Wynken de Worde, printed in 1511, a little collection of riddles, translated from the French, like those propounded by King John to the Abbot, with the title _Demaundes Joyous_. By this link the present ballad is connected with a curious class of compositions, peculiar to the Middle Ages--the Disputations, or Wit-Combats, of which the dialogues of Salomon and Marcolf (existing in many languages) are the most familiar, and those of Salomon and Saturn (in Anglo-Saxon) the oldest preserved specimens. These dialogues, in their earlier shape grave contests for superiority in knowledge and wisdom, underwent a change about the twelfth century, by which they became essentially comic. The serious element, represented by Salomon, was retained after this, merely to afford material, or contrast, for the coarse humor of Marcolf, whose part it is, under the character of a rude and clownish person, "facie deformis et turpissimus," to turn the sententious observations of the royal sage into ludicrous parodies.[1]
The hint, and possibly a model, for these disputations may have been found in Jewish tradition. We learn from Josephus, (_Antiquities_, Book VIII. ch. v.) that Hiram of Tyre and Solomon sent one another sophistical puzzles and enigmas to be solved, on condition of forfeiting large sums of money in case of failure, and that Solomon's riddles were all guessed by Abdæmon of Tyre, or by Abdimus, his son, for authorities differ. This account coincides with what we read in _Chronicles_, (Book II. ch. ii. 13, 14,) of the man sent by Hiram to Solomon, who, besides a universal knowledge of the arts, was skilful "to find out every device that might be put to him" by cunning men--that is, apparently, "hard questions," such as the Queen of Sheba came to prove Solomon with, (1 Kings, x. i.) some account of which is given in the _Talmud_.--See, on the whole subject, Kemble's masterly essay on _Salomon and Saturn_, printed by the Ælfric Society: also Grässe, _Sagenkreise des Mittelalters_, p. 406-471; the Grimms' _Kinder-und-Hausmärchen_, vol. iii. p. 236, ed. 1856; F. W. V. Schmidt, _Taschenbuch deutscher Romanzen_, p. 82.
Examples of the riddle-song pure and simple will be found under _Captain Wedderburn's Courtship_.