Emotional Anthologies: The Exeter Riddles and the Psalms

ABSTRACT The Old English riddles run the gamut in terms of emotional and rhetorical range, constituting a kind of micro-anthology within the wider anthology of the Exeter Book. They explore an assortment of stances, including not only of lament and celebration, but humiliation, anger, triumph, fear, and more. In doing so, they may channel the Psalms, as the emotional anthology which most dominated early medieval English culture. In his Expositio Psalmorum, Cassiodorus analysed the rhetoric of the Psalms in strongly emotional terms, and this chapter experiments with approaching the Riddles with an eye to his definitions of demonstrative, judicial, and deliberative oratory, each associated with different emotional dynamics. It closes with reflections on how Riddle 1 introduces the Exeter collection, contemplating how this text hints at the emotionally generative capacities of literature, as well as how it stages the tensions created by imbuing nonhuman speakers with psalmic voices. In playing with such a powerful literary model and set of emotional scripts, the Riddles foreground the ways in which literature can create new and surprising forms for emotional experience.

religious and wisdom literature. 2 Some riddles speak with a plaintive first-person voice, recounting suffering, while others laconically describe a mysterious wonder in the third person, and still others amass an abundance of quickfire observational statements.Many fit none of these descriptions.Given that the Latin enigma tradition was always closely connected with language-learning and poetic compositional practice, it makes sense for the vernacular riddles to aim to exemplify Old English poetic art, aiming for some degree of generic range in the process. 3t the same time as varying their generic affiliations and rhetorical modes, the Exeter Riddles model a range of emotions.Indeed, in advancing his taxonomy, Borysławski builds on Tupper's earlier groupings of riddles by emotions described, identifying the display of "heroic valour and prowess", "joy of good works", "love of family and friends", "grim hatred and malice towards mankind", "loneliness of celibate and exile", and "suffering and inability of wreaking revenge". 4This paper further explores how the Riddles run the emotional gamut.It does so in the spirit of Mary C. Flannery's call to embrace literary texts as sources in the history of emotions, not simply in the traditional historiographic sense of "source" as a witness to a culture, but in Sarah McNamer's sense of a generative "source"a "font" or a "wellspring" which creates new possibilities for what can be thought and felt. 5The Exeter Riddles are generative in their handling of emotion: not only do they aim to instigate readerly experiences of confusion and surprise, but they challenge a reader to recognise potentially unfamiliar forms of emotion.They locate emotion where the audience might not be used to seeing it, such as in the experiences of nonhuman and more-than-human entities, as well as in the societally overlooked experiences of certain groups of people, such as enslaved Welsh people. 6Some access what Irving Jr. has called the "draftee point of view", that of a fighter pressed unwillingly into conflict, in contrast to the deliberate acts of valour more familiar from heroic poetry. 7urthermore, in their depictions of emotional outpouring, the Riddles specifically seem to rework the Psalms, reflecting the tendencies of the wider vernacular poetic corpus.Old English verse shows extensive psalmic influence in its handling of emotion, as scholars in recent years have increasingly emphasised.Jane Toswell considers laments such as The Wanderer in a psalmic context (building on Elisa Mangina's work), as well as looking outwards to the full range of Old English poetic genres, including praise poetry such as Caedmon's Hymn and The Death of Edgar.She stresses that the Psalms are "the biblical text which engages directly and constantly with human emotion, with joy and sorrow, misery and ecstasy", such that they give rise to a similar emotional diversity in the poetry they inspire. 8Alice Jorgensen makes a parallel case for the importance of the Psalms' reception in early medieval England, placing particular emphasis on exemplarity 2 Borysławski, Old English Riddles, 101-19.3 See Borysławski, Old English Riddles, 41-75, esp.45-46.See also Orchard, Riddle Tradition, xiii-xvi; Soper, Life Course, 14-15.4   Tupper, Riddles, xc. 5 Flannery, "Introduction", 3, after McNamer, "Literariness of Literature", 116.On emotions in early medieval English texts see Jorgensen, "Introduction".6   On Welsh slaves and slave-traders in the Riddles, see Brady, "Dark Welsh".On the sexual desire of the enslaved Welsh woman in Riddle 10 (in Orchard's numbering, on which see note 31 below), see notably Rulon-Miller, "Sexual Humor"; Neville, "Speaking the Unspeakable".7 Irving, "Heroic Experience", 206-7, and see also Denno, "Oppression and Voice".8 Toswell, "Psalm Genres", 223, building on Mangina, "Selfhood and the Psalms", and see previously also Hollahan, "Anglo-Saxon Use of the Psalms", 136-67.See also Toswell, Anglo-Saxon Psalter, 283-64; "Structures of Sorrow", and further Shepherd, "Scriptural Poetry"; Harris, "Happiness and the Psalms".Zacher has also argued for the Psalms' influence on The Wife's Lament ('Looking beyond the Lyrical "I"').See also, in this special issue, Leneghan, "Beowulf", on psalmic models for divine wrath.
and emotional learning, asserting the Psalter's status as "a shared and ubiquitous text with vast potential to shape vocabularies, understandings, and indeed feelings and performances of emotion". 9The Psalms' widespread influence on the expression of emotion in Old English poetry should come as no surprise.The Psalter was the most readily available text in the period, both within religious houses and without, and was treated by Cassiodorus, followed by Bede, as an exemplary model for rhetorical art. 10 Monks and nuns were required to memorise the Psalter as a first step towards Latin literacy and to recite psalms each day and night in the Divine Office. 11Given the monastic contexts within which Old English poetry was being copied and quite possibly composed, the major impact of the Psalms on this poetry's emotional landscape makes sense.
On occasion in the course of this scholarly exploration, the Old English riddles have been found to parallel a small number of psalms, notably "the holy jesting, the sacred riddling of the abecedarian psalms". 12Certainly, late antique and early medieval authors saw the Psalms to have strongly enigmatic elements.When Bede defines enigma, he provides an example from the Psalms. 13Similarly, Cassiodorus' earlier commentary on the Psalms stressed the importance of enigma as means of hidden signification in these texts. 14By the late seventh century, the Psalms would have long been seen as rich in riddling strategiesmanifestations of God's obscure ways, through which humanity can only see "in enigmate" (1 Corinthians 13:12). 15The poets of the Riddles seem (on metrical grounds) to have worked mostly in the eighth century, 16 and may well have worked in a climate sensitive to enigmatic aspects of scripture.
