of the Exeter Book, p. 189).
53 See the Tiberius Psalter, London, British Library, Cotton Tiberius C. vi, 8v. Heslop describes the Tiberius Psalter as a ‘relentlessly Anglo-Saxon book’ which depicts ‘a banner bearing the device of a cross formy between four pellets. The same form of the cross is repeated at the top of the staff from which the flag flies’. T. A. Heslop, ‘A Dated “Late Anglo-Saxon” Illuminated Psalter’, AntJ 72 (1992), 171–4, at 172. As Heslop further observes, ‘there is little doubt that the Normans fought at Hastings under a banner of this design’ (ibid.). See also Jones, Bloodied Banners, p. 34.
54 Eusebius, Life of Constantine, trans. and ed. A. Cameron and S. G. Hall (Oxford, 1999), book 1, p. 81, lines 29–31. For more on the shape and design of the labarum, see ibid. pp. 207–11; Rostovtzeff, ‘Vexillum and Victory’, esp. pp. 95 and 104; and D. E. Martin-Clarke, ‘Significant Objects at Sutton Hoo’ The Early Cultures of North-West Europe: H. M. Chadwick Memorial Studies, ed. C. Fox and B. Dickins (Cambridge, 1950), pp. 107–19, at 116.
55 Cynewulf, Elene, ASPR, vol. II (1932), lines 85 and 89; golde geglenged, gimmas lixtan (90); see also 107, 128, 165 and 103–4. See also Tupper, Riddles of the Exeter Book, p. 190.
56 See Cynewulf, Elene, trans. C. W. Kennedy (Ontario, 2000), p. 20, lines 1022–7. See also Bitterli, Say What I Am Called, pp. 129 and 166; and Salvador-Bello, Isidorean Perceptions of Order, pp. 369–70.
57 This halige treo (128) is also a þuf (123) – another Old English term for ensign or battle standard, about which see more below, p. 81. For the likely influence of Eusebius’s Vita Constantini on Elene and The Dream of the Rood, especially with regard to the labarum, see Martin-Clarke, ‘Significant Objects’, pp. 115–16.
58 Mitchell, ‘Ambiguity and Germanic Imagery’, p. 39. Taylor calls this digression ‘an elaborate textual diversion’ (‘Mazers, Mead, and the Wolf’s-Head Tree’, p. 500). On ‘a variety of decoy possibilities’ as an inherent aspect of the riddle genre, see J. Wilcox, ‘New Solutions to Old English Riddles: Riddles 17 and 53’, PQ 69 (1990), 393–408, at 403. See also M. Salvador Bello, ‘Direct and Indirect Clues: Exeter Riddle no. 74 Reconsidered’, NM 99 (1998), 17–29, esp. 17; P. Sorrell, ‘Oaks, Ships, Riddles, and the Old English Rune Poem’, ASE 19 (1990), 103–16, esp. 107; and G. K. Jember, ‘Literal and Metaphorical: Clues to Reading the Old English Riddles’, Stud. in Eng. Lit. (Tokyo) 65 (1988), 47–56, esp. 47. As noted above, ‘cross’ is a persistently attractive solution to this riddle. See, for example, E. G. Stanley, ‘Heroic Aspects of the Exeter Book Riddles’, Prosody and Poetics in the Early Middle Ages: Essays in honour of C. B. Hieatt, ed. M. J. Toswell (Toronto, 1995), pp. 197–218, esp. 209–10; and also Baum, who suggests that ‘the solutions hesitate between Scabbard and Cross; probably both are intended’ (Anglo-Saxon Riddles, p. 17).
