Old English personal names

Old English personal names look unfamiliar to modern eyes, because only a few examples remain in common use today, mostly in their Middle English spellings (for example, Edward, Edmund, Alfred, Edith). However, Old English personal names follow a fairly straightforward pattern.

Two-element names

Old English seems to have had a stock of words that were considered suitable for forming names, often words that had positive connotations such as happiness, riches, strength, courage, power, wisdom, security, nobility and so on. Perhaps the idea was to bring good fortune to the recipient, or perhaps it was just more appealing to call a baby something nice.

Old English personal names are commonly formed by combining two components from this stock of name-words.

• Some name elements were used only for the first part of a name, e.g. Aethel- (noble, royal), Ead- (happy, rich, fortunate)


• Some name elements were only used for the second part of a name, e.g. –weard (guardian, protector)


• Some name elements could be used in either position, e.g. ric (strong), swith (strong), wine (friend), wald (power), here (army), hild (battle), burh/burg (stronghold), raed (counsel, wisdom)

The second element was usually a word of masculine gender in men’s names and feminine gender in women’s names, but not always.

Single-element names

Single-element names are based on a single word, rather than a combination of two. Masculine names commonly end with –a, e.g. Penda, Adda, Imma. This can be confusing to speakers of modern English, as we are used to the Latin convention of –a denoting a feminine ending. This confusion is reinforced by later Latinised forms of Old English women’s names such as Hilda (from Old English Hild). In Old English a single-element name ending in –a is more likely to be a man’s name.

Some two-element names can be shortened to single-element names, e.g. names such as Cuthbert or Cuthwulf could be shortened to Cutha. Hild may be a shortened form of a two-element name (see below).

Single-element names tend to be less common in the written sources than two-element names. Two-element names may have been more popular among the upper classes, and to have become more common over time (although caution is in order, given the scarcity of early sources).

Family connections – alliteration

There were no surnames in Old English. People were identified by a single personal name. Family connections could be signalled by alliteration, i.e. by choosing names within a family that all began with the same letter. Several examples of this can be seen in royal genealogies:

• The seventh-century king of Mercia, Penda, had a father called Pubba or Pybba (Historia Brittonum ch. 60) and a son called Peada (Bede Book III ch. 21);


• The seventh-century Northumbrian prince Hereric had two daughters called Hild and Hereswith (Bede Book IV ch. 23);


• The genealogy of the West Saxon kings in the Anglian Collection lists a succession of eight kings with names beginning with C-, Cerdic, Creoda, Cynric, Caewlin, Cuthwine, Cuthwulf, Ceolwald, Cenred;


• In the ninth and tenth centuries, the West Saxon king Aethelwulf had sons called Aethelbald, Aethelbert, Aethelred and Alfred (later The Great); Aethelred had sons called Aethelwold and Aethelhem; Alfred had sons called Edward and Aethelweard and daughters called Aethelflaed, Aelfthryth and Aethelgifu; Aethelflaed had a daughter called Aelfwyn (Asser, Life of Alfred Part II; Anglo-Saxon Chronicle 919 AD).

Family connections – common name element

Another way to indicate family connections was by using one of the elements of the father’s and/or mother’s name as an element in the child’s name. Where the shared name element was the first one, it would automatically produce alliteration as well. Again, several examples can be seen in royal genealogies:

• The seventh-century Northumbrian prince Hereric was married to a lady named Breguswith. They had two daughters called Hild and Hereswith (Bede Book IV ch. 23). Hereswith has a name combining the second element of her mother’s name (-swith) and the first element of her father’s name (Here-). It is quite possible that Hild was originally called Hildiswith (taking the second element of her mother’s name and a first element that alliterated with her father’s name), which was shortened to Hild for some reason;


• The seventh-century kings of Northumbria were (successively) the brothers Oswald and Oswy, who also had other brothers called Oswine, Oswudu, Oslac and Offa (Historia Brittonum ch. 57). Oswy had a daughter called Osthryth (Bede Book III ch. 11);


• The seventh-century king of East Anglia, Raedwald, had a son called Eorpwald (Bede Book II ch. 15), whose name contains the same second element as his father’s name (-wald);

Some name elements were extremely widespread over a long period of time. For example, Aethel- names appear in the royal family of Kent in the sixth century (Aethelbert, Aethelburh) (Bede Book II ch. 9), Northumbria in the seventh century (Aethelferth) (Bede Book I ch. 34), Mercia in the seventh century (Aethelred) (Bede Book III ch. 11), Wessex in the ninth and tenth centuries (see above), and East Anglia in the seventh century (Aethelwald, Aethelthryth) (Bede Book III ch. 22; Book IV ch. 19). It is perhaps not surprising that a name element meaning ‘noble, royal’ was so popular among families who claimed royal status.

Sometimes both alliteration and common name elements seem to be in use in the same family. For example, the seventh-century king of East Anglia, Raedwald, had one son called Eorpwald (Bede Book II ch. 15), who has the same second name-element as his father, and another son called Raegenhere (Bede Book II ch.12), whose name alliterates with that of his father. If we did not have Bede’s History to tell us that both Raegenhere and Eorpwald were the sons of Raedwald, there would be nothing in their names to connect them with each other. Whether the different name patterns reflected different family connections (for example, perhaps Raegenhere and Eorpwald were the children of two different marriages), family traditions (Raedwald had a brother called Eni; perhaps there was a tradition of having names in R- and E- in each generation), or just resulted from idiosyncrasy, is open to interpretation.

In Paths of Exile, I sometimes used alliteration and common name elements when choosing names for the fictional characters to signal family relationships (obviously, I retained the names of historical figures). For example, Eadwine’s name is recorded, and the name of his nephew Hereric is recorded, but Hereric’s parents are unknown. I chose the name Eadric for the fictional character of Hereric’s father, Eadwine’s elder brother in the novel, because the two name elements in Eadric link to the two known names (Ead- shared with Eadwine, and –ric shared with Hereric). I chose the name Heledd for Hereric’s mother, a fictional princess of the neighbouring Brittonic kingdom of Elmet, because it alliterated with Hereric’s name. Hereric’s name is thus imagined as alliterating with his mother’s name and sharing a second name-element with his father’s name. (It is, of course, entirely possible that Hereric was the son of a sister of Eadwine and a man called H-something or Here-something. I picked the first combination for storytelling reasons).