But the Riddles also directly engage with the Psalms in ways which go beyond a shared enigmatic mode.References to specific psalms in specifical riddles have been detected by scholars previously, and a quick examination of two of these moments will serve to highlight the range of emotional models available in the Psalms for the riddle-poets to draw upon.Megan Cavell has argued recently that Riddle 46 is best solved as "paten" and read in the context of the medical use of patens, written on and prayed over (including through the use of psalms) in order to cure sickness.This text describes the paten calling out "Heal me, saviour of souls" ("Gehaele mec, helpend gaesta", 5), a reference to the beginning of Psalm 11 ("Save me, O Lord", "Salvum me fac, Domine", 11:2). 17n a very different context to this cry for aid, Murphy detects a "deep familiarity with the language of the Psalms" in how Riddle 38 ("Creation") adapts its source, one of Aldhelm's enigmata: the Old English poet transforms "a taste of nectar" ("nectaris haustus", Enigima 100, 31) into "honeycomb" blended "with honey" ("beo-bread … mid hunige", 59).This combination echoes Psalm 18, a hymn of praise, which presents God's ordinances as "more to be desired than gold and many precious stones and sweeter than honey and the honeycomb" ("desiderabilia super aurum et lapidem pretiosum multum et dulciora super mel et favum", 18:11).Nearly all Old English glossed Psalters use the language of beo-bread and hunig to gloss these lines. 18So, in this riddle, celebration of the abundance of Creation is heightened through psalmic language, while the paten of Riddle 46 uses it to cry for help.Each text calls upon the Psalms to heighten their respective postures of petition and celebration.
In terms of the whole collection, the Riddles parallel the Psalms in modelling a great range of emotional and rhetorical stances.This article will consider the Riddles' emotional variety at an intersection with their use of rhetoric, "the art charged with generating and swaying emotion", as Copeland has recently emphasised. 19For our purposes, a helpful lens for exploring how the Riddles construct and anticipate emotions presents itself in Cassiodorus' analysis of psalmic rhetoric, which he couches in strongly emotional terms.His Expositio Psalmorum seems to have circulated widely in the period and influenced Bede. 20The riddle-poets may not have been influenced directly by Cassiodorus, but their manipulation of rhetoric works towards emotional effects in a manner which parallels the Psalms, and which Cassiodorus theorised in interesting ways.Take, for instance, his definition of a figura ("figure"): Figura est, sicut nomine ipso datur intellegi, quaedam conformatio dictionis a communione remota, quae interioribus oculis uelut aliquid uultuosum semper offertur, quam traditione maiorum ostentationem et habitum possumus nuncupare.
A 'figure', as may be understood from the term itself, is a configuration of a phrase beyond common use that is always presented, like a certain facial expression, to the inner eye.Following in the tradition of our forbears we can call it a (self-) presentation or demeanor. 21e comparison to one human face responding to another allows Cassiodorus to present "the text on the page as a kind of proxy for human speech, and the figure itself as the textual counterpart of direct emotional expression between speaker and hearer". 22his is characteristic of his sense of reading and writing as fuelled byand generative ofemotional investments. 23oreover, Cassiodorus' approach to rhetoric allows us to move beyond the well-worn generic categories of lament and thanksgiving when thinking about psalmic and poetic genres.Cassiodorus identifies three genres of rhetoric, channelling classical theories: the demonstrative or epideictic type (that which apportions praise or blame), the judicial (that which is suited to courtroom pleading), and the deliberative (that which is appropriate for political assemblies and aims to persuade or dissuade). 24These three types were known in early medieval England through other sources (such as Isidore), but Cassiodorus maps them in a sustained way onto the Psalms.In practice, the demonstrative or epideictic mode tends to dovetail with songs of thanksgiving, centred on emotions of joy and gratitude, while the judicial corresponds most naturally to songs of lament, enumerating wrongs and humiliations in a manner appropriate for the courtroom.We can trace parallel rhetorical efforts in the Riddlesthe judicial mode can even be found to characterise several of the sexual riddles, which are not usually seen as laments, but are preoccupied with experiences of coercion, intimidation, and transgression.Finally, considering the presence of a deliberative mode in the Riddles helps us to contemplate what might be termed advisory riddles, suggesting a course of action.Cassiodorus stresses that David composed the Psalms with different speakers in mind, seeing the texts to practice a kind of ethopoeia, "when we bring in someone to make a speech" ("quoties aliquem introducimus ad loquendum"). 25As such, single psalms can contain multiple voices, with the Psalter constituting a project of "impersonation and performance". 26Similarly, individual riddles can contain multiple voices and modes of speech.This article will be structured as a series of case studies, with each section exploring two or three riddles which operate mostly in a demonstrative, deliberative, or judicial vein, and identifying others which could be seen to participate in these modes.In doing so, it provides an account of the Riddles which stresses their emotional variety and suggests their use of the Psalms as a model, restoring the collection to its place in a vernacular poetic tradition permeated with influence from these texts.At the close of this article, I turn to focus on how the Riddles themselves meditate on poetry as something which moves, in the sense of instigating emotional engagement. 27Riddle 1 encourages consideration of the emotional stakes of the ensuing collection, preparing the audience for an encounter with the Riddles as works of art which, as Mary Carruthers puts it, "do not just simulate or represent human feelings but produce them in those who are experiencing the work". 28At the same time, this opening riddle also hints that emotional and spiritual experiences are not solely the preserve of humans.Attending to these dimensions of Riddle 1 allows us to appreciate the work done by the rest of the collection at the intersection of emotion, morality, and exemplarity.

