Abstract
In this article, I argue that the alliterative poem, St. Erkenwald, is a Middle English innovation on Old English and Anglo-Latin parchment riddles. By examining St. Erkenwald in light of the parchment riddles by Anglo-Latin riddlers Tatwine and Eusebius, and riddles contained in The Exeter Book, as well as the description of an ancient book in Matthew Paris’ Gesta abbatum monasterii Sancti Albani, I show that the Erkenwald-poet reimagined the motif of the talking piece of parchment as an ancient pagan judge. The Erkenwald-poet’s reimagining of the parchment riddle as an allegory of reading has perhaps been obscured by what I argue is an unnecessary emendation to the text.
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Notes
Murphy (2011: 3–5) briefly sketches out the tradition of a set of one hundred riddles that began with Symphosious ca. fifth century. As Murphy points out, not only were sets of one hundred riddles particularly popular in Anglo-Saxon England, the Exeter Book riddles are unique in that they are the only vernacular riddle collection of the Early Middle Ages. See also, Lapidge (2006).
St Erkenwald is quoted from Burrow and Turville-Petre (2004). Translations throughout are my own unless otherwise noted.
The Anglo-Latin riddles of Eusebius and Tatwine are quoted from Tatvini Opera Omnia (1968).
Bowers (2012: 96) reads the body as the antecedent of the pronoun his in line 178, Lyftand up his egh-lyddes, introducing touch into the sensory experience by suggesting that Erkenwald physically manipulates the corpse. Bowers then claims that “[t]his creepy public gesture,” had an analogue in Richard II’s disinterment of bodies from their tombs.
For comparison, lien (v.1), ‘to adopt a recumbent position,’ has the second person singular indicative form list and the third person singular indicative form lith.
The singular imperative of Middle English verbs should be the bare, uninflected form—in both cases lien—with variants that may have been spelled layne.
Cf. Early English Alliterative Poems in the West-Midland Dialect of the Fourteenth Century (1869: xxiii). To briefly summarize Morris’ discussion, in the West-Midlands dialect of the Pearl-poet, the second and third person singular indicative share the same ending, i.e. -es, rather than the Southern forms of -est, and -eth. While the West-midlands dialectical features of St. Erkenwald have been used to argue for the authorship of St. Erkenwald by the Pearl-poet, that critical debate is beyond the scope of this article. Interested readers are directed to Benson (1965), Nolan and Hills (1971), Peterson (1974), Cooper and Pearsall (1988), Andrew (1997), and Bowers (2012).
Cf. ll. 221–224 below for a series of second person singular indicative verbs addressed to the body.
The Exeter Book (1936: 335) editors write that direct influence from the Anglo-Latin riddles has not been convincingly demonstrated in Riddle K-D 26. Bosworth–Toller (Toller (1921)) suggests that line 17b, nales dol wite (no pain for the wound), seems to be based on the Latin from Tatwine’s parchment riddle: sanis victum et praestabo medelam (a healthy diet and a treatment that will heal); see entry for dol-sceaþa. Recent scholars are more willing to accept at least the use of a common set of imagery, if not direct influence itself. See Bitterli (2009).
Afros (2004) argues that sindrum begrunden in line 6b is problematic because the use of the dative in this context could mean that either the knife or the skin could be the referent. Afros claims that reading the line against Anglo-Saxon material culture and the process of manuscript production suggests that the skin is the likelier referent, as a reference to the knife would take the focus away from the production of parchment in addition to glossing over a vital step in the parchment making process.
Burrow and Turville-Petre (2004: 233nl.304) suggest an allusion to Matthew 5.6: ‘Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after justice; for they shall have their fill’.
My thanks to Stephen M. Kershner for his helpful advice on translating Gesta abbatum.
This reading is unsupported by the MED.
I have taken hyþe beþenede as a feminine accusative singular in apposition with mec, rather than the more common reading of the dative singular: ‘with stretched skin’.
Riddle K-D 26 concludes by stating that those willing to use the biblical text will be ‘healthier and surer of victory, bolder in their hearts and blither of mine and wiser in spirit’.
Unlike the mythic creation of writing in Plato’s Phaedrus, text is not being imagined as something that can be continually questioned—even if for Plato it is only capable of replying with the same answer repeatedly. In both Gesta abbatum and St. Erkenwald the textual body mirrors speech; it can signify once before being irrecoverably lost.
The seeming inescapability of past, however, is a product of the failure to completely erase it, a point well made in Flower (2006).
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Cook, B. Reading the Allegory of St. Erkenwald . Neophilologus 101, 455–468 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11061-017-9525-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11061-017-9525-9