Torture and Metamorphosis in Exeter Book Riddle 26¹

Abstract

The Exeter Book Riddles provide insight into how early English medieval people felt about their place in the non-human world by giving voice to many non-human creatures. Riddle 26 depicts the creation of a manuscript from the perspective of a sheep becoming a page. A close reading of the riddle reveals that the poem is divided into two nearly identical sections, which are built around the contrast between the fundamental and material elements of book-making and the cultural and religious utility of a manuscript.

The riddle begins with the killing of the animal at the hands of an unknown foe and then follows the speaking subject through its forced metamorphosis. The employment of a first-person narrator establishes an empathetic bond between the animal speaking voice and the human audience. However, near the middle of the poem, the tone changes dramatically as the emphasis turns from animal materialism to human spirituality. The closing lines insist on the beauty of the craft, the cultural significance of the book and the spiritual advantages derived from it. As a result, the interaction between the two sections appears to call into question humanity’s position in the book-making process, while simultaneously highlighting the paradoxes in book creation and manuscript culture.

A riddle is a form of wordplay that thrives in blurring the lines between conventional categories, as it aims to discover hidden analogies between the things of this world. In giving voice to many non-human subjects, the Exeter Book Riddles offer us an insight into the way the early medieval English people felt about their position in relation to the non-human world. Furthermore, because the collection is vast and diverse, it is possible to find in it a number of poems which, while describing the riddle subject, investigate its origin and evolution – usually forced by human hands.¹ Placed in a narrative space and in a specific period of time, the riddle subject is faced with the possibility of an effective identity mutation: undergoing a form of metamorphosis. Riddle 26 is fascinating on this basis because it depicts the production of a codex from the perspective of a sheep becoming a page, highlighting the paradoxes in book production and manuscript culture.

Notwithstanding the general consensus on the solution, Riddle 26 has long piqued the interest of many scholars. Both Marsden (1998) and Bitterli (2009) see in the struggle undergone by the subject an allegory for the journey of a Christian martyr. More recently, the poem has been discussed for its numerous ecocritical implications. Holsinger (2009) notes how the theme of the poem necessarily draws our attention to the paradoxical nature of the manuscript, as both “a book produced by and for human” and “a stack of dead animal parts” (Holsinger, 2009, p. 619). In a similar fashion, Dale (2017) sees Riddle 26 as an inversion of the colophon tradition. She examines how such a human-centric concept – the production of a book – was transformed into something focused on the animal and the material side of things. Similarly, Estes (2017), drawing on Kay’s studies (2011) on texts dealing with parchment, explores how the interactions between subject and object in the poem challenge the expectations about human dominance over animals.

Relying on all of these readings and on the dichotomic structure of the riddle, I propose that while the first section in Riddle 26 recognizes the animal’s role in the book-making process, the final section could be read as an attempt to justify the original act of violence: as if there was a need to re-frame the animal sacrifice in a Christian and anthropocentric perspective.

Metamorphosis, as a rhetorical strategy, depicts the fluidity and the disorder characterizing the universe, because it represents the situation in which any entity – with their own precise identity – becomes something different (Bynum, 2001, pp. 28–33). For instance, in Riddle 73,² the speaking subject, recognizable as a bow (OE boga), describes its own experience as a tree residing peacefully in the woods, before falling into the grasp of humans. Similarly, Riddle 93 portrays the emotionally charged transformation of antlers into an inkwell (OE blæc-horn). Moreover, indeterminacy of solutions is a characteristic of every metamorphic riddle: in Riddle 27, the subject, mead (OE medu), outlines its early life as honeydew (OE mele-deāw); in Riddle 35, the ore (OE ōra), found in the depths of the earth, becomes a mail coat (OE byrne); similarly, Riddle 83 depicts the whole lifecycle of a particular kind of ore, which ends up producing objects and money (probably gold, OE gold). This structure depicting a journey from early stages of life to a forced transformation can be considered paradigmatic, and this kind of ‘metamorphic’ riddle is an ideal tool to investigate how the relationship between humanity and animality is explored in the collection.