Epideixis, Thanksgiving, and Celebration
Many of the Exeter Riddles work primarily in an epideictic or demonstrative mode.Most are oriented around the delivery of praise, although, traditionally, blame can also be apportioned through this kind of speech.I suggest the following riddles participate in an epideictic mode, albeit many with some ambivalence.I include a suggested solution for each simply for the purpose of aiding a reader's memory of these texts, given that numbering varies with editions: 29 As can be seen, these more demonstrative riddles are spread across the collection.In approaching these, we might consider Cassiodorus' comments on Psalm 28, the first psalm of praise: Est enim totus psalmus Spiritus sancti laude plenissimus et per uarias allusiones praeconia eius maiestatis exsoluens.Hoc est quod oratores dicunt demonstratiuum genus, quando per huiusmodi descriptionem ostenditur aliquis atque cognoscitur.Sed quid de illo a quoquam congrue poterat dici, nisi quod de se ipse dignatur effari?
The whole psalm is teeming with praise of the holy Spirit, and by various allusions it issues proclamations of His majesty.This is what orators call the demonstrative type, when someone is revealed and acknowledged by descriptions of this kind.But what could anyone say appropriately about Him, except what He deigns to utter about Himself? 30 In sympathy with this psalm's project, as understood by Cassiodorus, the Riddles often reveal their subjects through proclamations of wondrous attributes.Like the psalms in their panegyric mode, they practice a kind of characterismos -"an explanation or description which brings some absent thing or person before the mind's eye" ("informatio uel descriptio, quae siue rem absentem siue personam spiritalibus oculis subministrat"). 31n doing so, they often share certain motifs with psalm verses dominantly concerned with praise of God and Creation.
The dewy ground gave birth to me from freezing innards; I was not made from a bristly fleece of wool; no fibre extends, nor noisy threads spring about; nor do Chinese worms weave me from their saffron fluff; nor am I plucked from wheels, nor battered with the hard comb; yet still I will be called 'piece of clothing' in common speech: I am not afraid of arrows drawn from long quivers.
The wet ground, wondrously cold, first gave birth to me from its innards; I know that I was not worked from woolly fleece, from hairs, through high skill in the thoughts of the mind.There are no wound wefts for me, nor do I have warps, nor under the threat of tumult does a thread sound out in me, nor does a noisy shuttle glide in me, nor does a slay strike me anywhere.Worms did not weave me with the skills of fate, those who decorate with trappings fine yellow fabric; however, I will be called widely over the earth a hopeful garment for heroes.Say, one clever in ingenious thoughts, with truthful words, with firmly wise speech, what this garment could be.
The Old English text introduces a more sequential narrative structure, beginning with the speaker's "first" emergence ["aerist", 2b]. 32It also integrates a celebratory language of wonder and intellectual skill in the allusions to the speaker's own self-knowledge, other kinds of skilful craft that are possible, and the solver's mental efforts.It omits Aldhelm's reference to a hypothetical fear of darts, but adds a description of the mailcoat's giving hope to heroes (11).
As a result of these changes, Riddle 33 begins to sound more like a meditation on the wonder of flesh itself.Flesh is described as a garment elsewhere in Old English (as in the compound flaesc-hama), and is, like the mailcoat, drawn "from the slime of the earth" ("de limo terrae", Genesis 2:7).This association is heightened by the poet's excision of the last line of the Latin, which narrows the field of possibility to dart-deflecting metal.The riddle instead draws closer to the general language of the crafted body in psalms such as 138, whose speaker describes their physical shaping: Ecce tu, Domine, cognovisti omnia novissima et antiqua: tu formasti me et posuisti super me manum tuam.(138:5) Behold, O Lord, you have known all things, the newest and those of old: you have formed me and have laid your hand upon me.
Compare Riddle 33's strongly chronological scope, along with its description of the marvellous yet mysterious skill with which it was made.Along with Aldhelm's enigma, all three texts share imagery of emergence from a womb: the psalmic voice rejoices "you have protected me from my mother's womb" ("suscepisti me de utero matris meae", 138:13).But where Aldhelm's text plays with textile imagery to make the point that a mailcoat is commonly referred to as "clothing" ("vestis", 6), the Old English riddle's epistemological focus activates the biblical associations of humans being divinely fashioned from clay, key to Psalm 138: Non est occultatum os meum abs te quod fecisti in occulto, et substantia mea in inferioribus terrae (138:15) My bone is not hidden from you, which you have made in secret, and my substance in the lower parts of the earth.
So, the riddle shares with Psalm 138 both its more developed sense of chronological personal history and its language of secrecy and knowing, both of which may conspire to encourage an audience to wonder whether Riddle 33 alludes to God's first shaping of Adam's body.
Compounding this attention to knowledge and revelation, Psalm 138 builds to a penultimate verse which cries out: "Prove me, O God, and know my heart; examine me, and know my paths" ("Proba me, Deus, et scito cor meum; interroga me et cognosce semitas meas", 138:23).The Old English riddle-speaker also calls for recognition, by the solver: "Say […] what this garment could be" ("Saga […] hwaet þis gewaede sy", 13-14).This is just one iteration of "the frequent vernacular challenge to 'say what I am called'", a distinctive feature of the Old English riddles. 33Compared to the intimacy between God and speaker in Psalm 138, the challenge closing Riddle 33and other Exeter riddlessuggests that the speaker has less confidence that they will be known by those they address.The speaker of the psalm is confident in God's knowledge of their experience, announcing "you have foreseen all my ways" ("omnes vias meas praevidisti", 138:4).In Riddle 33, the relationship between humanity and its crafted objects lacks the easy intimacy of God's relationship with the bodies he crafts.But the speaker of the psalm does utter a kind of plea for investigation -"interroga me"and in this we see more of the kind of attention-desiring, beseeching posture which Riddle 33 adopts.
Certain aspects of the vernacular history of this psalm add threads to its relationship with the riddle.So, the vernacular psalters commonly use "of innoðe" to render the "de utero" of the Latin (138:13), paralleling the "of his innaþe" of the riddle (2a), which also reflects the masculine gender of wong (1a). 34They also often use wis-dom for scientia (including in the Vespasian Psalter), paralleling the "wis-faest" speech of the imagined solver (13a).None of these echoes lock Riddle 33 into an overly close textual relationship with Psalm 138, but the way the crafted body is described in the psalm nonetheless may have been part of an intellectual climate which influenced the riddle-poet.
