(Medium Ævum xv [1946], 48–54), comparing Frag. 117 of Empedocles:
- Once I was a young man, maiden,
plant, bird, and mute fish cast ashore.
This, of course, is not a riddle, but an expression of cyclic metamorphosis. Just how an Anglo-Saxon came to know Empedocles is not clear.
- s67 ##
67 (K-D 95)
This, the last riddle in the Exeter book, is unhappily the most difficult. The text is complete but almost certainly corrupt, and any attempt to translate it is only a desperate hope, even after the experts have done their best with emendations.
I am a lordly, thing known to nobles,
and often I rest, famous among peoples,
the mighty and the lowly; I travel widely
and to me first a stranger remains to my friends
the delight of plunderers, if I am to have
success in the cities or bright reward.
Now wise men exceedingly love
my presence. To many I shall
declare wisdom. There they speak not,
none the world over. Though now the sons of men
who live on the earth eagerly seek
the tracks that I make. I sometimes conceal
those paths of mine from all mankind.
Perhaps Moon, perhaps Wandering Minstrel, perhaps Riddle. If the last, this is “a kind of monkish colophon to the collection” (Wyatt). Mrs. von Earhardt-Siebold (MLN lxii [1947], 558–59), taking “the delight of plunders” as a kenning for Quill-pen, would make that a clue to the solution.