Telling a narrative through the viewpoint of the animal becoming parchment, Riddle 26 makes the human beings involved act both as villains and heroes.

Mec feonda sum feore besnyþede,

woruld-strenga binom, wætte siþþan,

dyfde on wætre, dyde eft þonan,

sette on sunnan, þær ic swiþe beleas.

5 herum þam þe ic hæfde. Heard mec siþþan.

snað seaxses ecg, sindrum begrunden;

fingras feoldan, ond mec fugles wyn.

geondsprengde sped-dropum spyrede geneahhe,

ofer brunne brerd, beam-telge swealg,

10 streames dæle, stop eft on mec,

siþade sweart-last. Mec siþþan wrah

hæleð hleo-bordum, hyde beþenede,

mec mid golde; forþon me glisedon,

wrætlic weorc smiþa, wire bifongen.

15 Nu þa gereno ond se reada telg

ond þa wuldor-gesteald wide mære

dryht-folca helm (nales dol wite).

Gif min bearn wera brucan willað,

hy beoð þy gesundran ond þy sige-fæstran,

20 heortum þy hwætran ond þy hyge-bliþran,

ferþe þy frodran; habbaþ freonda þy ma,

swæsra ond gesibbra, soþra ond godra,

tilra ond getreowra, þa hyra tyr ond ead

estum ycað, ond hy ar-stafum,

25 lissum bilecgað, ond hi lufan fæþmum.

fæste clyppað. Frige hwæt ic hatte,

niþum to nytte; nama min is mære,

hæleþum gifre ond halig sylf. (ll. 1–28)

[A certain foe snatched away my life,

deprived me of earthly powers, then soaked me,

dipped me in water, drew me out again,

set me in sunlight, where I soon lost

5 those hairs I had. Then a hard knife’s edge,

its roughness rubbed off, cut me up;

fingers folded me, and a bird’s delight

spread on me serviceable drops, often made tracks,

across a brown rim, swallowed wood dye,

10 in some solution, stepped back upon me,

and travelled, leaving a dark track. Then a man

wrapped me with protective boards, bound me with hide,

adorned me with gold; and so there glistens upon me,

surrounded with wire, the wondrous work of smiths.

15 Now those decorations, and that red dye,

and that fine fortune, spread wide the fame

of the protector of noble nations (let no fool find fault).

If the children of men are willing to benefit from me,

they shall be the more sound and the more sure of victory,

20 the brisker in heart, the happier in mind,

the wiser in spirit; they will have the more friends,

more loved ones and kinsmen more loyal and close,

constant and true, who will gladly increase

their prosperity and honor, envelop them

25 with benefits and kindnesses, and enfold them

in love’s firm embrace. Find out what I am called,

of service to men; my name is well known,

effective for folk, and holy itself.] ³

The solution of Riddle 26 is generally understood to be a book (OE bōc), or, more precisely, a Gospel book (OE godspell-bōc).⁴ The explicit references to the “dryhtfolca helm” ‘protector of noble nations’ (l. 17a), and the self-definition as being holy “halig sylf” (l. 28b) make clear the religious context of the codex described.

The riddler chose to explore a known subject. Throughout the closely related Anglo-Latin riddle tradition, there are several poems portraying objects belonging to the scriptorium,⁵ notably the primary source for Riddle 26 that has been identified is Tatwine’s enigmatic poem De Membrano (Enigma V):

Efferus exuviis populator me spoliavit,

vitalis pariter flatus spiramina dempsit;

in planum me iterum campum sed verterat auctor.

Frugiferos cultor sulcos mox irrigat undis;

5 omnigenam nardi messem mea prata rependunt,

qua sanis victum et lesis praestabo medelam. (ll.1–6)

[A fierce ravager has robbed me of what I once wore,

and also taken away the spirit of the breath of life;

but an artisan made me a level plain in turn.