In a similar vein, those riddles which point to a water solution may channel psalm verses which celebrate the powers of water under God's direction.We find a mutual emphasis on the social and political importance of water, highlighting how different communities depend upon it.At times, Latin enigmata with solutions relating to water do emphasise that certain societies rely on their relationship with water; so, Alcuin's concatenating sequence of mini-riddles, the Disputatio Pippini, describes the sea as "the divider of territories" ("divisor regionum"), while the water of a riddle from the Lorsch collection claims to rise up from a heavily populated "sail-crossed sea" ("mare velivolo", 1), and ends by boasting that it "can produce a rich harvest for nations" ("valet populis spissam producere messem", 7). 35Water offers an opportunity to contemplate the whole earth and what divides and unites different societies, and the Latin riddles do take this up.However, the Old English riddles consider these issues in a manner which seems to owe more to the Psalms, especially when they express the human emotional experiences of awe and enjoyment attached to water.Riddle 39 reads as follows, in the wake of a lost opening: … edniwu; þaet is moddor monigra cynna, þaes selestan, þaes sweartestan, þaes deorestan þaes þe dryhta bearn ofer foldan sceat to gefean agen.5 Ne magon we her in eorþan owiht lifgan, nymðe we brucen þaes þa bearn doð.Þaet is to geþencanne þeoda gehwylcum, wis-faestum werum, hwaet seo wiht sy.
… renewed; that is the mother of many peoples, the best, the darkest, the dearest, that the sons of men have to be glad of over the surface of the land.We can in no way live here on earth unless we enjoy what those children do.That is something to think on, for every nation, for men firmly wise, what that creature may be.
The reference to the blackness of water (3b) itself has psalmic resonances, as God can be found surrounded by "dark waters" ("tenebrosa aqua", 17:12) when he flies on the wings of the winds.Moreover, this short text includes two references to nations or peoples (cynn, 2b, þeod, 8b), and two to descendants ("dryhta bearn", 4b, "bearn", 7b).The psalms similarly meditate on the support and pleasure provided to different peoples by waters, often taking a global perspective. 36Although the Old English Metrical Psalms seem to have been composed much later than the majority of the Riddles, they often contain language which parallels earlier gloss traditions, while having the benefit of reading as continuous verse: 37 Beoð Godes streames gode waetere faeste gefylde, þanan feorh-nere findað fold-buend, swa him faegere oft gegearewadest, God lifigende.Waeter yrnende waestme tyddrað; maenige on moldan manna cynnes on cneorisse cende weorðað, and blissiað, blowað and growað þurh dropunge deawes and renes.(64: 10-11)   God's rivers are filled with pure water, in which earth's dwellers find life-sustaining nourishment, such as the living God has often graciously provided for them.The running waters give rise to fruits; multitudes of mankind are propagated on earth in generations, and they rejoice, grow, and flourish through the dropping dew and rain. 38e heavy emphasis on different generations of peoples across the face of the earth resembles that found in Riddle 39.Later in the Exeter Book, the more elaborate Riddle 80 draws even closer to wording of Psalm 64 and vernacular traditions of glossing and translation.Although damaged at points, these lines are clearly preoccupied with the global reach of humanity's enjoyment of water: Hio biþ eadgum leof, earmum getaese; freolic, sellic, fromast on swiþost, gifrost ond graedgost grund-bedd trideþ, þaes þe under lyfte aloden wurde ond aelda bearn eagum sawe, swa þaet wuldor wifeð, world-bearna maegen, […] worulde wlitigað, waestmum tydreð, firene dwaesceð … oft utan beweorpeð anre þecene, wundrum gewlitegad, geond wer-þeode, þaet wafiað weras ofer eorþan [.]  ( 28-35, 38-42)   She is loved by the rich, an advantage to the poor; beautiful, excellent, she treads the ground, foremost and strongest, greediest and most voracious, of all that has grown up under the sky and the descendants of men have seen with eyes, so that she weaves glory, the strength of the children of the world […].She makes the world beautiful, gives rise to fruits, washes away sin … often covers over with a single roof, wonderfully decorated, around the nation, so that men over the earth are wonder-struck.
Again, we see an emphasis on the way water draws diverse peoples together in appreciation, including a reference to a "nation" (wer-þeode, 41b).Even this passage's pairing of rich and poor (28) has a psalmic resonance, not specifically in Psalm 64, but elsewhere when the entire world is addressed, "both rich and poor together" ("simul in unum dives et pauper", 48:3). 39In their global scope and their interest in the way that water, under God's direction, unites peoples in a common experience, Riddles 39 and 80 may owe some inspiration to the Psalms.Indeed, Cassiodorus is interested in the psalmic language of people, detecting an inclusive sense of gentes in the Psalms, capable of signifying all people within the Church. 40As Thacker has recently demonstrated, this aspect of Cassiodorus' thought seems to have been important to Bede, with gentes "resonant in particular of the barbarian peoples, and peoples like them from outside the Roman empire", and the Psalms offering a "communal language" for a Christian populus Dei, with the distinction between the chosen people and the barbarian outsiders dissolved. 41The way the riddles handle water achieves a similar effect, giving a global impression of humanity's experiences of wonder and worship.Numerous other riddles in a celebratory vein may be compared to praise psalms, but due to constraints of space I will only briefly suggest some here.Riddle 2 ("Bell") describes a suffering-yet-eager servant, paradoxically obeying its own retainer (the bell-ringer), capturing some of the complex mutuality between the Lord-as-helper and the Lord's servant in the psalms. 42Riddle 4, a triumphant speech by the sun, boasts "often I burn the living" ("Oft ic cwice baerne", 2a) in a manner consonant with the sun's description in Psalm 18 ("[...] and there is no one that can hide himself from his heat"; "[...] nec est qui se abscondat a calore eius", 18:7).The reed of Riddle 58 grows in a protected, watery dwelling place, and Psalm 22 develops in a parallel manner: initially, the speaker reports (in the prose version from the Paris Psalter) that the Lord "sustained me by the water's edge" ("fedde me be waetera staðum", 22:2), and later thanks God, declaring "you made ready in my presence an exceedingly broad table" ("Þu gegearwodest beforan me swiðe bradne beod", 22:6). 43imilarly, the reed grows "aet mere-faroþe" ("at the water's edge", Riddle 58, 2a) and lives to "speak across the mead bench" ("ofer meodu-bence … sprecan", 9).Several of the riddles which describe or invoke weapons, such as Riddle 53 ("weapons rack", or possibly "battering ram") and Riddle 76 ("Horn"), might usefully be viewed with an eye to how psalmic speakers can become weaponssuch as that of Psalm 17, appealing to God "who teaches my hands to war, and made my arms like a brass bow" ("qui docet manus meas ad proelium, et posuit ut arcum aereum brachia mea", 17:35).The bow of Riddle 21 is after all comparably "shaped for strife" ("on gewin sceapen", 2b), although this text is largely voiced in a more judicial vein of complaint, as I suggest below.The boundaries between different kinds of rhetorical and emotional mode are just as porous in the Riddles as in the Psalms.