References
Anglian Collection, available online
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, available online
Asser, Life of Alfred, available online
Bede, Ecclesiastical history of the English people. Translated by Leo Sherley-Price. Penguin Classics, 1968, ISBN 0-14-044565-X.
Historia Brittonum, available online

Thatched barns and stave churches: the possibilities of Anglo-Saxon timber architecture

“What is the house of Eorl but a thatched barn where brigands drink in the reek, and their brats roll on the floor among the dogs?”

--JRR Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings; The Two Towers (Book III, Chapter 10).

Thus spoke Saruman the wizard, after King Theoden had seen through his lies and told him to take a running jump, neatly articulating some of the more snobbish views of early English (‘Anglo-Saxon’)* culture in general and architecture in particular. Does timber architecture deserve this image?

Small buildings

There are no surviving drawings of early English buildings, and the written descriptions in sources such as Beowulf are stronger on poetic mood than on architectural detail, so the main evidence comes from archaeology. Herein lies an immediate problem; wood is a perishable material and rarely survives well in the ground. Usually all that is left of a timber building for archaeology to find is the ground plan, identified by post-holes and/or foundation trenches. Occasionally waterlogging has preserved some of the timber foundations, or if the building was destroyed by fire some of the charred timbers may have survived (charcoal being less prone to decay than wood), but even these favourable conditions usually preserve only the lower levels of the building.

Experimental archaeology, in which buildings are reconstructed using estimates of the techniques and materials available in the past, is invaluable for testing hypotheses about construction design and methods. It has provided a wealth of information about early English timber construction, especially for comparatively small buildings, such as the sort of houses and outbuildings that might have been occupied by a freeman farming family. Examples can be seen at West Stow near Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk, and Saxon House, Lincolnshire (pictures available on the links).

Large high-status buildings

There is a tendency to assume that bigger buildings, such as the large high-status halls identified at sites such as Yeavering in Northumberland, were a sort of giant version of the smaller houses reconstructed at sites like West Stow. In the absence of evidence for their superstructure, this is indeed the simplest explanation. Brian Hope-Taylor’s suggested reconstruction of the great hall at Yeavering follows this model (various other reconstructions, together with lots of useful information, available on the same site – it’s well worth clicking round the links). But Occam’s Razor isn’t always correct.

Norwegian stave churches

The stave churches of Norway beautifully illustrate both the problem and the possibilities that can be achieved with timber architecture.

This is the ground plan of Borgund stave church in Norway (north-east of Bergen), built in or shortly after 1180 and not substantially modified since.


Borgund stave church ground plan. From Wikimedia, public domain image.





















Doesn’t look very complicated, does it? It’s not very difficult to imagine a thatched barn of some sort on top of this, maybe a sort of central square hall with a few annexe-y bits added on round the sides.

Here is what it really looks like.


Borgund stave church. From Wikimedia under Creative Commons rules





















For all that one is supposed to be able to see the universe in a grain of sand, I think most of us would have real difficulty deducing this sophisticated structure from its ground plan. More pictures on the official website.

This is not to argue that high-status Anglo-Saxon halls such as Yeavering resembled stave churches, although if I were going to imagine Heorot** I can think of worse places to start. Absence of evidence is just that. It’s more a reminder that timber architecture can be just as sophisticated and just as spectacular as masonry, and that we shouldn’t be blind to the possibilities.

Map links
West Stow
Yeavering
Borgund, Norway


*Although Tolkien’s Rohirrim clearly have features in common with the early English ('Anglo-Saxons'), not least their language and their names, they should not be taken as a direct counterpart. Tolkien famously disliked allegory.

**Heorot is the great king Hrothgar’s magnificent feasting hall in Beowulf, although I expect that if you found your way here you knew that already.

Old English gods and myths: Hell

First of an occasional series. Very little is known of the pre-Christian religion of the early English (‘Anglo-Saxons’), because all the surviving Old English texts were written down after the conversion to Christianity and no written account of the previous religious beliefs survives. There are some snippets in Bede’s On the Reckoning of Time, some place names, bits of word etymology, fragments in poetry that might be echoes of an older tradition, occasional archaeological finds, and extrapolation from accounts of related cultures such as Tacitus’ Germania and the Norse myths. I need hardly say that this is not as firm a basis as one would like for trying to reconstruct a lost religion (!). Nevertheless, it’s better than nothing, so with that caveat in mind let’s see where we get.

Origin of the word “hell”

The modern English word “hell”, meaning the dwelling-place of the dead, the underworld and/or a place of punishment after death, derives directly from its Old English counterpart “helle”. This occurs in early sources:

In King Alfred’s translation of Boethius (ninth century), Cerberus, the dog who guards the gates of Hades in Greek and Roman mythology, is called “helle hund".

In the Old English poem Beowulf, the monster Grendel is described as “feond on helle”, “an enemy from hell”.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, “helle” is cognate with Old Frisian (helle), Old Saxon (hellia, hel), Old High German (hella), Old Icelandic (hel), and Gothic (halja), probably originally meaning a hole or place of concealment. So the word is widespread in the Germanic languages, and was in use by at least the ninth century. It was probably in use much earlier, since it occurs in several languages and may therefore derive from a time before the languages became differentiated, though it’s always possible that the languages borrowed it from each other.

Descriptions of hell

Since “helle hund” was used in relation to Cerberus, “hell” was presumably considered to be roughly equivalent to Hades and was not confined to the Christian concept of hell. No description of the pagan English concept of hell has come down to us, but since the word was cognate with the Old Icelandic Hel, it’s a reasonable inference that the concept attached to the word was also similar to the Norse concept. Luckily, we have an idea what that was.

In Snorri Sturluson’s Prose Edda, written in Iceland in the thirteenth century, Hel referred both to the goddess of the underworld and to her realm. (This is similar to Greek and Roman mythology, in which Hades referred both to the god of the underworld and to the underworld itself). Snorri gives a vivid description of Hel and her realm:

But evil men go to Hel and thence down to Niflhel [Dark Hel]; and that is down in the ninth world.

--Gylfaginning chapter 3. Prose Edda.

Hel he threw down into Niflheim, and made her ruler over nine worlds. She has the power to dole out lodgings and provisions to those who are sent to her, and they are the people who have died of disease or old age. She has there an enormous dwelling with walls of immense height and huge gates. Her hall is called Eljudnir (Sprayed with Snowstorms), her dish is Hunger, her knife is Famine, her slave is Lazy, and her woman servant is Slothful. The threshold over which people enter is called Fallandaforad (Falling to Peril), her bed is named Kor (Sick-bed) and her bed curtains are called Blikjandabol (Gleaming Disaster). She is half black and half a lighter flesh-colour and is easily recognised). Mostly she is gloomy and cruel.