Soon a cultivator irrigates fruitful furrows with what flows;

5 my meadows yield a varied crop of balsam,

through which I shall offer nourishment for the healthy and a cure for the injured.]⁶

The opening of Riddle 26 clearly evokes the first two Tatwinian lines. The reference to the deprivation of the vital breath is manifest both in “Efferus exuuiis populator me spoliauit / uitalis pariter flatus spiramina dempsit” and in “Mec feonda sum feore besnyþede, / woruld-strenga binom”. In the Old English poem, the subject that Tatwine previously called a “populator”, a robber or ravager, is transformed into “sum feonda”, a certain foe. Both riddles describe first the abattoir, a place dedicated to the slaughter of animals, and only afterwards the scriptorium, a place where the dead animal regains life as an object of worship and value (Bitterli, 2009, pp. 173–174). The final verse of the Latin text, “sanis victum et lesis praestabo medelam”, is expanded in Riddle 26 through the copious comparatives that between lines 18–25 point towards the benefits intended for those who will use the sacred book.

The Old English text, however, is much more focused on the book making process. Tatwine develops a series of metaphors related to agriculture, describing the parchment pages as fields, while the production of the book is briefly referred only on the third line. In Riddle 26, instead, the interchange between metaphorical and literal references is notable, as is the attempt to offer recognition both to the work of the smiths and, simultaneously, to the animal that must be skinned in order for the codex to exist.

The Exeter Book riddle is built upon an opposition: on the one hand, the text develops the animal and material aspect of the production, while, on the other, it highlights the human, cultural and spiritual side of the result. The poem could be read as composed of two almost equivalent sections, elaborated on the contrast between the fundamental elements in the production of a manuscript and the cultural and religious utility of its final role.

The first part of the poem follows the making of a manuscript chronologically: killing the animal (ll. 1-2a), tanning the skin (ll. 2a-5a), folding the individual sheets, filing the parchment (ll. 5b-6b). However, significantly more space is given to the actions of writing (ll. 7b-11a), while finally the binding process is depicted between lines 11b and 13a. The initial experience of the protagonist therefore emphasizes the corporeal and material elements. The riddle does not dwell on the form and function of the object to be guessed; instead, it explores the path that has led a living being to become an object manufactured for human consumption.

Nonetheless, unlike other first-person riddles in the Exeter Book, which often begin with the proclamation of an active and clear identity for the speaking subject,⁷ the first word of Riddle 26 is the accusative “mec”: the speaking subject is the object of actions performed by others. The long narrative focused on the treatment of the skin, entrusted to this objectified voice, suggests an unusual interest in the gorier aspects of the process.

The cleaning and drying of the animal skin should have been routine for those involved in the making of parchment.⁸ Nevertheless, these same acts, related through the alienating point of view of the creature undergoing it, give the impression that this concerns a form of torture. The riddle starts introducing a nameless enemy as the only active character; their first significant action is to deprive the narrator of their life – “feore”, associated through alliteration with “feonda” – while the following line reaffirms the loss: “woruld-strenga binom” ‘deprived me of my earthly powers’. Therefore, the first two lines establish the tone for the entire text, based on a relationship of conflict between animal and human.

Furthermore, the lexical choices of lines 1–6 seem to reiterate a sense of passivity in the speaking subject, who is forced into a series of privations. The four subsequent verbs, in fact, are united by the prefix be-, which makes transitive an intransitive verb, and, in some cases, adds a sense of deprivation (Dietz, 2004, pp. 582–583; OED, s.v., be-). According to the DOE, besnyþþan means ‘to deprive, to rob (someone of life)’. The verb is attested only two further times, in Beowulf and in Andreas,⁹ and in both cases the verb is followed by an indirect object indicating vital breath, life (feorh or ealdor). It therefore designates an unnatural death. The following beniman (l. 2a), ‘to take away, deprive’, and beleosan (l. 4a), ‘to lose, be deprived of (someone or something)’, have a similar connotation, as does begrindan (l. 6b), which can indicate both ‘to grind, scrape (something) free of’, as well as ‘to deprive, strip (oneself) of (something)’ (DOE, s.v. besnyþþan, beniman, beleosan, begrindan).¹⁰