Judicial Rhetoric, Persecution, and Confession
For Aristotle, judicial or forensic oratory was appropriate for a court of law, with speakers advancing an accusation and defence or claim and counter-plea.When Cassiodorus reworks the category, he places more emphasis on penitence and use of concessiothe admission of guilt and throwing of oneself on the mercy of the Judge. 44In particular, he sees the seven penitential psalms (6, 31, 37, 50, 101, 129, 142 in the Vulgate) as constituting: quoddam iudiciale genus, in quo reus conspectibus iudicis praesentatus assistit, peccatum suum lacrimis diluens et confitendo dissoluens, summum genus defensionis afferens, quo se ipse condemnat.a sort of judicial genre, in which the defendant appears before the sight of the Judge, atoning for his sin with tears, and dissolving it by confessing it.He offers the best type of defence by condemning himself. 45ssiodorus advances his theory of this genre when analysing Psalm 6, whose speaker begs to be released from their suffering of mind and broken-boned body (6:3), asking how long their plight will go on (6:4).They continue: Laboravi in gemitu meo.Lavabo per singulas noctes lectum meum, lacrimis stratum meum rigabo.Turbatus est prae ira oculus meus.Inveteravi inter omnes inimicos meos.(6:7-8) I have laboured in my groanings.Every night I will wash my bed, I will water my couch with my tears.My eye is troubled through anger.I have grown old among all my enemies.
Cassiodorus interprets the references to bed and couch here as sexual, referring to the lecherous sins of the body. 46Similarly experiencing suffering, persecution, and/or hostile circumstancesnot without some dark allusions to sexthe following riddles may owe something to this rhetorical tradition in the Psalms: This section will mainly explore Riddle 77 and Riddle 3. It will draw some comparisons with the penitential psalms that capture Cassiodorus' interest in their judicial rhetoric and use of confessio, but will also range more widely, considering various psalm verses that stress persecution by enemies.Riddle 3 has been discussed far more extensively in scholarship, so with the goal of finding a new perspective on the familiar, I will begin with the weathercock.
I am bulged-breasted and swollen-throated, have a head and a high tail, eyes and ears and one foot, a back and a hard beak, tall neck, and two sides, a stick in the middle, a dwelling place above men.
I endure a tormenting attack, when that which stirs the forests moves me, and streams strike me while I am standing, the hard hail and the ice coat me, the frost freezes and snow falls on the pierced-bellied one, and I suffer that … can my misfortune … The description of such a full-blown physical assault has many parallels in the strongly metaphorical language of the Psalms, which unlike the Riddles explicitly ask for God's mercy.The speaker of Psalm 30 complains-in a manner resonant of the disorganised anatomy of the weathercock and many other riddle-creatures-"my bones are disturbed" ("ossa mea conturbata sunt", 30:11).47Riddle 77's creature's situation amid violent waters is also a common psalmic plight.Psalm 68 describes waters from the sea rather than the sky, but like the riddle it blends this tumult with emotional exhaustion: Salvum me fac, Deus, quoniam introierunt aquae usque ad animam meam.Infixus sum in limum profundi et non est substantia.Veni in altitudinem maris, et tempestas demersit me.Laboravi clamans raucae; factae sunt fauces meae; defecerunt oculi mei dum spero in Deum meum.(68:2-4).
Save me, O God, for the waters are come in even unto my soul.I stick fast in the mire of the deep and there is no sure standing.I am come into the depth of the sea, and a tempest has overwhelmed me.I have laboured with crying; my throat is become hoarse; my eyes have failed whilst I hope in my God.
This passage is notable for its description of a tormented throat (paralleling Riddle 77's swollen one), but its imagery of rising waters as means of describing misery and fear is widely paralleled elsewhere, as in Psalm 87.18 ("they have come round about me like water"; "circumdederunt me sicut aqua") or 123:5 ("our soul has passed through a torrent: perhaps our soul had passed through a water intolerable"; "torrentem pertransivit anima nostra: forsitan pertransisset anima nostra aquam intolerabilem"). 48Indeed, the riddle-creature's experience of torturously prolonged exposure to frosty conditions is represented in the Psalms in the context of God's anger.The speaker of Psalm 147 describes snow, mists, and falling crystals, and asks "who shall stand before the face of his cold?" ("ante faciem frigoris eius quis subsistit?"147:17); that of Riddle 77 helplessly endures a similar attack. 49We might further compare Riddle 14 ("anchor") whose speaker also endures attacks from wind and wave (1), threatened by the prospect of these forces "tearing [them] apart" ("mec slitende", 6a) and striving to stand firm (8-10).
Describing a different kind of relentless assault from hostile forces, Riddle 3 is often said to resemble The Wanderer, not least in its use of the compound an-haga ("solitary one"). 50However, as Mangina and Toswell have has persuasively argued, there are parallels between The Wanderer and the penitential psalms, and considering this connection may help us reframe the connections between The Wanderer and Riddle 3. 51 Psalm 38 may even constitute a direct source for the half-lines "sorrow is renewed" ("sorg bið geniwad", 50b) and "care is renewed" ("cearo bið geniwad", 55b) in The Wanderer, although neither scholar argues this. 52Psalm 38 offers its Latin version of this formulation -"dolor meus renovatus est"in the context of describing verbal reticence, in a manner very like The Wanderer 8-21: Dixi, "Custodiam vias meas ut non delinquam in lingua mea.Posui ori meo custodiam, dum consistit peccator adversum me."Obmutui et humiliatus sum et silui a bonis, et dolor meus renovatus est.(38:2-3) I said, "I will take heed to my ways that I sin not with my tongue.I have set a guard to my mouth, while the sinner stands against me."I was dumb and was humbled and kept silence from good things, and my sorrow was renewed.