59 See ‘The Harrowing of Hell,’ in the Tiberius Psalter, London, British Library, Tiberius C. vi, 14r (Winchester, s. xi med.) (Figs. 2 and 3). Gneuss-Lapidge, ASMss 378. As W. H. Hulme observes, ‘Artists … were at a very early date caught by the magnetism of the scene which represents the victorious Christ with the banner of the Cross in one hand treading the shattered gates of hell and Satan underfoot’ (The Middle-English Harrowing of Hell and Gospel of Nicodemus, EETS es 100 (London, 1907), p. lxv). See also Tamburr, K., The Harrowing of Hell in Medieval England (Woodbridge, 2009), p. 11 Google Scholar. For medieval parallels between Christus Victor and Emperor Constantine, including use of the vexillum, see ibid. pp. 30–1, 39 and 132.
60 See, for example, W. A. Chaney, The Cult of Kingship in Anglo-Saxon England (Los Angeles, 1970), pp. 46–8; and C. J. Wolf, ‘Christ as Hero in “The Dream of the Rood”’, NM 72 (1970), 202–10. For this in the Harrowing of Hell, see Tamburr, Harrowing of Hell, pp. 13–14, 28 and 34–7.
61 ‘and bore the spoils of Hell’.
62 Similarly, healle, þær hæleð druncon (1) can also refer to the taking of Communion in other contexts. See, e.g., Pinsker and Zeigler, Die altenglischen Rätsel des Exeterbuchs, p. 276. Deepest thanks to my anonymous reader for pointing out these connections.
63 See Taylor, ‘Mazers, Mead, and the Wolf’s-Head Tree’, pp. 500 and 502.
64 ‘I am readily able to sing before noblemen of that beam’s inherent virtue’.
65 Cf. Niles, who sees this simply as a polite form of address to a generic audience (Old English Enigmatic Poems, p. 65); compare also Doane, ‘Three Old English Riddles’, p. 244.
66 For example, the emphasis on the earls as the text’s ideal audience directs away from the possibility that, as some scholars have suggested, the fourfold list of trees is an allusion to patristic traditions describing the Cross as composed of four types of wood. See n. 19 above; Tupper, Riddles of the Exeter Book, p. 190; and Salvador-Bello, Isidorean Perceptions of Order, p. 369.
67 Equivalent to ME lyn, or OE lind. See the website of the Toronto Dictionary of Old English, s.v. ‘hlin’. Cf. Bosworth-Toller, Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, s.v. ‘hlyn’. For toponymic evidence supporting the likelihood of hlyn as linden, see Hooke, D., Trees in Anglo-Saxon England: Literature, Lore and Landscape (Woodbridge, 2010), pp. 215 and 257.Google Scholar
68 On the Sutton Hoo shield as ‘a lime species’, see M. G. Comey, ‘The Wooden Drinking Vessels in the Sutton Hoo Assemblage: Materials, Morphology, and Usage’, Trees and Timber, ed. Bintley and Shapland, pp. 107–21, esp. 109.
69 For the significance of lime-tree/linden in an Anglo-Saxon context, see Hooke, Trees in Anglo-Saxon England, pp. 214–17. For linde as ‘shield’, see, for example, Beowulf 2365 and 2610; and The Battle of Maldon 96 and 244. See also Bosworth-Toller, Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, s.v. ‘lind’.
70 See, for example, Beowulf: siðþan he under segne sinc ealgode / wælreaf werede (1204–1205a); Þa wæs æht boden / Sweona leodum, segn Higelace[s] (2957b–2958).
71 The artisanal value of maple-wood is offered in support of the solutions ‘mazer’ (see Taylor, ‘Mazers, Mead, and the Wolf’s-Head Tree’, p. 505) and ‘harp’ (see Williamson, Old English Riddles, p. 301).
72 See C. P. Biggam, ‘The True Staff of Life: the Multiple Roles of Plants’, Material Culture of Daily Living, ed. Clegg Hyer and Owen-Crocker, pp. 23–48, esp. 44.
73 Hooke, Trees in Anglo-Saxon England, p. 158; see also pp. 255–8. In performance, hlin – whatever wood the poet intended – was also likely to recall hlyn, ‘sound, noise, clamour, din’, especially with reference to the noise of battle. See Bosworth-Toller, Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, s.v. ‘hlyn’.
