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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
The poem 57 is one of the simplest and shortest of the whole collection of Old English Riddles, a gem of a riddle, if correctly understood. In my opinion the last line should be interpreted as ending with the statement that the little creatures “name themselves.” As yet no satisfactory solution has been found.
1 The text of the riddle as given here follows the edition by G. Ph. Krapp and E. Van Kirk Dobbie, The Exeter Book. The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records, iii (New York, 1936), 209; additional punctuation marks have been added by the present writer.
2 S. v. roopnis, L, 244. The Corpus Glossary ed. W. M. Lindsay (Cambridge, 1921); cf. also Bosworth-Teller, Anglo-Saxon Dictionary (Oxford, 1882-98), s.v. rōp.
3 The Exter Book, Part ii, ed. W. S. Mackie, EEIS, 194 (London, 1934), p. 149.
4 See, for instance, one of the latest anthologies of English Literature, College Survey of English Literature, ed. B. J. Whiting, etc. (New York, 1942), i, 54.
5 As another possible solution he suggests “gnats.”
6 More recently C. Brett, who proposes ceo, “Notes on Old and Middle English,” MLR, xxii, 257 sq.; and F. Holthausen, who would solve crāwe, “Ein altenglisches Rätsel,” GRM, xv, 453 sq.
7 Op. cit. p. 351.
8 The study of etymology was a craze in antiquity as well as in the Middle Ages, with Isidore of Seville's Etymologiae sive Origines representing the famous medieval textbook. Great importance was attached to the meanings of personal names.
9 Much of the ancient vogue for puns can be accounted for by the fact that people were such acute listeners.
10 Cf. Max Manitius, Geschichte der Lateinischen Literatur des Mittelalters (München, 1911), i, 137 and 422, and the poems De voce hominis absona, and De cantibus avium, and De filomela F. Buecheler-A. Riese, Anthologia Latina, i, 2, No. 730, 733 and 762.
11 To mention only a few popular names which are imitative in origin: bittern, chiff-chaff, cock, crake, crow, curlew, grackle, gull, hoopoe, kittiwake, mew, owl, pipit, rail, shrike, skua, turtle, whimbrel; or the American birds: bobolink, bobwhite, chickadee, killdeer, pewie, or phoebe, veery, whip-por-will. See also Isidore, Etymologiae, ed. W. M. Lindsay, (Oxford, 1911), xii, 7. In this chapter on birds Isidore shows himself fully aware of the onomatopoeic quality of bird-names.
12 Printed in R. Th. Ohl, The Enigmas of Symphosius (Philadelphia, 1928), p. 134.
13 Aldhelmi Opera ed. R. Ehwald, Mon. Germ. Hist. AA xv (Berlin, 1919), p. 180, 3-4.
14 Ibid., No. xxxv, p. 112.
15 How divergent in meaning ancient color-words are, could best be shown by following up their distribution throughout various groups of languages, but a few examples of terms for colors drawn from Old English and Old Norse will be sufficient here to show that it is often impossible to determine the exact shade of a color conveyed by the name, and that ancient color terms do not embrace the same gradations of shades as their modern equivalents: OE 
stands for blue, purple, grey or green, cf. F. Holthausen, Altenglisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, Heidelberg, 1934, s.v. 
(n); ON eggja-rauÐa designates the yolk of an egg, but actually reads the “red” of an egg; brūn in OE may stand for “black,” in ON brún clœÐi is the “black” dress of a divine, and Brúnn is the appellation for a “black” horse, a black horse is never called svartr but brúnn, cf. Cleasby-Vigfusson, Icelandic-English Dictionary s.vv., (Oxford, 1874), Bede, following Aristotle, recognizes four colors in the rainbow, while the Rimbegla knows only three, cf. Cleasby-Vigfusson s.v. litr.
16 Enigma No. xcviii, op. cit., p. 144, 1-3.
17 Riddle 51, 2-3.
18 Riddle 48, 4-5.
19 Enigma, lxxix, op. cit., p. 133, 10-11.
20 F. Holthausen, “Ein altenglisches Rätsel,” GRM., op. cit.
21 See especially Handbook of British Birds (London, 1938), i.
22 See for the name of the jackdaw the discussion by J. Hoops, Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde, s.v. Dohle.
23 Cf. Hoops op. cit. s.v. Dohle and O. Ritter, Vermischte Beiträge zur englischen Sprachgeschichte (Halle, 1922), pp. 5-6.
24 Kemble, Codex Diplomaticus Aevi Saxonici, iii, 48, 26.
25 Cf. Hoops, op. cit., s.v. Dohle: F. Kluge-A. Götze, Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache (Berlin, Leipzig, 1930), s.v.; E. Lidén, “Zur vergleichenden Wortgeschichte,” Z. f. Sprachforschung, 56 (1929), 211; E. Hellquist, Svensk Etymologisk Ordbok, ii (Lund, 1939). s.v. kaja.
26 Cf. Hoops, loc. cit.
27 E. Ekwall, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Placenames (Oxford, 1936), s.vv.
28 Ch. Swainson, The Folklore and Provincial Names of British Birds (London, 1886), s.v. Jackdaw, and Joseph Wright, The English Dialect Dictionary (Oxford, 1896-1905), s.v. caddow.