Free The Riddles of The Hobbit by Adam Roberts Page B

three legs in the evening?’) and of Samson’s riddle in the Bible (‘out of the strong came forth sweetness’). These puzzles encode the human sense that the divine is a mystery with which we must wrestle if we hope to do more than die like a beast.
    The Old English poem
Solomon and Saturn
(possibly composed during King Alfred’s reign, in the later ninth-century) includes a riddle contest between the pagan king called Saturn and the Christianised figure of the Biblical Solomon. It is a text in two parts, and althoughthe second is most relevant to my purpose here—largely consisting, as it does, of an exchange of riddles between the two deuteragonists—the first has its place too. In part 1 Saturn, having searched through Libya, Greece and India hoping to find ‘truth’ has come back disappointed. He asks for Solomon’s help, and is accordingly given a detailed account of the
Pater Noster
, going in detail through the individual letters that make up the prayer. He does this because these letters, represented as richly ornamented runes, individually contain divine power. I will come back to this sense of the power of the individual letter in my next chapter. The longer
Solomon and Saturn II
(327 lines, as compared to part I’s 169) is a straightforward riddle contest. 23 In the words of Dieter Bitterli: ‘the two interlocutors pose and answer several enigmatic questions, including at least two proper riddles whose subjects appear to be “book” and “old age”.’ 24 Another perhaps more directly pertinent example is the Icelandic saga of King Heidrek—Old Norse rather than Old English, a favourite of Tolkien’s, and a book later translated into English by Tolkien’s son, Christopher. 25 King Heidrek, a powerful king of men, happens to have a grievance against a fellow called ‘Gestumblindi’. The king sends him word ‘to come and be reconciled, if he cared for his life’; and Gestumblindi, doing so, proposes a riddle-contest.
    But this fellow’s name ought to alert us straight away that all is not as it seems: for ‘Gestum Blindi’ means ‘Guest (who is) blind’—
guest
in the old sense of the word, ‘stranger’. The blind stranger, if we know our Norse myth, puts us in mind of Odin: one-eyed, a wanderer, fond of riddles. At any rate, rather than face the judgment of Heidrek’s counsellors, ‘Gestumblindi’ enters into a riddle contest with the king, and asks him:
    If only I still had
    what I had yesterday!
    discover what it was;
    it hurts mankind
    it hinders speech
    yet speech is inspired by it
    Ponder this riddle.
    The king replies ‘Góð er gáta þín, Gestumblindi, getit er þessar’—‘Good are (these)
gáta
of thine, Gestumblindi; guessed them I have’; or in lessYoda-like English, ‘your riddle is a good one, Gestumblindi; but I have guessed it!’ This is a line of verse, presumably the stock way of saying that you have solved a riddle, and the king repeats it after almost all the riddles he is asked. (The answer to the ‘if only I still had’ riddle is: ‘ale’)
    I travelled from my home
    And from my home I went
    I saw the road of road;
    There was a road underneath
    And a road overhead,
    And on every sides there were roads.
    Ponder this riddle,
    O prince Heidrek!
    Góð er gáta þín, Gestumblindi, getit er þessar
! ‘You passed over a bridge across a river, and the road of the river was beneath you, but birds flew above your head and flew past on your either side, and that was their road.’
    What was the drink
    That I drank yesterday?
    Neither wine nor water,
    Neither mead nor ale,
    It wasn’t any kind of food,
    Yet I came away thirstless.
    Ponder this riddle,
    O prince Heidrek!
    Góð er gáta þín, Gestumblindi, getit er þessar
! ‘You lay down in shade where dew had collected on the grass, and with this you cooled your lips and satisfied your thirst.’
    Who is that shrill one
    on hard ways walking,
    paths he has passed before;
    many are his kisses
    for of