--Gylfaginning, chapter 34. Prose Edda.

When the Norse god Odin journeys to the realm of Hel to ask questions of a long-dead seeress, she tells him:

I was snowed on with snow, and smitten with rain,
And drenched with dew; long was I dead.

--Balder’s Dream

So the Norse Hel was thought of as a miserable place of cold and wet and hunger, presided over by a hideous monster. This is consistent with the description of Grendel’s bleak abode in Beowulf:

The fell and fen his fastness was
The march his haunt

--Beowulf, lines 102-103

…. walked nightlong
The misty moorland

--Beowulf, lines 161-162

…up steep screes, by scant tracks
Where only one might walk, by wall-faced cliffs,
Through haunted fens – uninhabitable country

--Beowulf, lines 1410-1411

Grendel, together with giants, ogres, elves and evil spirits, is described in the poem as the descendant of Cain, banished to the wastelands by God. Leaving aside the Christian gloss, the picture of a cold, wet, bleak and thoroughly miserable wilderness inhabited by monsters (one of whom, Grendel’s mother, is female), is entirely consistent with the Norse description of Hel in the Prose Edda.

Interpretation

So, it seems reasonable to infer that before they converted to Christianity the pagan English had a concept of a cold and miserable place called hell. As the word continued in use after conversion to Christianity as the name for a place of punishment after death, it seems likely that the original concept also included the idea that hell was the afterlife for people who weren’t favoured. Whether everyone who died a natural death went there, as Snorri says in Gylfaginning chapter 34, or whether evil people went there, as Snorri says in Gylfaginning chapter 3, is not clear. Quite possibly there were different traditions among different groups of people. If the word originated from a root meaning “hole” as the Oxford English Dictionary says (and I would take their word for most things on word origins), it seems likely that it derived from a description of the grave – a cold, wet, miserable hole in the ground where one went after death in the literal as well as metaphorical sense. This may tie in to the variable funeral customs observed in ‘Anglo-Saxon’ cemeteries, and I’ll come back to this in a later post.

Was “hell” in Old English also used in its other common modern sense, as an expletive and an intensifier in colloquial phrases (What the hell, how the hell, go to hell, hell of a… etc)? I have no idea. Formal court poetry doesn’t generally use colloquialisms, and Old English poetry is more formal than most because of the demands of the alliterative measure. If there was an Old English dictionary of slang and swearing it certainly hasn’t come down to us. Since the word was in use and represented a place that you wouldn’t look forward to going to, as in its modern sense, it seems not unreasonable that it might also have been in use as an imprecation, and I use it in this sense in Paths of Exile. However, I think we can safely say that phrases that rely on hell being a hot place (when hell freezes over, snowball’s chance in hell, a cold day in hell, hell-fire) probably came into use later, after the shift to the Christian concept of hell as a fiery place.


ReferencesBeowulf. Translated by Michael Alexander. Penguin Classics, 1973. ISBN 0-14-044268-5.
Oxford English Dictionary. Available online by subscription at www.oed.com
Prose Edda. Translated by Jesse Byock. Penguin Classics, 2005. ISBN 978-0-14-044755-2.

Human sacrifice in Anglo-Saxon England: what rite might have been used?

In an earlier post I reviewed the limited evidence relating to human sacrifice in early England (‘Anglo-Saxon’ England), and came to the conclusion that the early English almost certainly knew of human sacrifice, but that there is little evidence that they practised it to any great extent. A small number of graves, such as the strange burials at Sutton Hoo, are consistent with human sacrifice but other explanations are possible. I personally think it most likely to have been a rare event reserved for exceptional circumstances.

If human sacrifice was practised at all in early England, what form might the rites have taken? As there’s little evidence for it at all, it won’t surprise you to hear that there’s no definite evidence for the rites that might have been employed. However, it may be possible to make some extrapolations from related cultures, with due caution and the usual caveat that other interpretations are possible.

Sutton Hoo

The body buried without grave goods and probably face down in one of the quarry pits used to construct Mound 5 at Sutton Hoo may have been a sacrifice, but was not well enough preserved to give any evidence for the cause of death (Carver 1998).

The group of anomalous burials (see earlier post for details) surrounded the site of a gallows, so it is plausible (though not certain) that at least some of them had died on it. Whether they represent sacrifices or executions, or indeed whether such a distinction can be made, is not known. One body had a dark stain around its neck that could have been the remains of a rope. Others were decapitated, but whether this happened at or after death is not known. The dates for this group of burials span the period from the sixth to the eleventh century (Carver 1998).

Iron Age Europe: the bog bodies

The Roman historian Tacitus, writing in the 1st century AD, says that the tribes living in the areas that are now Germany and southern Denmark sacrificed human victims to Mercury, but doesn’t say what rite was used.

Mercury is the deity whom they chiefly worship, and on certain days they deem it right to sacrifice to him even with human victims.

--Tacitus, Germania

He also says that the slaves who washed the wagon of the goddess Nerthus were drowned in a sacred lake, although this is attributed to a desire to maintain secrecy rather than to sacrifice as such.

Anon the chariot is washed and purified in a secret lake, as also the curtains; nay, the Deity herself too, if you choose to believe it. In this office it is slaves who minister, and they are forthwith doomed to be swallowed up in the same lake. Hence all men are possessed with mysterious terror; as well as with a holy ignorance what that must be, which none see but such as are immediately to perish.

--Tacitus, Germania

Remarkably, a few human bodies from the Iron Age in northern Europe have survived to the present day, preserved in acid and waterlogged conditions in peat bogs. Readers in Britain will probably be most familiar with “Lindow Man”, discovered during peat cutting at Lindow Moss in Cheshire, in north-west England in 1984. The lower half of his body had presumably been destroyed by the peat-cutting machinery (unless someone found a nasty surprise in their azalea bed), leaving only the body above the waist and part of one lower leg. The investigations into the body have been described in clear and readable detail by Don Brothwell of the University of London (Brothwell 1986). Lindow Man had been struck at least twice on the top of the head by a blunt instrument, fracturing his skull. He also had a broken jaw and chipped tooth which may indicate another blow to the lower face, and a broken rib which may indicate a violent blow to his back. He had also been strangled by a twisted cord, his neck was broken, his throat had been cut, and there was a possible stab wound to his chest. The number of different types of injury seems excessive for an ordinary murder, and suggests a ritual death (Brothwell 1986). Hutton comments that it recalls the “triple death” of Irish legends (Hutton 1993).