Furthermore, the speaker alludes to their status as a stranger, in a manner congruent with the opening lines of The Wanderer: Exaudi, Deus, orationem meam, et deprecationem meam; auribus percipe lacrimas meas.Ne sileas a me, quoniam incola ego sum apud te in terra, et peregrinus sicut omnes patres mei.(38:13)   Hear my prayer, O God, and my supplication; give ear to my tears.Be not silent to me, for I am a dweller in your land, and a stranger as all my fathers were.
It therefore seems likely that parts of The Wanderer stand in quite direct relation to Psalm 38, although this view is not well represented in the poem's scholarship.
I am a solitary one, wounded by iron, injured by swords, having had my fill of battledeeds, wearied by edges.Often I see warfare, a terrible fight.I do not expect comfort, that safety will come to me in the toil of war, before I am entirely ruined among men, but the hammer's remnants beat me, hard-edged terribly sharp handwork of smiths bites me in the towns; I must wait for a more dreadful meeting.I could never find any kind of doctor in this dwelling-place, one of those who can heal wounds with herbs, but the wounds caused by edges increase on me through death-blows day and night.
References to the pairing of day and night can be found in the Psalms, accentuating a scene of seemingly interminable suffering: Quoniam tacui inveteraverunt omnia ossa mea, dum clamarem tota die.Quoniam die ac nocte gravata est super me manus tua.Conversus sum in aerumna mea [.]  (31:3-4)   Because I was silent all my bones grew old, while I cried out all the day long.For day and night your hand was heavy upon me.I am turned in my anguish [.]  54 Several other psalms parallel Riddle 3's description of incessant attacks.Psalm 43, for example, again making use of diurnal language, declares "we are weakened by death all the day long" ("morte afficimur tota die", 43:22).Psalm 87 describes a speaker calling to God day and night (87:2), having become "as a man without help" ("sicut homo sine adiutorio", 87:5).In a medical register, God features regularly in the Psalms as a much wished-for physician, paralleling the absent "doctor-kind" ("laece-cynn", 10b) of Riddle 3. 55 Other riddles describe agonisingly prolonged suffering, possibly channelling the Psalms.The antler-turned-inkhorn of Riddle 89 experiences exile (cf.Psalms 38:13;  68:9) and "endures all the torments that have gnawed at shields" ("aglaeca ealle þolige/ þaet bord biton", 23b-4).The ox of Riddle 70 describes being pressed into wide-ranging travel (11b-12) and the suffering of "a share of sorrows" ("earfoða dael", 15a), stressing verbal restraint in a manner which recalls The Wanderer and Psalm 38: ic swigade, naefre meldade monna aengum, gif me ord-staepe egle waeron. (16b-18) I was silent, never mentioned to anyone even if the jabs from points were painful to me.
For this text, though, another parallel surfaces in Psalm 16, here translated in the Old English prose psalms: 54 See also Psalms 21:3, 87:2. 55See Psalm 29:3, 40:5, 87:2, 106:20, 146:3, etc.  Ne ic furðum nanum menn ne saede eal þa earfoða þe hi me dydon; for þam wordum þinra weolora ic geþolode hearde wegas and manigfald earfoðu.(16:4)   Nor did I ever mention to anyone all the sufferings which they have inflicted upon me; because of the words of your lips I endured difficult paths and numerous sorrows. 56ddle 70 too, describes the silent suffering of earfoða ("sorrows").As the ox's suffering is not explicitly for God's sake (as in the psalm), the riddle leaves the reasons unspecified, although on some level we may be encouraged to wonder how far the humans governing the ox's life are playing God. 57ven some of the sexual riddles play with voices of oppression, as in the case of Riddle 23's onion, complaining of being plundered and hurt by its manhandler: "she grasps me, attacks me until I am red" ("heo on mec gripeð/ raeseð mec on reodne", 7b-8a).The sexual innuendo is pursed along violent lines, possible repurposing psalmic discourses of persecution and injury.Hope of salvation may not surface in Riddle 23, but, like the later "onion" riddle, Riddle 63, it does play with a concept of retributive violence.Both texts seem to build on a riddle by Symphosius that turns on the same conceit: "I bite the biters" ("Mordeo mordentes", Enigma 44, 1). 58But Riddle 63 reports "everyone seizes me" ("aeghwa mec reafað", 2b), drawing closer to the totalising, nebulous statements of persecution in the Psalms.Although the Old English riddles seem closely related to Symphosius' text, they also resemble psalm verses describing shadowy enemies bringing defeat upon themselves: Dum adpropiant super me nocentes, ut edant carne, meas qui tribulant me inimici mei ipsi infirmati sunt, et ceciderunt.(26:2) While the wicked draw near against me to eat my flesh, my enemies that trouble me have themselves been weakened, and have fallen. 59e Riddles not only make plea-like cases for recognition of their suffering (and perhaps implicitly for mercy and reprieve), but anticipate the kinds of reversals of fortune that come about in the Psalms.In doing so, they shade back into the triumphant, celebratory kind of rhetoric discussed in the previous section, but this time built on a foundation of prior abjection.

Deliberative Rhetoric, Meditation, and Decision-Making
There are also those voices in psalms and riddles which recommend a course of behaviour, rather than celebrating a wonder or recounting experiences of suffering.Cassiodorus identifies a deliberative mode of speech in a small number of psalms, enabling the voice of a wise advisor to argue "from the viewpoint of the useful and the honourable" ("ostendens ab utili et honesto"), or to stage a process of ambivalence giving way to clarity. 60Once again, Cassiodorus' definition has its roots in classical 56 Translation after O'Neill, Old English Psalms, 47. 57 On Riddle 70 and "nature's subjugation to fallen humanity", see Dale, Natural World, 57-85, at 58.I am also influenced here by Hannah Irvine's sense of the possibly Christ-like resonance of the ox's being "bound under a beam" ("bunden under beame", 13a), and more generally indebted to our discussions of the spiritual implications of the ox riddles. 58On the "biter bitten" motif across Old English and Latin riddles, see Orchard,ed. and trans.,Riddle Tradition, See also Psalm 56:7.60 Cassiodorus, Expositio Psalmorum, ed. Adiaen, CCSL 97, 47, 2.11; trans. Wash, Explanation of the Psalms, vol. 1, 65. See  Astell, "Cassiodorus's Commentary", 49-50.