74 M. Halsall, The Old English Rune Poem: a Critical Edition, McMaster Old English Stud. and Texts 2 (Toronto, 1981), 93, line 90, and p. 153. For discussion of the oak in early medieval English culture more generally, see Hooke, Trees in Anglo-Saxon England, pp. 193–200.
75 For a discussion of riddilic elements in the Rune Poem, see Sorrell, ‘Oaks, Ships, Riddles’, esp. p. 116, for the treow/treow pun. For oak, as well as lime, in Anglo-Saxon shields, see Bintley and Shapland, introduction to Trees and Timber, p. 5, n. 27, citing Watson, J., ‘Wood Usage in Anglo-Saxon Shields’, ASSAH 7 (1994), 35–48.Google Scholar
76 In Cynewulf’s Elene, beam (91), along with treo(w) (89), is used to designate the vision upon which Constantine models his labarum.
77 Halsall, The Old English Rune Poem, p. 89, lines 35–7, and p. 127. See also Hooke, Trees in Anglo-Saxon England, p. 210; and Pollington, S., The Mead Hall: the Feasting Tradition in Anglo-Saxon England (Hockwold cum Wilton, Norfolk, 2003), p. 79.Google Scholar
78 Biggam, ‘True Staff of Life’, p. 44. Pollington, Mead Hall, p. 131. The staves of the large tub in the Sutton Hoo burial are yew, which ‘seems to have been selected purely for its appearance’ (Comey, ‘Wooden Drinking Vessels’, pp. 115 and 119).
79 Ibid. p. 119.
80 Hooke, Trees in Anglo-Saxon England, p. 207.
81 Halsall, The Old English Rune Poem, p. 89, lines 35–7.
82 Bruce-Mitford, ‘Sutton Hoo Ship-Burial’, p. 18. In Cynewulf’s Elene, Constantine’s labarum is also called þuf (123). Likewise, Bede offers the Latin tufam and Old Engish thuuf as synonyms for King Edwin’s vexillum, the royal banner that accompanied him everywhere (Historia ecclesiastica [hereafter HE] ii. 16, in Bede’s History of the English People, ed. B. Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford, 1969)). See also Bosworth-Toller, Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, s.v. ‘þuf’.
83 See Pollington, Mead Hall, pp. 116–18.
84 Hooke, Trees in Anglo-Saxon England, p. 214. For the combination of oak, lime and holly in prehistoric joinery in Britain, see ibid. p. 157.
85 Oak, holly and yew are all represented as warriors in the early Welsh poem Câd Goddeu, ‘The Battle of the Trees’; the same trio also appear among the seven chieftain trees, sacred, high-status trees in early medieval Irish law. In medieval Ireland, at least, three of the four trees the riddle names are directly associated with war and aristocracy (Hooke, Trees in Anglo-Saxon England, pp. 90 and 45).
86 ‘are advantageous to the lord or master’.
87 For the range of translations, see Bosworth-Toller, Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, s.v. ‘nyt’.
88 See above, n. 17.
89 Maxfield, ‘Military Standards’, p. 4504. See also Jones: ‘The banner then not only served to mark the position of the commander on the field, but also telegraphed his orders and intentions, and served as a rallying-point for his men. Given this role it will be clear that the loss of a commander or of his banner could be catastrophic for an army’ (Bloodied Banners, p. 37, emphasis added).
90 See above, n. 70.
91 See Martin-Clarke, ‘Significant Objects’, p. 115, citing Beowulf 2505 and 1204; see also Hennequin, ‘Anglo-Saxon Banners’, pp. 15–17. Cf. Jones, Bloodied Banners, p. 42.