The violence in the man’s deeds is, furthermore, highlighted by the images used: a blade cuts harshly on a defenseless body (ll. 5b-6a); their hair is forced to fall (ll. 4b-5a), while unknown fingers shape the subject’s body without them being able to react (“fingras feolda”, l. 7a). Scholars, such as Marsden (1998, pp. 169–176) and Bitterli (2009, pp. 171–178), have seen here the rhetoric of sacrifice. This is a definite possibility, given that sacrifice and mortification of the body are major themes in the religious practice of medieval Christianity. For instance, it does not seem accidental that in The Dream of the Rood, the men who uproot the tree from which the cross will be formed are similarly described:

Þæt wæs geara iu, (ic þæt gyta geman),

þæt ic wæs aheawen holtes on ende,

30 astyred of stefne minum. Genaman me ðær strange feondas,

geworhton him þær to wæfersyne, heton me heora wergas hebban.

Bæron me ðær beornas on eaxlum, oððæt hie me on beorg asetton,

gefæstnodon me þær feondas genoge. (ll. 28–33)¹¹

[Years ago it was – I still recall it – that I was cut down at the forest edge, removed

from my root. Strong enemies seized me there, fashioned me as a spectacle for

themselves and required me to hoist up their felons. There men carried me upon their

shoulders until they set me up on a hill.]¹²

The speaking subject, the tree, just as the animals’ skin in Riddle 26, remembers its own experience: cut on the edge of the forest (l. 29), uprooted (l. 30a), it is then transformed into an unworthy spectacle by the actions of cruel and powerful men (ll. 30b-31a). The tree becomes cross and then turns into a companion for Christ, whose sufferings are reflected on the wounds inflicted to the wood itself. Men are here characterized as enemies, because they build the torture device which ends up to kill Christ. As noted by Swanton (1987, pp. 66–74), the poem seems to suggest that the blame for this atrocious act does not fall exclusively on the soldiers, nor on the Roman officials, nor on the Jewish people; all of humanity is at fault here. Therefore, all of humanity is feōnd.

The strategies of personification adopted in The Dream of the Rood transfer the agony suffered by Christ (ll.46–51, 62) to the Cross itself. The poem ultimately presents the figure of Christ in terms reminiscent of a warrior who voluntarily strips down and ascends the Cross (ll. 37–39), whereas the personified Cross appears as a member of the Lord’s comitatus, sharing its Lord’s sufferings and decisions (ll. 46–51, 62). Likewise, as argued by Marsden (1998, p. 146), the speaking subject of Riddle 26 could refer symbolically either to a Christian martyr – or even to Christ himself – who silently endures the humiliation of death and bodily torture before the triumph of resurrection.¹³ The descriptions of the immersion in water and the removing of impurities could be both allusions to the baptism ceremony. According to this interpretation, therefore, even the mortification of the body would constitute part of the path to reach a celestial reward: as the Christian martyr is gratified for his torments with eternal life in the sight of God, so too the sacrificed animal would resurrect in the form of a splendid decorated codex.

As a matter of fact, in the poem, the sufferings of the speaking subject give way, gradually, to a description of the admirable work of the smiths (l. 14). When describing the act of writing, two new elements are introduced into the narrative. Two kennings highlight the natural origin of the final product: “fugles wyn” (l. 7b), ‘a bird’s delight’, is the feather, and “beamtelge” (l. 9b), ‘wood dye’ is clearly the ink. The gush of ink, which springs from the movement of the pen, wets the pages, creating a sort of symbiosis between the constituent parts of the manuscript: the quill consumed (“swealg”, l. 9b) the ink, which in turn will soak the parchment ‘leaving a dark track’ (“siþade sweart-last”, l. 11a). This dark track as a metaphor links the act of writing with the trail produced by the footprints left when walking on an unpaved path. It is an analogy already present in a riddle by Aldhelm, Penna,¹⁴ and also appears again in the Exeter Book collection.¹⁵ It implies an important aspect of the reading process: the understanding. Footprints on the ground have no meaning for those who do not know how to recognize in them the passage of a bear, a deer or any other animal; the reader must be able to observe carefully and interpret the signs they encounter, so that they can pursue their path of knowledge.

