Wrestling with Old English Riddles (7 and 8)

Less than monthly I know. Been working on Riddle 8 today - my second Old English riddle. It is a slow business and tiring but the fresh air that I feel blowing round the tough concrete physicality of the words is still evident.

               my coat makes no sound

[Before I go on, here is a spoiler alert in terms of riddle solutions by the way which I will be spilling in a few words' time.]

                                                                   as I tread on the ground

My last and first riddle, 7, was a silent swan, a mute, so everyone believes, but either swans have changed their flight patterns, wing depths and bone densities, or we have changed our tastes because while for the riddler this wing-song is sweet, for us today the words we would choose to describe that sound are quite different - some of them incorporated in my version, and I think quite making it, for what it is. Why is this? I know our tongues are less tolerant of bitterness than in bygone days - we sprinkle sugar on everything and so have quite limited our range in terms of taste - you can see it in all the wild foods which used to grace our tables but which we no longer like to eat - try a few - we now find them too bitter and this is why we let them go. Similarly, are our ears less settled with rougher sounds as we sprinkle the atmosphere with pop tunes, thus making songs like those of the swan's feathers much harsher and harder to hear as songs?

A similar question comes to mind with Riddle 8. Less unanimous than with Riddle 7 but still quite convincing is the proposed solution of a noisy nightingale, but once again our modern day reading of nightingale as sweet and beautiful is several times at odds with the riddle which in one line equates the bird with a less pleasant sound: a stormy shout - is this the same bird, or did they hear noise where we hear sweet? Alternatively, do we with our centuries of poetic nightingales fail to register noise as noise, plastering it over with a veneer of sweetness? Have our musical tastes changed so much? And there is some work with music history I also need to do in terms of other aspects of this riddle. But I know descriptions of sweet nightingales go way back to Anglo-Saxon times. I need to look into this more - I am not sure about it at all.

The other parallel I notice between these two riddles is the contrast with 'men' - in each riddle we have both heroes/warriors and the everyday sort. In Riddle 7 the humans are firmly landlocked unlike the soaring swan and in Riddle 8 they are possibly defiantly silent in contrast to the shouting bird. Interesting how the contrast with the bird lumps the two different groups of humans in one less than flattering heap.

The differences in the translation process? I still enjoy reading the words out and still seem to do it with a natural Swedish-Finnish accent (grace a my ex Swedish-Finnish lodger?), so that has not changed. However, I am much more au fait with the resources I can access now and more familiar with Anglo-Saxon syntax. I remember a great sense of freshness with Riddle 7. With Riddle 8, while the freshness is still palpable, I notice more a feeling of tiredness, and as well as struggling with word definitions and grammar, I am spending more time looking at readings, interpretations and discussions - (is critical work more tiring than 'straight' translation?). I am currently stuck because I need to read an article (on order) which seems to argue for a different reading for scericge (not actor/actress but nightingale). If this is really the case, it could have a substantial effect on the end of the riddle which seems in bit of a tangle at present, hence perhaps my tangled mind.

I can't post the two translations here (Riddle 7 being practically done, Riddle 8 less so) in case it limits their publication chances elsewhere. However, a visually manipulated draft of Riddle 7 reflecting some of its process of translation is appearing in the Amsterdam literary & arts journal Versal 12 in June - this is exciting as they have asked if they can translate my choice of a variety of typefaces into a variety of point sizes and layout options instead: http://www.versaljournal.org

                With one mouth    

Riddle 7 has one word spelt in a kind of olde english way - not a 'real' Old English word but a neat reminder of that language, which I hope I can replicate in another riddle so a reader of them realizes this is not a misprint....!


                                                      I talk in multiple tones