92 Martin-Clarke, ‘Significant Objects’, p. 116.
93 Wace, Roman de Rou, trans. G. S. Burgess (St Helier, 2002) pp. 284–5, quoted in Jones, Bloodied Banners, p. 42.
94 WM, GR iii. 241 (ed. Mynors et al., p. 454).
95 Similarly, among the Romans standards ‘were the symbolic embodiment of the unit, and their loss constituted a very considerable disgrace. Their retrieval was seen as a symbol of successful retribution and restored prestige’ (Maxfield, ‘Military Standards’, p. 4505). For banners as tokens and spoils of victory in the Middle Ages, see also Jones, Bloodied Banners, p. 43.
96 For the banner as royal regalia, see G. R. Owen-Crocker, ‘“Seldom … does the deadly spear rest for long”: Weapons and Armour’, Material Culture of Daily Living, ed. Clegg Hyer and Owen-Crocker, pp. 201–30, esp. 229. See also Martin-Clarke, ‘Significant Objects’, pp. 114–15; and Chaney, The Cult of Kingship, pp. 128 and 146.
97 Ibid. p. 140; Bede, HE ii. 16 and n. 82 above.
98 For example, Bruce-Mitford identifies the standard as ‘a symbol of royal office peculiar to the Anglo-Saxon background’ (‘Sutton Hoo Ship-Burial’, p. 13).
99 Niles, Old English Enigmatic Poems, p. 65. See also Williamson, Old English Riddles, pp. 303–4; Tupper, Riddles of the Exeter Book, p. 191; and Wyatt, Old English Riddles, p. 106.
100 J. M. Foley, quoted in Salvador-Bello, Isidorean Perceptions of Order, p. 372. For arguments against ‘gallows’ as the actual solution, see Niles, Old English Enigmatic Poems, p. 65.
101 Ibid. p. 65; see also p. 71.
102 See ‘Old English Hexateuch’, London, British Library, Cotton Claudius B. iv, 59r (s. xi/xii), Gneuss-Lapidge, ASMss 315; and ‘Miscellany on the life of St. Edmund’, New York, The Morgan Library, M. 736, 19v (Bury St Edmunds, s. xii1). For archaeological evidence of two-post gallows at Anglo-Saxon sites, see Reynolds, A., Anglo-Saxon Deviant Burial Customs (Oxford, 2009), pp. 158 and 133CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Cavell, Weaving Words, p 41.
103 See above, n. 18. In his solution, Taylor addresses this difficulty with a reconsideration of treow – which he identifies not as ‘tree’, but more metaphorically as ‘source’ – to suggest that the kenning should instead be taken as a ‘metaphor denoting something that perpetuates the creation of outlaws’ (i.e. alcohol) (Taylor, ‘Mazers, Mead, and the Wolf’s-Head Tree’, p. 508).
104 For example, even with traditional interpretation of ‘wolf’s-head’ as ‘outlaw’, I suggest that the kenning ‘tree for a wolf’s-head’ more directly recalls the Old English heafod-stocc than the gallows. As Andrew Reynolds has shown, this ‘stock or post on which the head of a criminal was fixed after beheading’ was a familiar enough part of the Anglo-Saxon world to appear in charter bounds as a landmark. See Bosworth-Toller, Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, s.v. ‘heafod-stocc’. See also Reynolds, Anglo-Saxon Deviant Burial Customs, pp. 31, 119, 169, 223–4, 243 and 273–4. The quasi-legalistic allusion to a head on a stake also has heroic resonances: in Beowulf, Grendel’s heafod is mounted on waelstenge, a spear, or, more literally, a ‘pole or stake of the slain’ (Beowulf 1638–9). See Bosworth-Toller, Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, s.v. ‘wæl-steng’, ‘wæl’ and ‘steng’. This is the same grisly trophy that Beowulf presents before Hrothgar, queen and court, in the evocative verbal echo of Riddle K-D 55’s þær hæleð druncon, on flet beran, noted above.
105 Taylor, ‘Mazers, Mead, and the Wolf’s-Head Tree’, pp. 507–8, citing Williamson.
106 As Salvador Bello explains, even the most difficult and deliberately misleading clues in a riddle can be understood, retroactively, to support the correct solution. (‘Direct and Indirect Clues’, pp. 17 and 20.)