Although many other bog bodies have been found from sites across northern Europe, including Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark, Britain and Ireland, many were either insufficiently preserved or insufficiently investigated to identify a cause of death. However, several other bog bodies show evidence for one or more of the types of injuries inflicted on Lindow Man:

• Borre Fen Man - hanging/strangulation, skull injury


• Borre Fen Woman (II) – skull injury, other fractures


• Elling Woman – hanging/strangulation


• Grauballe Man – throat cut, skull injury, other fractures


• Lindow Man - hanging/strangulation, throat cut, skull injury, chest wound (possible) other fractures (possible)


• Lykkegard Man - hanging/strangulation


• Osterby Man – beheading, skull injury


• Rendswuhren Fen Man – skull injury, chest wound


• Stidsholt Fen Woman – beheading


• Tollund Man – hanging/strangulation


• Werdingerveen Man – chest wound

--Brothwell 1986; Coles & Coles 1989

More than half of these bodies (6/11) had multiple types of injury, though Lindow Man had the widest range. Head injuries were the most common (6), perhaps intended to stun the victim out of mercy or convenience. The other modes of death include strangling or hanging (5), chest wounds (2) and cutting of the throat (2). Placing the body in a pool in the bog (all of them, by definition) may also have represented drowning, yet another mode of death. Other bog bodies have been found pinned down in the bog by stakes or branches and may have been drowned (a woman at Jelling in Denmark, a man and a girl at Windeby in north Germany, a man at Gallagh in Ireland), although it may also be possible that the bodies were placed in the bog after death and pinned down to prevent them floating to the surface of a pool. Two of these bodies had cords around the neck that might have been used for strangulation (Gallagh, the man at Windeby) (Coles & Coles 1989).

Some Irish legends feature a “Triple Death”. For example, Adomnan’s Life of Columba says that St Columba prophesied that Aed Dub (Aed the Black) would die by falling, drowning and stabbing.

And Aid, thus irregularly ordained, shall return as a dog to his vomit, and be again a bloody murderer, until at length, pierced in the neck with a spear, he shall fall from a tree into the water and be drowned

--Adomnan, Life of Columba, Chapter XXIX

In another Irish legend, Diarmait mac Cerbaill, king of all Ireland, is killed by his foster-son Aed Dub by drowning, burning and stabbing (see Wikipedia).

The significance of the multiple modes of death is unknown. It has been suggested that certain modes of death were sacred to particular gods (Powell 1983), so perhaps a person killed using several modes was believed to influence several gods. Or it may be that the elaborate ritual was required to differentiate the sacrifice from a commonplace death – after all, people could drown by accident, or could be stabbed, beaten or strangled as a result of war, a brawl or an ordinary murder. Perhaps a multiple death was intended to mark the person out as a gift presented especially to the gods.

Norse documentary sources

Multiple modes of death are also found in documentary descriptions of Norse customs. In the tenth century, an Arab diplomat, Ahmad ibn Fadlan, wrote a detailed description of the Rus, who were Norse traders living on the River Volga in what is now Russia. In it he describes a human sacrifice at the funeral of one of the Rus leaders:

… they laid her at the side of her master; the old woman known as the Angel of Death re-entered and looped a cord around her neck and gave the crossed ends to the two men for them to pull. Then she approached her with a broad-bladed dagger, which she plunged between her ribs repeatedly, and the men strangled her with the cord until she was dead.

--Risala

According to the Icelandic poem Havamal, the Norse god Odin was hanged on the World Tree and stabbed with a spear.

I trow I hung on that windy Tree
nine whole days and nights,
stabbed with a spear, offered to Odin,
myself to mine own self given,

--Havamal

If we take hanging and strangling as equivalent, this is the same death as that meted out to the slave girl on the Volga, and Havamal is explicit that this is a sacrifice to Odin.

The Greek historian Procopius, writing in Byzantium in the 6th century AD, says of the inhabitants of Thule (modern Norway and Sweden):

This sacrifice they offer to Ares, since they believe him to be the greatest of the gods. They sacrifice the prisoner not merely by slaughtering him, but by hanging him from a beam or casting him among thorns, or putting him to death by other horrible methods.

--Procopius, Gothic War. Quoted in Ellis Davidson (1964).

Ares is the Greek war-god, whom the Romans called Mars. Procopius presumably substituted the name of the Greek god he considered to be the nearest equivalent to the Norse deity concerned. The two most obvious candidates for a Norse war god are Tyr or Odin, both of whom could be considered gods of war.

Adam of Bremen, writing in 1070, described extensive human sacrifice at the temple of Old Uppsala in Sweden:

There is a festival at Uppsala every nine years […] The sacrifice is as follows; of every kind of male creature, nine victims are offered. By the blood of these creatures it is the custom to appease the gods. Their bodies, moreover, are hanged in a grove which is adjacent to the temple. This grove is so sacred to the people that the separate trees in it are believed to be holy because of the death or putrefaction of the sacrificial victims. There even dogs and horses hang beside human beings.

--History of the Archbishops of Hamburg-Bremen

He is clear that the victims were hanged, and if his reference to “blood” is literal rather than poetic it may indicate that they were also stabbed, as described in Havamal and the account of the slave girl on the Volga.

The medieval Norse saga Gautrek’s Saga contains a vivid account of a sacrifice to Odin. In the saga, King Vikar prays to Odin for a favourable wind, and when the lots are drawn to decide who will be the sacrifice in payment, the lot falls to King Vikar himself. King Vikar tries to cheat his fate by staging a mock sacrifice. He stands on a tree stump with the soft intestines of a calf looped around his neck and fastened to a branch above, and one of his men thrusts a blunt wooden rod at him with the words, “Now I give you to Odin”. As soon as the words are uttered, the rod becomes a spear piercing King Vikar through, the intestine becomes a strong rope and the branch jerks the king into the air and hangs him (Ellis Davison 1964). Odin, the master of deceit, is not easily cheated.

