The Exeter Book's heritage becomes traceable from the death of Leofric, bishop of Exeter, in 1072. [15] Among the possessions which he bequeathed in his will to the then-impoverished monastery at Exeter (the precursor to the later cathedral) is one famously described as i mycel Englisc boc be gehwilcum þingum on leoð-wisan geworht: "one large English book on various subjects, composed in verse form". [16] This book has been widely identified by scholars as the Exeter Codex. [16] [17]

Elliott van Kirk Dobbie and George Philip Krapp (eds), The Exeter Book, Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records 3 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1936), digitised at https://web.archive.org/web/20181206091232/http://ota.ox.ac.uk/desc/3009 Q: Four legs I do have, yet I never walk. I work not, yet I have food. All the food I get, none do I eat but you do. I cannot read yet many times I’m found with books. I am only but a carpenter’s work. Flood, Alison (22 June 2016). "Unesco lists Exeter Book among 'world's principal cultural artefacts' ". The Guardian . Retrieved 26 June 2016. The Exeter Book riddles are a fragmentary collection of verse riddles in Old English found in the later tenth-century anthology of Old English poetry known as the Exeter Book. Today standing at around ninety-four (scholars debate precisely how many there are because divisions between poems are not always clear), the Exeter Book riddles account for almost all the riddles attested in Old English, and a major component of the otherwise mostly Latin corpus of riddles from early medieval England. James Paz, Nonhuman Voices in Anglo-Saxon Literature and Material Culture (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2017), pp. 17-26; http://www.oapen.org/search?identifier=631090.Aside from eight leaves added to the codex after it was written, the Exeter Book consists entirely of poetry. However, unlike the Junius manuscript, which is dedicated to biblically inspired works, the Exeter Book is noted for the unmatched diversity of genres among its contents, as well as their generally high level of poetic quality. [12]

Craig Williamson (trans), A Feast of Creatures: Anglo-Saxon Riddle-Songs (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982) There are two glasses. One contains water, and the other contains an equal quantity of wine. A teaspoon of water is removed and mixed into the glass of wine. A teaspoon of the wine-water mixture is then removed and mixed into the glass of water. Which of the mixtures is now purer? John D. Niles, Old English Enigmatic Poems and the Play of the Texts, Studies in the early Middle Ages, 13 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2006). If you are running a race, and you overtake the person in second place, what place do you move into? Riddles are a great way to get brains engaged and thinking and are great at filling the gap when your kids need to step away from screens and are looking for something else to do.The Riddle Ages: Early Medieval Riddles, Translations and Commentaries, ed. by Megan Cavell and others, 2nd edn (Birmingham: University of Birmingham, 2020–).

Riddles are great for all ages and all skill levels. The answers may be on the tip of your tongue while others will require a little extra time to figure out. You can find more riddle fun with our Disney Riddles and Space Riddles. Why I love Riddles What am I? A: Hyphen. The first two lines yield high-fen. A hyphen is used by a writer to tie (or cramp) two words together. Q: A girl is sitting in a house at night that has no lights on at all. There is no lamp, no candle, nothing. Yet she is reading. How? A: The woman is blind and is reading braille. Who am I?’ This question lurks in all stories, poems, speeches that use the first person, the ‘I’ voice: from a Shakespeare soliloquy, to a Victorian novel, to a contemporary poem. One of the texts below directly asks ‘Say what I’m called’, but all probe these questions of identity, and of how we relate to the voices and things around us.

a b Carol Lind, 'Riddling in the Voices of Others: The Old English Exeter Book Riddles and a Pedagogy of the Anonymous' (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Illinois State University, 2007).