Exeter Book Riddle 74 and the play of the text

Abstract

Riddle 74 is one of a handful of Old English riddles of the Exeter Book that have stubbornly resisted a solution. As Bruce Mitchell and Fred C. Robinson remark, ‘scholars have suggested answers…but none satisfies all the conditions set forth in the poem’. Peter Clemoes finds the attributes that are ascribed to this particular riddle-subject to be ‘so paradoxical that it seems impossible to name their possessor at all’. Riddles normally do have answers, however, and this one is no exception. My first aim in this article is to offer an answer to Riddle 74 that will put debate to rest as to its intended solution.