A Crossing of Old and New: Riddle 55 of the Exeter Book
I saw in the hall, where heroes drank,
carried onto the floor a wondrous woodtree
of four kinds and wound gold,
cunningly fastened treasure, and part of silver
5 and the sign of the cross, which He raised the ladder
for us to heaven before He stormed
the city of the inhabitants of hell. I can easily tell
before noblemen the origin of this tree:
there was maple and oak and the hard yew
10 and the dark holly: All together [they] were useful
to the L(l)ord; All have one name,
gallows; that often warded off (received)
a weapon for its liege lord, a treasure in the hall,
a gold-hilted sword. Now show me the answer
15 of this song, he who presumes
to say in words how the wood is called.
Most of the riddles contained in the Exeter Book have been answered to the satisfaction of the majority Anglo-Saxon scholars. One that continues to elude a definitive answer, however, is Riddle 55. Several solutions have been suggested, but only three have received critical consideration. Dietrich first offered the solution as scabbard, explaining, "The scabbard is richly decorated and divided into quarters by a cross, probably each quarter was made of a different wood" (qtd. in Taylor 497). Craig Williamson refutes this answer by pointing out that Anglo-Saxon shields were lined with leather or fleece and sometimes covered with cloth. In addition, "the structural weakness of such a hybrid should be obvious" (Williamson 307). Another solution, suggested by Leibermann, is sword rack, to which Williamson remarks, "there is no evidence in Old English or in Anglo-Saxon archaeology for the existence of an early English sword rack. There i...
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...old as Christ’s deputy to their thanes. In any case, Riddle 55 deserves all the attention it has received from scholars.
Works Cited
Chaney, William A. The Cult of Kingship in Anglo-Saxon England: The Transition
from Paganism to Christianity. Berkeley; U of California P, 1970.
Chickering, Howell D., Jr., ed., trans. Beowulf. New York: Anchor Books, 1977.
Crossley-Holland, Kevin, ed., trans. The Anglo-Saxon World: An Anthology.
Oxford: Oxford UP, 1982.
Mitchell, Bruce, and Fred C Bruce, eds. A Guide to Old English. 5th ed. Oxford:
Blackwell, 1992.
Taylor, Keith P. "Mazers, Mead, and the Wolf’s-head tree: A Reconsideration of
Old English Riddle 55." Journal of English and Germanic Philology 94.4 (1995): 497-512.
Williamson, Craig, ed. The Old English Riddles of the Exeter Book. Chapel Hill:
U of North Carolina P, 1977.
Raffel, Burton. and Alexandra H. Olsen Poems and Prose from the Old English, (Yale University Press)Robert Bjork and John Niles,
The Canterbury Tales, written by Geoffrey Chaucer, has gone through many adaptations. Some authors decided to translate the story into verse, while others chose to write the as a narrative in prose. Although all adaptations are based off the same story, they are vastly different and can be the result of opposing interpretations of the original work. After reading a text translated by Nevill Coghill (referred to as Version I) and a text translated into a narrative by a different author (referred to as Version II), it is obvious that for each similarity they share, there are many more differences in language, syntax, and imagery as well.
Those who choose social work as their profession do so for a variety of reasons. In general, they appear to be motivated by a combination of humanitarian and egalitarian values, and by a desire to understand how society works and how to make it better for everyone. Frequently, a person is motivated to become a social worker following exposure to injustice and oppression.(p.16.)
Goldstein,Gary. "The Life of Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford (1550-1604)" Luminarium: Anthology of English Literature. Anniina Jokinen, 3rd of June 1999. Web. 25th of April 2014.
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