This colourful story is from a late source and may be no more than vivid fiction, or it may be based on a genuine tradition of a rite used to send a victim to Odin by hanging and stabbing. It is consistent with Havamal, but if the saga writer was familiar with Havamal he could simply have copied the rite and added some dramatic details.

Conclusion

Irish and Norse legends, and accounts of Norse customs, all describe human sacrifice involving death by multiple methods. These might be dismissed as no more than bizarre stories invented by chroniclers about barbaric peoples of far away and long ago, if it were not for the evidence of the bog bodies.

These individuals demonstrate clearly that death by elaborate and multiple methods was inflicted in Iron Age northern Europe, including Britain, north Germany and Denmark, and the victims placed in the peat and water of bogs. The pattern of injuries varies from one to another, presumably indicating variations in the rite as well as variations in the survival of evidence. Wounding with sharp implements, hanging or strangulation, and violent blows to the head are all represented among the bodies, and their location in watery places may represent actual or metaphorical drowning. It is worth remembering that alternative rites, such as burning, would either leave no trace (if the ashes were dispersed) or might be difficult to distinguish from an ordinary cremation burial. Drowning and/or disposal in bogs might have been a common factor among ritual deaths, or just the common factor among the ones that happen to have left evidence for us to identify and interpret.

Exactly how widespread human sacrifice was, how long it persisted, and what rites were used when and in which societies, remains uncertain. No definite sacrificial victim from the early medieval period in England has yet been identified (Lindow Man has been dated to around the first century AD), which might be interpreted either as absence of evidence or evidence of absence. However, if human sacrifice was carried out in early England, one might reasonably conjecture that the rites involved would have been likely to resemble either those used on the earlier Iron Age bog bodies, or those recorded for later Norse culture.

References
Full-text sources available online are linked in the text
Brothwell D. The bog man and the archaeology of people. British Museum Press, 1986, ISBN 0-7141-1384-0.
Coles B, Coles J. People of the wetlands: bogs, bodies and lake-dwellers. Thames & Hudson, 1989, ISBN 0-500-02112-0
Ellis Davidson HR. Gods and myths of northern Europe. Penguin, 1964, ISBN 0-14-020670-1.
Carver M. Sutton Hoo: Burial ground of kings? British Museum Press, 1998, ISBN: 0-7141-0591-0.
Hutton R. The pagan religions of the ancient British Isles: their nature and legacy. Blackwell, 1993, ISBN:0-631-18946-7.
Powell TGE. The Celts. Thames & Hudson, 1983, ISBN 0-500-27275-1.

John Barleycorn

The Murder of John Barleycorn

As I went through the North Country,
I heard a merry meeting,
A pleasant toy, and full of joy,
two Noble-men were greeting.

And as they walked forth to sport,
upon a Summers day,
They met another Noble-man,
with whom they had a fray.

His name was Sir John Barley-Corn,
he dwelt down in a Vale,
And had a Kinsman dwelt with him,
they called him Thomas good-Ale.

The one named Sir Richard Beer,
was ready at that time,
And likewise came a busie Peer,
call'd Sir William White-Wine.

Some of them fought in a black-Jack,
some of them in a Can.
But yet the chiefist in a black pot,
fought like a Noble-man.

Sir John Barley-Corn fought in a Bowl,
who won the Victory,
Which made them all to chafe and swear,
that Barley-Corn must dye.

Some said kill him, some said him drown,
some wished to hang him high,
For those that followed Barley-Corn,
they said would beggars dye.

Then with a Plow and they Plow'd him up,
and thus they did devise
To bury him within the Earth,
and swore he would not rise.

With harrows strong they came to him,
and burst Clods on his head,
A joyful Banquet then was made,
when Barley-Corn was dead.

He rested still upon the earth,
till rain from Sky did fall,
Then he grew up on branches green,
which sore amaz'd them all.

Increasing thus till Midsummer,
he made them all afraid,
For he sprang up on high,
and had a goodly Beard

When ripening at St. James tide,
his countenance waxed wan,
Yet now full grown in part of strength,
and thus became a man.

Wherefore with Hooks and Sickles keen,
unto the fields they hy'd,
They cut his Legs off by the Knees,
and Limb from Limb divide.

Then bloodily they cut him down,
from place where he did stand,
And like a Thief for Treachery,
they bound him in a band.

So then they took him up again,
according to his kind,
And plac'd him up in several stacks,
to wither with the wind.

Then with a pitchfork sharp and long,
they rent him to the heart,
And Traytor like for Treason did,
they bound him in a Cart.

And tending him with weapons strong,
unto the Town they hie,
Whereas they Mow'd him in a Mow,
and so they let him lie.

They left him groaning by the walls,
till all his Bones were sore,
And having took him up again,
they cast him on the floor.

And hired two with Holly Clubs,
to beat at him at once,
Who thwackt so hard on Barley-Corn,
the Flesh fell from his Bones, [sic]

Then fast they knit him in a sack,
which griev'd heim very sore,
And soundly steept him in a fat, [vat
for three days space and more.

From whence again they took him out,
and laid him forth to dry,
Then cast him on the Chamber Floor,
and swore that he should dye.

They rub'd and stir'd him up and down,
and oft did toyl and ture,
The Mault-man likewise with vows his death,
his body should be sure.

They pul'd and hal'd him in a spight,
and threw him on a Kill, [kiln
Yea dry'd him o're a fire hot,
the more to work their will.

Then to the Mill they forst him straight,
whereas they bruis'd his bones,
The Miller swore to murther him,
betwixt a pair of Stones.

The last time when they took him up,
they serv'd him worse than that,
For with hot scalding Liquor store
they washt him in a fat. [vat

But not content with this Bod wot, [God
they wrought him so much harm,
With cruel threat they promise next,
to beat him into Barm.

And lying in this danger deep,
for fear the he should quarrel,
They heap'd him straight out of the fat,
and turned him into Barrell, [sic]

They roar'd and broach'd it with a Tap,
so thus his death begun,
And drew out every drop of Blood,
while any drop would run.

Some brought in Jacks upon their backs,
some brought in Bowls and Pail,
Yea, every man some weapon had,
poor Barley-Corn to kill.

When Sir John Good-Ale heard of this, [Thomas Good-Ale
he came with mickle might,
And took by strength their Tongues away,
their Legs, and their sight.

Sir John at last in this respect,
so paid them all their hire,
That some lay bleeding by the walls,
some tumbling in the mire.

Some lay groaning by the walls,
some fell i'th street down right,
The wisest of them scarcely knew
what he had done o'er night.

