The First Riddle of Cynewulf
William Witherle Lawrence · PMLA/Publications of the Modern Language Association of America · 1902
There are few questions concerning Anglo-Saxon literature which have been more widely discussed than the interpretation of the so-called First Riddle of Cynewulf. The subject was introduced by Heinrich Leo in 1857, in his celebrated monograph Quae de se ipso Cynewulfus Poeta Anglosaxonicus tradiderit. Before that time the line shad attracted little attention. As is well known, they occur in the Exeter Book, the collection of verse left by Bishop Leofric to his cathedral church in the eleventh century. Thorpe, in his edition of this manuscript, did not venture to translate them, which is scarcely to be wondered at, since both language and grammatical construction are unusually obscure. The investigations of Leo, however, with those of his followers and opponents, at once gave great interest and importance to the almost unnoticed lines. It may be well to mention briefly the principal theories which have been founded on this bit of verse, some of which rival in ingenuity the familiar attempts to establish a Baconian cypher in the works of Shakespeare.