The Riddles of The Hobbit by Adam Roberts Page B

major problem in the US. SWG claims to be the first US bottled water company to directly address the growing consumer awareness of the benefits of calcium for healthier bones and teeth. 29
    Or, if you prefer: ‘Milk, rich in calcium, builds strong bones!’ Now I would hazard that I would not find many Old English scholars who could so much as give either of the above ‘answers’ the time of day, much less a mention in a critical edition of the
Exeter Book
. As far as I can see, the unwritten rules of scholarly investigation into OE riddles goes something like this: the point of the exercise is not really,ingeniously or otherwise,
to answer
these riddles
. Rather the point is one of imaginative entry into the mind of an Anglo-Saxon. That is to say, the modern-day scholar sets out to answer them in a way that is consistent with the world-view of an Anglo-Saxon mind. The first answer (ice) is the sort of answer a ninth-century Middlesaxon might think of. The second (the Thames seen from a hill under certain conditions of light) is an answer that, although it probably wouldn’t occur to Mr Ninth-Century, would at least be comprehensible to him. But the third answer (‘milk’) would make no sense to him at all. The fact that it makes perfect sense to a twenty-first-century dweller in Middlesex, like me, is not relevant. These, after all, are Anglo-Saxon, not modern English, riddles. 30
    But why do we conceive of riddles in this way? A ‘riddle’ (from
rædan
, to counsel, advise or teach), like a kenning, is a mode of knowing. Riddles are about giving the commonplace a conceptual shake to enable us to see it anew. Thinking of milk as a way in which water becomes bone is a perfectly good way of knowing. If Bilbo Baggins asks ‘what have I got in my pocket?’ and Gollum answers ‘molecules of air’, then Gollum has answered the question asked. Would it be fair for Bilbo to say ‘no … although I
do
have molecules of air on my pocket,
that’s not what was in my mind when I posed the question
’—? Surely, if Bilbo were minded to say such a thing, then he ought to have cut straight to the chase and asked a different question, along the lines of ‘I’m thinking of something: guess what it is’. But that sort of question would make a very poor riddle indeed. Or:
SPHINX:
You must answer my question or die! What walks on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon and three legs in the evening?
OEDIPUS:
Samuel Johnson’s well-trained dog.
SPHINX:
No! The answer is man, who crawls as a babe, walks tall in youth, and uses a stick in his dotage!
OEDIPUS:
You said morning, noon and evening; not infancy, youth and dotage.
SPHINX:
It’s metaphorical!
OEDIPUS:
Besides, a baby doesn’t walk on four legs. It crawls on its legs and arms. Arms aren’t legs.
SPHINX:
[
Utters a howling, glass-shattering shriek
]
Metaphorical
legs! Not literal legs! Legs in a
man-ner of speak-ing!
OEDIPUS:
Well,it’s half metaphor and half literal, isn’t it, since the baby uses two legs and two arms. So of the four legs stipulated, two are literally legs and two are only metaphorically legs.
SPHINX:
Git!
OEDIPUS:
So, which is it to be, literal or metaphorical?
SPHINX:
I’m not listening! I’m putting my wings over my ears! La! La! La!
OEDIPUS:
And the noontime walking on two legs is literal, not metaphorical. So your riddle mixes metaphor and literal application in an inconsistent manner.
SPHINX:
Shut up! Shut up!
OEDIPUS:
Of these two answers to the riddle, mine better fits the terms of the question.
SPHINX:
That’s not the point. When I asked the question I was not inviting you to answer it; I was demanding that you guess what was in my mind! I was thinking of man, not Samuel Johnson’s dog; you didn’t guess that. So you must die!
OEDIPUS:
That’s hardly fair. Call your supervisor; I want to have a word with her.
[
There’s a great deal of squawking and shrieking. The Over-Sphinx comes in.
]
OVER-SPHINX:
Can I help you?
OEDIPUS:
Yes.