A Crossing of Old and New: Riddle 55 of the Exeter Book Essay -- Riddl

A Crossing of Old and New riddle 55 of the Exeter Book I saw in the hall, where heroes drank,carried onto the floor a wondrous woodtreeof four kinds and wound gold,cunningly fastened treasure, and part of silver5 and the sign of the cross, which He raised the ladderfor us to heaven before He stormed the city of the inhabitants of hell. I can easily tell before noblemen the origin of this treethere was maple and oak and the hard yew10 and the dark holly All together they were usefulto the L(l)ord All have one name,gallows that often warded off (received)a weapon for its liege lord, a treasure in the hall,a gold-hilted sword. Now show me the answer 15 of this song, he who presumes to say in words how the wood is called. Most of the riddles contained in the Exeter Book have been answered to the gratification of the majority Anglo-Saxon scholars. One that continues to elude a definitive answer, however, is Riddle 55. Several solutions have been suggested, but only three have received fine consideration. Dietrich first offered the solution as scabbard, explaining, The scabbard is richly decorated and divided into quarters by a cross, probably each quarter was made of a diverse wood (qtd. in Taylor 497). Craig Williamson refutes this answer by pointing out that Anglo-Saxon shields were lined with leather or fleece and sometimes covered with cloth. In addition, the structural flunk of such a hybrid should be obvious (Williamson 307). Another solution, suggested by Leibermann, is sword rack, to which Williamson remarks, there is no evidence in Old incline or in Anglo-Saxon archaeology for the existence of an early English sword rack. There i... ...old as Christs deputy to their thanes. In any case, Riddle 55 deserves all the attention it has received from scholars. Works CitedChaney, William A. The Cult of Kingship in Anglo-Saxon England The Transitionfrom Paganism to Christianity. Berkeley U of California P, 1970.Chickering, Howell D., Jr., ed., trans. Beowulf . New York Anchor Books, 1977.Crossley-Holland, Kevin, ed., trans. The Anglo-Saxon World An Anthology.Oxford Oxford UP, 1982.Mitchell, Bruce, and Fred C Bruce, eds. A Guide to Old English. 5th ed. OxfordBlackwell, 1992.Taylor, Keith P. Mazers, Mead, and the Wolfs-head tree A Reconsideration ofOld English Riddle 55. Journal of English and Germanic Philology 94.4 (1995) 497-512.Williamson, Craig, ed. The Old English Riddles of the Exeter Book. Chapel HillU of North Carolina P, 1977.