In Riddle 26, the choice to juxtapose this writing analogy with the verb swelgan appears to be deliberate, as it is clearly not dictated by alliterative constraints. Moreover, swelgan is attested several times in the context of riddles dedicated to the scriptorium. Riddle 93, already mentioned, depicts the antlers-turned-into-inkwell as forced to swallow black wood and water (“Nu ic blace swelge woda ond wætre”, ll. 24b-25a). In Riddle 49, the speaking subject explains that they usually swallow helpful gifts (“se oft dæges swilgeð þurh gopes hond gifrum lacum”, ll. 2b-3) and other precious things costlier than gold (“golde dyrran”, l. 6b): this description could allude to fine manuscripts, assuming ‘book cabinet’ or ‘bookcase’ as the solution. If, however, the riddle describes ‘pen and inkwell’, the poem might suggest a reflection on the priceless value of the written word (Shook, 1974, pp. 224–225). Otherwise, particularly significant is the use of swelgan in Riddle 47:

Moððe word fræt. Me þæt þuhte

wrætlicu wyrd, þa ic þæt wundor gefrægn,

þæt se wyrm forswealg wera gied sumes,

þeof in þystro, þrym-fæstne cwide,

5 ond þæs strangan staþol. Stæl-giest ne wæs

wihte þy gleawra, þe he þam wordum swealg. (ll. 1–6)

[A moth devoured words. That seemed to me

a marvelous turn of events, when I heard about that wonder,

that that worm, a thief in the dark,

should swallow some man’s song, his securely set speech,

5 and its strong foundation. The stealing guest was not

a whit the wiser, though he swallowed those words.]¹⁶

This famous riddle focuses on the paradox of the book-moth which, although it does nothing but swallow words, does not derive any knowledge out of it. Both forswelgan and swelgan here are used to mark the paradoxical actions of the moth, especially considering the figurative extension of their meaning.¹⁷ Indeed, swelgan describes the act of ingesting food ‘to swallow; to take in, drink, absorb’, but, in a figurative sense, it could also assume the meaning of ‘to take in to the mind’ (BT, s.v. swelgan). Just as the bookworm cannot understand what it consumes, so too is it unable to acquire the wisdom that men’s words can offer. The bookworm of Riddle 47 is one of those errantes excluded from understanding the dark trails left on the pages. Conversely, in our Riddle 26, the message swallowed by the quill is absorbed and preserved by the parchment page for the benefit of the children of men who want to use it (l. 18): the pages, in this case, are preserved and thus can make those who read them wiser (“ferþe þy frodran”, l. 21a).

At the end of the riddle, the negative perspective of the preceding lines has been reversed. In fact, the human being, introduced as a “feond” in the first line, becomes a hero in line 12, a man worthy of esteem (“hæleð”). At this point, the torture is over; the mortification of the body has reached the moment of its sublimation, because material needs are supplanted by spiritual benefits. The parchment is no longer just skin, but an artifact worthy of admiration, because it leads to Christian salvation. Now the protagonist can take possession of their own voice: they have absorbed – taken into their own mind – the wisdom deriving from the word of God, an instrument for achieving safety, victory, glory and prosperity (ll. 19–23). The voice which at the beginning of the riddle was only an object – “mec” – can finally become subject – “ic” (l. 26b) – and claim their own famous name – “Nama min is mære” (l. 27b) – and their own holiness “halig sylf” (l. 28b). Thus the second half of the poem strongly insists on the spiritual and cultural benefits of the (Gospel) book. It can be argued that this is an attempt to provide a justification for that original act of violence, as if it were necessary to reassess the sacrifice of the animal in a Christian and anthropocentric way; hence the insistence on comfort, wisdom and other advantages that the book presents for human beings.

The speaking subject has, in point of fact, undergone a process of irreversible metamorphosis. Riddle 26 places the animal genesis of the parchment at the center of the narration. Even after being irreversibly transformed by the skilled hands of craftsmen, the manuscript retains the remnants of its initial condition. As anyone who has worked on a parchment may attest and as many scholars have noted,¹⁸ the signs of the organic origin never completely disappear: sometimes, sections of the spine, veins, arteries – features of an animal biology – remain visible and perceptible on the page. Thus, the poem, describing a skinned animal on a support that is literal skin, directly questions the relationship between parchment page, content and human readers.