theories of rhetoric, newly shaped for a Christian context.In Astell's words, when Cassiodorus identifies deliberative speech in the Psalter, "he finds the psalmist looking less to future advantage than to eternal goods and divine values as a basis for decision-making in the present and in the presence of God". 61The following (non-exclusive) list of riddles highlights those which likewise seem to urge spiritually beneficial behaviour: So for example, Riddle 9 ("Cup of wine"), occupies a rhetorical mode at once malevolent, bewildered, and exhortatory: Ic dysge dwelle ond dole hwette unraed-siþas; oþrum styre nyttre fore.Ic þaes nowiht wat þaet heo swa gemaedde, mode bestolene, daede gedwolene, deoraþ mine won wisan gehwam.Wa him þaes þeawes, siþþan heah bringað horda deorast, gif hi unraedes aer ne geswicaþ. (3-10) I mislead the foolish and urge the stupid on unwise paths; others I steer away from a beneficial course.I have no idea why they, so maddened, deprived of mind, misled in deeds, celebrate my dark ways to everyone.Woe to them of that habit, when they bring on high the dearest of treasures, if they do not first cease that imprudence.
Wellsprings: Aldhelm's Praefatio and Riddle 1 Ending with a beginning, this article closes by considering how Riddle 1 frames the rest of the collection.The riddle's references to the Psalms hint at their influence on the emotional world of the other riddles.Moreover, Riddle 1 hints more generally at poetry's power to stir up emotions, and this section goes on to explore a possible connection between Riddle 1 and Aldhelm's reflections on poetic composition and emotional arousal in the complex acrostic praefatio that introduces his enigmata.
Exeter Riddle 1 is an unusually lengthy riddle that is most easily solved as "Wind", or "Wind of God".It describes the divine instigation and quelling of a series of destructive storms and earthquakes, and in doing so works with a version of the "suffering servant" motif that has long been detected in the Riddles, but so rarely appreciated for its biblical and Christological associations (see notably Isaiah 52:13-53:12). 66This riddle presents a series of explicit challenges to the solver, not only as to the identity of the speaker, but also that of the figure (God) who controls its unleashing and containment (14-15, 27-30, 65b), as articulated in the poem's closing challenge: Saga hwaet ic hatte, oþþe hwa mec raere, þonne ic restan ne mot, oþþe hwa mec staeðþe, þonne ic stille beom.(102b-104) Say what I am called, or who raises me up, when I am not allowed to rest, or who steadies me, when I am still.
A similar figure of a loyal servant, by turns activated and subdued by God, recurs in the Psalms.See, for example, Psalm 3: "I have slept and have taken my rest and I have risen up, because the Lord has sustained me" ("ego dormivi et somnum cepi et resurrexi, quoniam Dominus suscepit me", 3:6).Similarly, the speaker of Psalm 138 calls out: "Lord, you have proved me and known me.You have known my sitting down and my rising up" ("Domine probasti me et cognovisti me.Tu cognovisti sessionem meam et resurrectionem meam", 138:2).Cassiodorus encourages a Christological reading of these lines, comparing Isaiah 53:4: "he has borne our sins and carried our infirmities" ("Peccata suscepit nostra, et infirmitates nostras portauit"). 67Riddle 1 certainly plants the seeds for such a reading, with Christ as the ultimate suffering servant, as the speaker continually refers to the burdens on its back (12-14a, 15b, 35b-6a, 66, 95-6).It describes the water that it carries in terms which quietly evoke the sins of humanity: haebbe me on hrycge þaet aer hadas wreah fold-buendra, flaesc in gaestes, somod on sunde.(12-14a)   I have on my back what once covered the kinds of earth-dwellers, flesh and spirits, together in the stream.
On one level this line refers to watersrains, even the Floodthat previously covered humanity, but it may also refer obliquely to sins that are accumulated by flesh and spirit, but which have been lifted away by Christ.The suggestion of the Flood, and possibly even baptism, as water which has washed over humanity, further heightens the spiritual resonance of these lines.Riddle 1 can therefore be read as engaging psalmic associations, with wide-ranging spiritual implications.Indeed, even in its primary interest in storms raised up and quelled, Riddle 1 may echo the Psalms.The portion of the riddle which describes a storm at sea shares is especially close to one particular psalm, with both texts dwelling on the terror of seafarers' souls.Riddle 1 reads as follows: Þaer bið ceole wen sliþre saecce, gif hine sae byreð on þa grimman tid, gaesta fulne, 60 þaet he scyle rice birofen weorþan, fere bifohten, faemig ridan yþa hrycgum.Þaer bið egsa sum aeldum geywed, þaer þe ic yrnan sceal strong on stið-weg.Hwa gestilleð þaet?65 (58b-65) There a ship may expect a dire conflict, if the sea bears it at that terrible time, full of souls, so that it must become deprived of power, injured mortally, ride foamy on the backs of the waves.Then a certain terror is shown to men, when I must run strong on a hard path.Who makes that still?
This passage's final question echoes earlier lines that challenge a solver to identify who draws the wind from the waves, "when the streams again grow still" ("þonne streamas eft stille weorþað, 29), namely God.Although the riddle's main focus is the speaker's identity (the wind/storm), it also attends to the emotional impact on humans.
Compare Psalm 106's account of the hide-and-reveal miracle of a storm whipping up the sea to a similarly fearsome end, before God again stills it, along with the people upon it: They that go down to the sea in ships, doing business in the great waters, these have seen the works of the Lord, and his wonders in the deep.He said the word, and the breath [spiritus] of the storm stood, and the waves thereof were lifted up.They mount up to the heavens, and they go down to the depths.Their soul pined away with evils.They were troubled, and reeled like a drunken man, and all their wisdom was swallowed up.And they cried to the Lord in their affliction and he brought them out of their distresses, and he turned the storm into a their chests, water from their bellies" ("sweart swinsendu seaw of bosme,/ waetan of wombe", 77-78a).Feelings are often described in hydraulic terms in Old English literature, as Leslie Lockett has demonstrated; 75 in Riddle 1, the imagery of waters bursting out from confinement metaphorically suggests several processes, including those of poetic inspiration and the stirring of strong feeling.
