Did just a few more Riddles tonight — #60-65. #60 (“Reed Pen”) is interesting because it sits in a group of just riddles (following a slightly different version of #30 (“Wood”), not translated here), but also because it is considered by some to be categorizable with the so-called “Elegies.” Following Kathleen Davis’s chapter in the Cambridge Companion to Early English Literature, I find the category of the elegy to be highly suspect, but also I see only a vague affinity of Riddle #60 to The Wanderer, for instance. But, given the riddling nature of both Wulf and Eadwacer and The Husband’s Message, there might be some intriguing overlap in the problem of first-person narrators in Old English lyric poetry.

The other one I wanted to talk about is the heavily damaged but doubtlessly pornographic Riddle #65 (“Mead-Cup”?). Muir has several more partial lines reconstructed than in the ASPR text, but these are bracketed readings for the most part. I went ahead and used them, not going so far as Trautmann in his older edition, but giving just a bit more credence to the titillating nature of the poem.

I still think the Poker riddle and the Shirt riddle are some of my best translations.