Kay’s studies (2011, pp. 13–32; 2017) deal with how the materiality of the parchment codex influences the reading of works such as Le Boucher d’Abbeville and Ysengrimus and more recently also of the Latin and French bestiaries, starting from the philosophical work of Giorgio Agamben, among others, on the nature of the human being. According to Agamben (2002), the human being in history is defined through an uninterrupted process of differentiation from the animal. This process is called an ‘anthropological machine’ and essentially consists in a never-ending exclusion of the animality within the human self. This process is historically sensitive and destined to fail. It is ‘historically sensitive’, because every historical period reconstructs and re-elaborates a different concept of humanity and, in relation to it, the perception of the animal (the other which the human is modeled on), is also modified. Moreover, the process is destined to fail, because it is internal. The anthropological machine, in fact, acts as a caesura, continually delineating a boundary between what is human and what is not. Therefore, humanity defines itself in this movement: the process of separation operates continually within the self and could never be completely resolved. In other words, man recognizes himself as man, because he is distinct from the animal within him. According to Kay, in the act of reading a manuscript, where the levels between content (text) and support (parchment) are confused, Agamben’s anthropological machine stops working. Writing and reading about ‘skin’ on ‘skin’ can cause ‘sutures’: moments of short circuit in which the work of the Agambian caesura between human and animal ceases to act; in these volatile moments a ‘(mis)identification’ might happen between the subject-who-reads and the book-which-is-read. The distinction between the page – made up of the skin of the animal – and the text – to which it provides material support – is momentarily gone, the human reader stops considering the parchment as a neutral surface. During these moments of ‘suture’, the ‘skin’ of the manuscript might end up being perceived as double the human skin; in those ephemeral instants it might be possible to conceive a relationship of the human with other animals that is not, at the same time, an act of separation from them. Through the apparently impracticable passage of the narrator from sheep to parchment page, Riddle 26 exposes this sort of disturbing short circuit between animal, content of the text and book as an object.

Therefore, the manuscript described in Riddle 26, despite the consolation derived from its final role, is primarily a representation of a tortured and hybrid body. As noted by Mittman (2006, p. 109), “the emphasis in this poem is on the life of the parts, the animals from which the manuscript has been assembled and the violence of this process”.

The final lines of the riddle situate the result of the process as an evident success for humanity: the ability to control and manipulate a natural creature has a positive outcome.¹⁹ However, the attention given to animal origins, to the actions necessary to create the codex, would seem to suggest the desire to put those initial acts into a different perspective. The emphasis that the first fourteen lines give to the animal’s voice is an explicit recognition of the truth that, in order for the book to exist, both the sacrifice of an animal and the work of a human being are necessary. Riddle 26 therefore seems to promote the animal origin of the book object, in recognition of an ethical problem (Dale, 2017, pp. 87–102). The extra layer of skin, the decorations in gold filigree and purple dye are a subsequent cover: a material representation of all those positive values ​​(comfort, wisdom, goodness), epitomized by the Bible in the religion of the Book. Yet, the positive reversal is not complete: all that wonderful wisdom is derived from the damage of the animal whose life has been taken away.

From an ecocritical perspective, Holsinger (2009, pp. 616–624) reads Riddle 26 as a small acknowledgment of the complexity of the ethical question on the production of books: manuscripts are, at the same time, the result of the slaughter of a vast number of animals and the best way to preserve a record of human culture. The early medieval English people almost certainly did not consider the ethical problem according to the nuances of the ecological critics of the twenty-first century, yet the fiction of the riddle creates enough space to discover the point of view of the transformed creature. Thus, Riddle 26 acknowledges the necessary sacrifice of the animal, explores the parchment production process and expresses its contradictions, making them vivid and painful for anyone who reads the text, considering it in its original context on a parchment page.