All you good wives that brew good ale,
God keep you all from teen,
But if you put too much water in,
the Devil put out your Eyne.

--Dated to 1620–1630, full text of this and many more songs available here

The ballad of the death and resurrection of John Barleycorn has been a popular one in England and Scotland for at least four centuries. The earliest known version is the Scots ballad Allan-a-Mault, found in the 16th-century Ballantyne manuscript (for the lyrics, see the link above). Alternative versions abound. Robert Burns wrote a version in 1782, and numerous folk groups have recorded variants and adaptations (see Wikipedia for a list). Curiously, John Barleycorn’s laying low of his tormentors in the last verses is often omitted, which I think is rather a shame as it neatly brings the poem full circle.

It’s appealing to see the ballad of John Barleycorn as a distant memory of a sacrificial king or a dying god whose death rendered the earth fertile, along the lines suggested in Frazer’s immensely popular book The Golden Bough. (However over-enthusiastic Frazer’s conclusions, if his book helped to inspire Mary Renault’s Theseus novels I can forgive him anything).

Kathleen Herbert suggests that the name ‘Beow’ (Old English for ‘barley’), which appears among the legendary figures connecting Alfred the Great’s pedigree back to Noah’s Ark, is another representation of John Barleycorn (Herbert 1994).

It’s also very appealing to connect John Barleycorn with another legend involving a miraculous drink derived from the blood of a murder victim, the Norse legend of the origin of the mead of poetry. Kevin Crossley-Holland’s is the best modern retelling I’ve come across. It’s well worth seeking out his book, but here’s a short summary for anyone who isn’t familiar with the legend:

When they agreed their truce, the Norse gods created Kvasir, wisest of all men. Kvasir was murdered by two jealous dwarfs, who drained his blood and mixed it with honey to brew a sublime mead. Whoever drank a draught of that mead became a poet or a wise man. The mead was stolen by a giant, and recovered by Odin using his characteristic mixture of force, deceit and sexual seduction. After that, the gods guarded the mead of poetry well, and it was never stolen again. But from time to time, Odin would permit a man to drink of it; he gave the gift of poetry.

Could John Barleycorn and wise Kvasir be connected, or derived from the same ancient tradition handed down from the dawn of time? Well, possibly, though I cannot see how you’d go about testing the hypothesis. Heady stuff, this, speculating about long-lost religions.

Perhaps the ballad of John Barleycorn began life as an extended Old English riddle? It wouldn’t take much to recast the song in the familiar say-what-I-am-called format. Indeed, John Barleycorn has been suggested as a possible solution to Riddle 26 in the Exeter Book:

Part of the earth grows lovely and grim
With the hardest and fiercest of bitter-sharp
Treasures--felled, cut, carved,
Bleached, scrubbed, softened, shaped,
Twisted, rubbed, dried, adorned,
Bound, and borne off to the doorways of men--
This creature brings in hall-joy, sweet
Music clings to its curves, live song
Lingers in a body where before bloom-wood
Said nothing. After death it sings
A clarion joy. Wise listeners
Will know what this creature is called

--Riddle 26, translation and original text available here

I can see the connection, though I personally prefer ‘lyre’ as a solution to this riddle because of the reference to music.

Rhyme, riddle or remnant of a vanished religion, raise a glass to John Barleycorn next time you go for a beer.


References
Herbert, Kathleen. Looking for the Lost Gods of England. Anglo-Saxon Books, 1994. ISBN 1-898281-04-1.
Crossley-Holland, Kevin. The Norse Myths. Penguin, 1980, ISBN 0-14-006056-1.

Acha of Deira and Bernicia: daughter, sister, wife and mother of kings

Acha lived during the early part of the seventh century. She was at the centre of the dynastic conflicts between the kingdoms of Bernicia and Deira that would eventually forge the two into the great early English (‘Anglo-Saxon’) kingdom of Northumbria. Deira corresponded roughly to modern Yorkshire, and Bernicia roughly to modern Northumberland; for approximate locations, see map.

Acha was born into the royal family of Deira, married into the royal family of Bernicia, and two of her sons were kings of Northumbria. Her life marks the beginning of the unified kingdom of Northumbria, and possibly made a significant contribution to it. What do we know about her? As usual, not very much:

Evidence

Bede, Ecclesiastical History

• Oswald was the son of Aethelferth of Bernicia, and nephew to King Edwin by his sister Acha (Book III, Chapter 6)


• Acha’s husband Aethelferth drove her brother Edwin into exile and tried for more than a decade to have Edwin murdered (Book II, passim).


• Oswald died on 5 August 642, when he was 38 years old (Book III, Chapter 9). He must therefore have been born between August 603 and August 604.


• Oswald’s brother Oswy succeeded him as king (Book III, Chapter 14). Oswy died on 15 February 670, at the age of 58, and was succeeded by his son Egfrid (Book IV, Chapter 5). Oswy must therefore have been born between February 611 and February 612.


• Egfrid’s aunt Ebba was Abbess of Coldingham monastery (Book IV, Chapter 19) at the time it was destroyed by fire in about 680 (Book IV, Chapter 25).

Historia Brittonum
Aethelferth Flesaurs of Bernicia had seven sons: Eanfrid, Oswald, Oswin, Oswy, Oswudu, Oslac, Offa (Chapter 57).

Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
The sons of Aethelferth were Enfrid, Oswald, Oswy, Oslac, Oswood.
Oslaf, and Offa.

Reginald of Durham
Aethelferth not only drove from his kingdom Aella king of the Deirans whose daughter he had married, but after inflicting a series of defeats on him and expelling him from several refuges he deprived him of his life and kingdom together.
Quoted in John Marsden, Northanhymbre Saga.

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
Ebba, abbess of Coldingham, was the daughter of Acha and Aethelferth and died in around 683.


Interpretation

Parentage
Bede says unequivocally that Acha was Edwin’s sister. Reginald of Durham says she was the daughter of Edwin’s father Aelle, and this is consistent with the fact that her sons Oswald and Oswy were both accepted as kings in Deira, suggesting that they had a claim to Deiran royal blood through their mother. Edwin and Acha may or may not have had different mothers; there is no indication either way.