107 Wyatt, D., Slaves and Warriors in Medieval Britain and Ireland, 800–1200 (Leiden, 2009), p. 73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
108 Beowulf 2961–98. See Wyatt, Slaves and Warriors, pp. 101 and 75; cf. Jones, Bloodied Banners, p. 107.
109 Quoted in A. T. Hatto, ‘Snake-swords and Boar-helms in Beowulf’, ES 38 (1957), 145–60, at 159–60.
110 See Magoun, F. P., ‘The Theme of the Beasts of Battle in Anglo-Saxon Poetry’, NM 56 (1955), 81–90 Google Scholar. For discussion of warriors (wælwulfas) as cognate with the wolf as beast of battle in The Battle of Maldon, see P. Cavill, Maxims in Old English Poetry (Cambridge, 1999), p. 122.
111 See ‘the late seventh-century Law of Ine’, King of Wessex, quoted in Wyatt, Slaves and Warriors, p. 104.
112 See above, n. 55 and n. 76; Elene 89 and 128. Lupine zoomorphic symbolism appears on multiple artifacts in the Sutton Hoo burial, with a number of the wolves worked in gold. See Hicks, C., Animals in Early Medieval Art (Edinburgh, 1993), p. 69.Google Scholar
113 Bohn, H. G., The Chronicle of Henry of Huntingdon: Comprising the History of England, from the Invasion of Juluis Cæsar to the Accession of Henry II (London, 1853), pp. 130 and 192.Google Scholar
114 One such raven banner was enshrined by a Christianized follower of Cnut in the Northumbrian Church of St Mary in York. See Chaney, Cult of Kingship, pp. 41 and 132–4. For the Sutton Hoo standard, see Martin-Clarke, ‘Significant Objects’, pp. 112–13. See also R. L. S. Bruce-Mitford, The Sutton Hoo Ship-Burial: a Handbook (London, 1972), p. 21. For this item as ‘honoured object’ and likely royal symbol, see Bruce-Mitford, ‘Sutton Hoo Ship-Burial’, pp. 18–19, 4 and 7; and Chaney, Cult of Kingship, pp. 53 and 142. In an interesting echo of the current discussion, Bruce-Mitford dismisses the possibility, raised by other scholars, that the Sutton Hoo object might have been ‘a portable weapon-rack’ (‘Sutton Hoo Ship-Burial’, p. 12).
115 For Anglo-Saxon modelling after Roman prototypes, especially depictions of standards found on Roman coins circulating in Britain, see Bruce-Mitford, ‘Sutton Hoo Ship-Burial’, pp. 14 and 17–18; and especially Deanesly, ‘Roman Traditionalist Influence’, pp. 129–46. See also Maxfield, ‘Military Standards’, p. 4503; and Rostovtzeff, ‘Vexillum and Victory’, p. 97.
116 Maxfield, ‘Military Standards’, p. 4503, citing Pliny’s Historia naturalis x. 16. Emphasis added. See also Rostovtzeff, ‘Vexillum and Victory’, p. 97. Deanesly notes that these totemic animals were likewise represented on the coins from which the early English likely drew their inspiration (‘Roman Traditionalist Influence’, p. 138).
117 G. Freibergs, ‘Yin and Yang as Insignia of the Armigeri: Chinese Cosmological Symbols on Late Roman Shields’, The Medieval West Meets the Rest of the World, ed. N. van Deusen, Musicological Stud. 62/2 (Ottawa, 1995), 1–35, at 14, and esp. 1–2. For illustrations and contextual commentary on the Notitia, see L. Ueda-Sarson, ‘Late Roman Shield Patterns: Comes Britanniae’, http://lukeuedasarson.com/ComesBritanniarum.html.
