_30_ _Then take the knife and put it into the liquid._
1. The sudden stitch in the side (or rheumatic pain) is here thought of as coming from the arrows shot by the "mighty women"--the witches.
21-28. These irregular lines are imitated from the original.
[Critical editions: Wyatt, Tupper, and Trautmann. Wyatt (Boston, 1912, Belles Lettres edition) used as a basis for these translations. His numbering is always one lower than the other editions, since he rejects one riddle.
Date: Probably eighth century for most of them.
For translations of other riddles than those here given see Brooke, _English Literature from the Beginning to the Norman Conquest_, Pancoast and Spaeth, _Early English Poems_, and Cook and Tinker, _Selections from Old English Poetry_.
There is no proof as to the authorship. There were probably one hundred of them in the original collection though only about ninety are left. Many of them are translations from the Latin. Some are true folk-riddles and some are learned.
In the riddles we find particulars of Anglo-Saxon life that we cannot find elsewhere. The _Cambridge History of English Literature_ sums their effect up in the following sentence: "Furthermore, the author or authors of the Old English riddles borrow themes from native folk-songs and saga; in their hands inanimate objects become endowed with life and personality; the powers of nature become objects of worship such as they were in olden times; they describe the scenery of their own country, the fen, the river, and the sea, the horror of the untrodden forest, sun and moon engaged in perpetual pursuit of each other, the nightingale and the swan, the plow guided by the 'gray-haired enemy of the wood,' the bull breaking up clods left unturned by the plow, the falcon, the arm-companion of æthelings--scenes, events, characters familiar in the England of that day."]
What man is so clever, so crafty of mind, As to say for a truth who sends me a-traveling? When I rise in my wrath, raging at times, Savage is my sound. Sometimes I travel, 5 Go forth among the folk, set fire to their homes And ravage and rob them; then rolls the smoke Gray over the gables; great is the noise, The death-struggle of the stricken. Then I stir up the woods And the fruitful forests; I fell the trees, 10 I, roofed over with rain, on my reckless journey, Wandering widely at the will of heaven. I bear on my back the bodily raiment, The fortunes of folk, their flesh and their spirits, Together to sea. Say who may cover me, 15 Or what I am called, who carry this burden?