Children
Of Aethelferth’s seven sons listed in Historia Brittonum and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, it is noticeable that all have names beginning with O- except the eldest, Eanferth (Eanfrith, Eanfrid). Eanferth and the O- sons also appear to have taken different routes into exile on their father’s death. Eanferth appears in the Pictish king-lists as the father of a king of the Picts, Talorcan, which strongly suggests that he was exiled in Pictland. Oswald and Oswy, by contrast, lived on the island of Iona in Dal Riada (modern western Scotland). It is a strong possibility that the O- sons were Acha’s children and Eanferth was a half-brother by a previous wife. A daughter Aebbe (Ebba, Abb) is also recorded, but there is no indication of her age relative to the sons. This would suggest that Acha bore Aethelferth at least seven children, six sons and a daughter, during their marriage. If the sons are listed in the correct order, they were all born between 603/604 and 617.

Age
Acha’s son Oswald was born between August 603 and August 604, and so Acha must have been of childbearing age by this time. This sets the latest possible date for her birth at around 590.

Another son, Oswy, was born between February 611 and February 612, so Acha must still have been of childbearing age by then. If the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and Historia Brittonum have listed her children by Aethelferth in the correct order, and assuming that all the sons with names beginning with O- were Acha’s sons (see above), she also bore Aethelferth three or four more sons after Oswy. If she bore one child a year, with no stillbirths or multiple births, the youngest son may have been born around 614 to 616, which is only 1-3 years before Aethelferth’s death. This would suggest that Acha was no more than forty or so at this time, which in turn would suggest that she cannot have been born much before 575.

Nothing is known of Acha’s death.

Marriage
Acha was married to Aethelferth of Bernicia. Reginald of Durham says that she was married before Aethelferth killed her father Aelle, expelled her brother Edwin, and took over the rule of Deira. I’ve argued elsewhere that the likely date for this annexation is 605. Aethelferth and Acha were certainly married before Oswald’s birth, so at latest they were married by autumn 603. How much earlier is open to speculation. As no children older than Oswald are mentioned, I think it likely that the marriage was not much before then.

Acha’s husband Aethelferth killed and deposed her father Aelle (Reginald of Durham), and spent the next twelve years trying to hunt down and murder her brother Edwin (Bede). How did Acha feel about this deadly conflict between her birth family and her husband?

Needless to say, history does not tell us, so Acha’s reaction is open to the imagination. A few things can be inferred. First, she evidently continued to have marital relations with Aethelferth for at least a further six or seven years, since their son Oswy was born in 611 or 612, and possibly up until around the time of Aethelferth’s death in 617 if the remaining sons in the lists are also her children. So it can safely be said that she didn’t leave Aethelferth, die of grief, rebel against him, or refuse to do her duty as his wife. Whether she was forced to stay with him, or was his wholehearted partner, or something in between, is open to speculation.

Second, Bede makes no mention of Acha during his description of Edwin’s reign. This may be simply because she was not germane to his history of the conversion of the English to Christianity. Or it may suggest that she died before Edwin’s reign began, or went into exile with her children. Either way, there’s no indication of a tearful reunion with her long-lost brother, unlike Hildeburgh’s return to her birth family after a similar conflict in the poem The Fight at Finnsburgh.

Third, although Bede says very little about Acha, he does not condemn her. He even suggests that Edwin would, or should, have been pleased to be succeeded by her son Oswald, “…it is fitting that so great a predecessor [Edwin] should have had so worthy a man of his own blood to maintain his religion and his throne.” (Book III, Chapter 6). This may be a slight indication that Acha’s conduct – whatever it was – during and/or after the conflict was not considered dishonourable.

Fourth, there is no record in any of the sources of Edwin attempting to persecute Aethelferth’s sons as Aethelferth had persecuted him. This may simply be absence of evidence, or it may be that he had insufficient power or influence to pursue them to Pictland or Dal Riada. Considering that Edwin’s armies were victorious as far afield as Anglesey, the Isle of Man and the West Saxons (Bede), it is perhaps unlikely that he was unable to pressurise kings in the north if he chose, but the possibility cannot be discounted. Or a further possibility may be that Edwin deliberately chose not to pursue his sister’s sons. In Old English culture the relationship between a maternal uncle and his nephews was a particularly significant one, with the uncle acting almost as a second father. Old English had special words for a maternal uncle (eam) and nephew (sweostersunu, ‘sister-son’), implying that the relationship was distinct from a paternal uncle (faedera) and nephew (nefu). It may be that Edwin was unwilling to violate this relationship – perhaps Acha was still alive? – and was prepared to leave his nephews alone unless directly threatened.

Fifth, there is no record of Aethelferth’s sons attempting to depose Edwin as he had deposed their father. Edwin’s recorded enemies were Mercia, Gwynedd and the West Saxons, not the realms of the far north. Again, this may just be absence of evidence. Or it may indicate that the kings of Pictland and Dal Riada weren’t inclined to take on Edwin’s Northumbria – though one would have thought they might at least have had a go at grabbing some land while he had his hands full in North Wales or Wessex. Is it possible that there was some sort of informal live-and-let-live agreement between Edwin and his sister’s sons during his reign? Was Acha perhaps acting as peace-weaver, putting a brake on the otherwise endless cycle of blood-feud and revenge? This is pure speculation on my part; but an interesting possibility.

Old English Riddles, part 2 – word puzzles

As well as the double entendre humorous riddles discussed here earlier, the Exeter Book contains riddles that have more of the character of a cryptic crossword. These word puzzles form the majority of the riddles in the collection. An everyday object or activity is described in a roundabout way and the listener (or reader) has to work out the intended meaning. Anyone who has read The Hobbit (which I suspect includes most readers of this blog) is familiar with the word-puzzle form of Old English riddles. Remember Bilbo playing Gollum at riddles for his life by the dark lake under the goblins’ den in the Misty Mountains? They take it in turns to tell riddles, and the stakes are high; if Gollum fails to answer one of Bilbo’s riddles he will show Bilbo the way out (and thus lose the prospect of a meal), and if Bilbo fails to answer Gollum will eat him. For example:

“A box without hinges, key or lid
Yet golden treasure inside is hid”
(Bilbo)

“It cannot be seen, cannot be felt
Cannot be heard, cannot be smelt
It lies behind stars and under hills
And empty holes it fills
It comes first and follows after
Ends life, kills laughter”
(Gollum)

--The Hobbit, by JRR Tolkien

(Answers at the foot of the post).

