The Road That Refused to Disappear: York, the Coast, and the persistence of an East Yorkshire Corridor - III
For a little while, I have been searching for examples of where an ancient song or riddle can tell us a little of the world that no historian considered worth recording. Today I unexpectedly tripped over a multitude of examples in the Exeter Book. Patrick Murphy in Unriddling the Exeter Riddles describes the book as "a neatly written poetic miscellany that has been dated by its most recent editor to circa ad 965-975". Written in Old English, Erhardt-Siebold has suggested a Northumbrian provenance for the contents.
My immediate interest is riddle 22.
The riddle starts with sixty men riding to the "wave shore" and describes their safe passage across the sea. The 60 men ride, mostly, on road/farm horses (fæthengest), 11 on steeds - horses of war (fridhengestas) and 4 on bright steeds (sceamas). The riddle assumes audience recognition of the sea crossing as a commonplace, if dangerous, activity. It is framed nicely to set a first hurdle to unpicking the delightful puzzle set by the rest of the piece.
Murphy translates the riddle as:
"Sixty men came riding together on horses to the wave shore; the horsemen had eleven horses (of some kind), four bright steeds. Nor could the warriors make their way over the seas as they aspired, but the waters were too deep, the tumult of waves terrible, the banks steep, the streams strong. The men began then to mount up into a wagon, and they loaded their horses too under the pole. Then the wagon bore the horses, the steeds and the men, resplendent with spears, over the abode of water to the land, so that an ox did not draw it, nor the strength of servants, nor the road horse, nor did it swim on the sea, nor trudge over the ground under its passengers, nor stir up the sea, nor fly from the air, nor reverse its course; nevertheless, it bore the men over the water and their white horses with them from the high shore, so that they mounted back up on the other side, the brave warriors and their horses out of the sea safe and sound."
This seems to be one of those riddles that has escaped satisfactory resolution - although Murphy has put forward a convincing solution - that the horses are an identifiable group of stars that never leave the Northern night skies, in between the North Star and the handle of the Big Dipper.
My interest lies in the image of a sea crossing of a cavalry group rather than the riddle itself. There is a brutal power in the Old English description of the "wave shore", the constitution and differentiation of the horses, and the danger when wave shore and horses are brought together: "the waters were too deep, the tumult of waves terrible, the banks steep, the streams strong." And the irresistible assumption that any fool in ad 970 knew the danger.
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