118 See Coulston, ‘The Draco Standard’, pp. 101 and 105.
119 Ibid. p. 102, for Roman examples, including at least twenty depicted on Trajan’s Column alone. Historical records also attest to lavishly decorated dragon banners, which fit even more closely with the description of the riddle-object’s sinc searobunden. As Coulston describes, ‘The entry of Constantius II into Rome saw the emperor surrounded by purple-embroidered dracones attached to gilded and gem-studded staffs’ (ibid. p. 101). Deanesly, ‘Roman Traditionalist Influence’, p. 138, similarly notes the ‘silver-bound jaws’ of other examples. For the simplistic T-shape cross, see Tupper, Riddles of the Exeter Book, p. 189.
120 See Freibergs, ‘Yin and Yang’, pp. 15–16; and Coulston, ‘The Draco Standard’, p. 102.
121 Deanesly, ‘Roman Traditionalist Influence’, p. 136.
122 Ibid. p. 138.
123 Coulston, ‘The Draco Standard’, p. 112, n. 47, emphasis added.
124 Mackie, W. S., ‘Notes upon the Text and the Interpretation of “Beowulf”’, MLR 34 (1939), 515–24, at 524.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
125 Chaney, Cult of Kingship, pp. 123–4, 126 and 143. See also Martin-Clarke, ‘Significant Objects’, p. 115; and Cramp, R. J., ‘ Beowulf and Archaeology’, MA 1 (1957), 57–77 Google Scholar, esp. 60, n. 13.
126 As Tigges has suggested of the Exeter Book Riddles, ‘The difference between nonsense anomalies and those featuring in riddles is that in the latter the anomalies ideally stop being so as soon as we realize what the answer is supposed to be’ (‘Signs and Solutions’, p. 68).
127 See Bosworth-Toller, Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, s.v. ‘abiddan’ and ‘abædeþ’. See also n. 17 above; and ASPR III, 350. For the additional possibility ‘to offer’, see Niles, Old English Enigmatic Poems, p. 66–7; for ‘to receive’, see Williamson, Old English Riddles, p. 304. For an overview of the controversy, see Muir, Exeter Anthology II, 651–2.
128 See Tupper, Riddles of the Exeter Book, p. 189; Williamson, Old English Riddles, p. 303; and Salvador-Bello, Isidorean Perceptions of Order, p. 371.
129 Compare Stanley, ‘Heroic Aspects’, p. 210.
130 See Baum, Anglo-Saxon Riddles, p. 17; Murphy, Unriddling, p. 62; and Niles, Old English Enigmatic Poems, p. 67, n. 24.
131 See Tupper, Riddles of the Exeter Book, p. 189; Niles, Old English Enigmatic Poems, pp. 61–2 and 69. Also uncertain is the relationship between these solutions and rode tacn (and/or wulfheafedtreo as ‘gallows’); as Williamson notes: ‘somehow (either by an unknown wordplay or because of some unknown similarity of function or design) the box is being compared to a gallows or rood in the riddle’ (Old English Riddles, p. 303).
132 Compare Cavell’s reading of Elene, in which Constantine’s ‘battle-success is also linked to the use of God’s symbol on his standard. Thus, the victory-standard here acts as a metonymy for victory’, a ‘visual representation of the outcome of conflict’ (Weaving Words, p. 27).
133 See, for example, H. E. Davidson, The Sword in Anglo-Saxon England: its Archaeology and Literature (1962; Woodbridge, 1998), pp. 75–6 and 212–13; and Portnoy, ‘Laf-Craft’, p. 559.
134 As noted above, segn is used in Beowulf to refer to the warriors under the banner-lord’s command (1204–1205a and 2959b–2960).
135 Nelson, M., ‘The Rhetoric of the Exeter Book Riddles’, Speculum 49 (1974), 421–40, at 424.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
136 The author wishes to thank Dr Puck Fletcher for their editorial expertise in preparing this article for publication, as well as Professor Stephanie Jamison, Professor Roberta Frank and the anonymous readers at ASE for their valuable feedback.