The Exeter Book Riddles clearly belong to the same tradition, and Tolkien may well have consciously drawn on them for the scene. For example:

Riddle 34:
“In the town I saw a creature
that feeds the cattle. It has many teeth
its beak is useful as it points down,
gently plunders and turns for home;
it searches for plants along the slopes
and always finds those not rooted firmly;
it leaves the living ones held by their roots,
quietly standing where they spring from the soil
brightly gleaming, blowing and glowing.”

Riddle 35:
“The dank earth, wondrously cold
first delivered me from her womb.
I know in my mind I wasn’t made
From wool, skilfully fashioned with skeins.
Neither warp nor weft wind about me
no thread thrums for me in the thrashing loom
nor does a shuttle rattle for me,
nor does the weaver’s rod bang and beat me.
Worms that decorate the yellow web
never spun for me with the skills of the Fates.
Yet all over the earth one man will tell another
that I’m an excellent garment.
Wise man, say what I am called.”

(Answers at the foot of the post)

These are two of the shorter riddles, and two for which a solution is fairly well agreed among scholars. The Exeter Book does not give solutions (perhaps, in true cryptic crossword fashion, they were to come in next week’s edition?), and consequently it is not known what the intended solutions were, if indeed there were intended to be ‘right’ answers at all. Quite a few of the riddles are still the subject of fierce academic debate.

Many of the Exeter Book riddles are complex and require the listener to have either a considerable amount of background knowledge or a talent for lateral thinking or both. Often there is more to them than simply finding a solution. For example, Riddle 35 above refers to the three supernatural female powers who wove the fates of men and gods, “wyrda craeftum”, translated as “…spun for me with the skills of the Fates.” In Norse mythology these three supernatural women were the Norns, in Greek mythology the Fates. In Old English fate or destiny is ‘wyrd’, from which we get the modern English word “weird”, and Shakespeare’s three Weird Sisters in the Scottish Play must surely reflect the same three figures. You don’t need this to solve the riddle, but it adds an extra layer to the image of weaving cloth, and the wearer of a mail coat would especially like the Three Ladies of Fate to be on his side as he goes into battle.

Riddles and riddling phrases such as these are closely related to a word form characteristic of Old English and Norse poetry, the kenning. ‘Kenning’ comes from the Old English ‘cen’ meaning ‘to know’ or ‘to make known’, now obsolete in English but still around as ‘ken’, ‘to know’, in Scots (as in the phrase, “Ye ken, lassie….” beloved of Scottish Romances.

Norse kennings can be very complex, requiring knowledge of one or more myths to decipher them. For example, ‘Sif’s hair’ as a kenning for gold, which refers to the story that Loki cut off the goddess Sif’s beautiful fair hair and the dwarves made her a replacement in gold. English kennings tend to be simpler. For example, in Beowulf the sea is referred to as ‘hron-rade’ (‘whale road’), ‘ganotes baed’ (gannet’s bath), and ‘swan-rade’ (‘swan’s road’), icicles are ‘wael-rapas’ (‘water ropes’), and the ribcage is ‘banhus’ (‘bone house’). Kennings such as these are condensed riddles, describing a familiar object in elliptical terms. Or, saying the same thing another way, riddles are extended kennings.

Unlike the double entendre riddles, these word puzzles don’t seem to be intended to have the audience rolling in the aisles. They display a delight in the flexibility of language and a recognition that even ordinary objects, such as a rake, can be described in poetic terms. Like a modern cryptic crossword, they also provide an intellectual challenge and an opportunity for both setter and solver to compete in knowledge and vocabulary. Riddle games like the one Bilbo plays with Gollum may well have been regular entertainments in halls and humbler houses alike (though, one hopes, in less desperate circumstances). Theresa Tomlinson uses retellings of some of the Exeter Book riddles to great effect in her novel Wolf Girl, where a monk, a princess, a cowherd and a weaver’s daughter use riddles to cheer themselves up, as well as acting as an analogy for the main plot of solving a mystery.



Answers:
Bilbo’s riddle: an egg
Gollum’s riddle: darkness
Riddle 34: a rake
Riddle 35: a mail coat

Old English Riddles - a thousand years of double entendre

“I am a wonderful help to women
The hope of something good to come
I harm only my slayer
I grow very tall, erect in a bed
I am shaggy down below
The lovely girl grabs my body, rubs my red skin
Holds me hard, claims my head.
That girl will feel our meeting!
I bring tears to her eyes!
What am I?”

(Answer at the foot of the post.)

This is Riddle 23 from the Exeter Book, also known as the Exeter Codex. The word ‘riddle’ derives from the same root as the Old English word ‘-raed’, meaning ‘counsel, explain, teach’. A riddle is typically a short poem describing a familiar object or activity in a cryptic way, and the listener (or reader, after they came to be written down) has to work out what is being described. They can be clever, witty, poetic, beautiful, almost mystical. As this one shows, they can also display a bawdy sense of humour. Seven of the Exeter Book Riddles are of the same form as Riddle 23.

English/British humour seems to be uncommonly fond of the risque double meaning. It’s a staple of seaside postcards, Carry On films, Frankie Howerd scripts, and innumerable other sitcoms, not to mention Shakespeare (“Thou wilt fall backward when thou hast more wit, wilt thou not Juliet?”). In English, it seems, any entendre can be double’d. It’s rather nice to see proof that this hasn’t changed in a thousand years. Incidentally, is this a characteristically British form of humour? I don’t associate it with US humour, but that may reflect the US material we see over here. Would any American readers care to comment?

The Exeter Book is believed to be the “…one large book in English verse about various subjects” which was bequeathed to the Exeter Cathedral Library by Leofric, first Bishop of Exeter, in 1072 and survives in Exeter Cathedral Library to this day. The date of its composition is not known, though it’s usually ascribed to the second half of the tenth century, say around 960 or so. The Exeter Book contains a remarkable variety of Old English verse, religious and secular, including The Seafarer, The Wanderer, The Husband’s Message, The Wife’s Lament, Widsith and, of course, the Riddles.

To me, the Exeter Book Riddles show early English culture in an attractive light. Clearly these were people who liked jokes as well as elegies, who valued mundane tasks as well as heroes, and who enjoyed intelligent word games but weren’t above a vulgar belly laugh. It’s worth remembering that the Exeter Book was a gift from a bishop to his cathedral library, presumably expected to be read mainly by monks and other clerics. Evidently at least one senior churchman of the time was no prim killjoy.

Do you have a favourite riddle?




Answer: an onion. Whatever were you thinking?