In playing with the image of floods bursting from nowhere, Riddle 1 may adapt Aldhelm's metaphor for human poetic inspiration, transforming his praise of God's physical and emotional interventions into a nonhuman entity's (the wind's) celebration of the same.As such, from one perspective, Riddle 1-as-prologue recentres nonhuman emotional experience.Indeed, as has been evident throughout this paper, the Psalms provide a major model for the articulation of nonhuman emotionaleven spiritualexperience, frequently slipping between human and nonhuman referents.Psalm 144 even asserts "Let all your works confess to you, O Lord" ("Confiteantur tibi, Domine, omnia opera tua?", 144.10), and Augustine mulls upon this line's puzzling implication that God can be praised by "the earth, the trees, and all other creatures that lack understanding" ("terra, ligna et quaeque insensata"). 76Riddle 1 raises a similar question, using the voice of the wind to honour God's power of inspiration.To what extent are the emotions articulated in the Psalms available to parts of Creation beyond humanity?The riddle prepares us for a subsequent array of mostly nonhuman creatures who speak in a strangely familiar psalmic mode, laying claim to familiar emotions.
But Riddle 1 also highlights how riddles are not psalms, however much they can sound like them.Its speaker cannot refer to its own spiritual identity in quite the same way as psalmic voices.It does not have a human soul to protect, even though it consists of a flow of air that feels like a spiritus or a pneuma.As we have seen at various points in this study, the emotional conditions described in the Riddles cannot follow exactly the same trajectories as the Psalms. 77This is most obvious in the unresolved torment of texts like Riddle 3, whose speaker cannot find a healer (10b-12).If we hear a half-familiar reference to God-as-physician in this text, then the solution of the riddle as a nonhuman entity (shield or chopping board) fixes this salvific figure at a distance.This is the uncanny side to the Riddles' use of psalmic or pseudo-psalmic rhetoric: once a nonhuman solution is found, it is rarely one that could be posited to experience salvation in the manner of humans.
Are we dealing with a kind of ventriloquism or prosopopoeia that might be ironically jarring, even parodic, when the Riddles approximate the emotional extremity of the Psalms?Riddle 1 may prepare the audience for this possibility when mulling upon the marvel of violent storms, raised and dropped, creating terror and wonder in humanity before disappearing again.This dynamic suggests the transience of even the most intense emotional expressions and effects, just as the rhetoric of a riddle works to emotionally engage, to present (in Cassiodorus' terms) a face to the inner eye, in a way that might be surprising, even shocking.From this perspective, the Riddles are truly generative, experimenting with surprising new forms of emotional experience.They are "sources" in McNamer's sense of the word as "font" or "wellspring", or in Riddle 1's sense of a storm bursting 75 Lockett, Psychologies, esp.54-109. 76Augustine, Enarrationes in Psalmos CI-CL, ed.Dekkers and Fraipont, CCSL 40, 2098.from the ground to shake and distress humanity, before retreating again. 78But at the same time, Riddle 1's subterranean hydraulic model always insists on a pre-existing network of pressures and forces that makes violent outbursts possible.The rest of the riddles similarly indicate a realm of experience that is potentially shared by the human and nonhuman, but which is often hidden. 79Readers of these texts will differ in how much irony they perceive when objects or animals make emotional claims in psalm-like voices, and perhaps this was always the case.
Ultimately, the most stable point of contact between the voices of the Psalms and the Riddles are their mutual demands for recognition.Many psalmic speakers call out for attention, as when that of Psalm 12 asks "How long, O Lord, will you forget me unto the end?How long do you turn away your face from me?" ("Usquequo Domine oblivisceris me in finem?Quousque avertis faciem tuam a me?" 12:1), or when that of Psalm 30 demands "Bow down your ear to me; make haste to deliver me" ("Inclina ad me aurem tuam; adcelera ut eripias me", 30:3).Perhaps most reminiscent of the Riddles is the wish to be investigated in Psalm 138: "Prove me, O God, and know my heart; examine me, and know my paths" ("Proba me, Deus, et scito cor meum; interroga me et cognosce semitas meas", 138:23).The rest of this text largely operates in a mode of thanksgiving, demonstrating that pleas to be known are not solely the province of laments.The request to be known shares much with the challenges of the Riddles, not only for their creatures to be named, but to be witnessed and understood more fullyas Riddles 26 and 33 have it, to say what the entity "could be" or "might be" ("sy", 13b; 14b).The riddle-creatures may not hope for salvation in precisely the same way as the voices of the Psalms, but they at least hope to be known by the one to whom they cry out, whether this figure is divine or human.

Conclusion
This paper has explored the emotional range of the Exeter Riddles.It has suggested possible influence from the Psalms, understood as a parallel kind of anthology.Inspired by Cassiodorus' identification of demonstrative, judicial, and deliberative rhetoric, this article has argued that the voices of the Riddles tend to inhabit emotional postures along these lines.It suggested rough groupings of the riddle-poems into these three camps, but has stressed such categories are non-exclusive and that individual texts themselves (in-keeping with how Cassiodorus saw the Psalms) shift between different voices and emotional stances.Viewed in this way, the Old English riddles can emerge a little further from generic quarantine, understood instead to participate in a shared literary inheritance with the rest of the vernacular corpus, given that we are increasingly appreciating how extensively Old English poets drew on the Psalms.This paper finally turned to Riddle 1, uncovering this text's possible connections to both the Psalms and Aldhelm's praefatio, and tracing implications for the generation of both poetry and emotion.This is a poem about a force which bursts from (seemingly) nowhere to shock and move humanity; it is therefore quite appropriate as an introduction to a body of poetry which experiments with mysterious voices articulating possibly surprising forms of emotional 78 McNamer, "Literariness of Literature", 116. 79 See Soper, Life Course, 9, 13, on riddlic isomorphism.experience.Like the rest of the Old English riddles, Riddle 1 at once chimes with the emotional exemplar of the Psalter and pulls away, crafting a new emotional arc both familiar and strange.