¹ Arnold, J. H. and Goodson, C., ‘Resounding Community: the History and Meaning of Medieval Church Bells’, Viator 43 (2012), 99–130, at 100–1CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

² Symphosius, the Aenigmata: an Introduction, Text and Commentary, ed. and trans. T. J. Leary (London, 2014), p. 41. All references to Symphosius’ riddles in this article are from Leary’s edition and translation [hereafter referenced as The Aenigmata]. For recent scholarship on the dating and authorship of the riddles, see Enigmata Symposii. La fondazione dell’enigmistica come genere poetico, ed. M. Bergamin (Florence, 2005), pp. xi–xvi; Sebo, E, ‘Was Symphosius an African? a Contextualizing Note on Two Textual Clues in the Aenigmata Symphosii’, N&Q 56 (2009), 324–326 Google Scholar; Castelletti, C. and Siegenthaler, P., ‘Virgilian Echoes in the Aenigmata Symposii: Two Unnoticed Technopaignia’, Philologus 160 (2016), 133–150, at 144–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Leary, Symphosius: the Aenigmata, pp. 1–6. For their influence on the Riddles of Aldhelm, see Klein, T., ‘Pater Occultus: the Latin Bern Riddles and their Place in Early Medieval Riddling’, Neophilologus 103 (2019), 399–417, at 409–11CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for their influence on the Bern Riddles, see Klein, ‘Pater Occultus’, pp. 404–8, and for their influence on the Exeter Book Riddles, see D. Bitterli, Say What I Am Called (Toronto, 2009), pp. 18–20. For their medieval popularity more generally, see M. Salvador-Bello, Isidorean Perceptions of Order: the Exeter Book Riddles and Medieval Latin Enigmata (Morgantown, WV, 2015), pp. 133–41. The widespread popularity of Symphosius is attested by the number of his riddles that circulated, in full or in part, and verbatim or in paraphrase, in other early medieval texts. These include the Latin Historia Apollonii regis Tyri and its Old English translation, Alcuin’s Disputatio Pippini (see Bayless, M., ‘Alcuin’s Disputatio Pippini and the Early Medieval Riddle Tradition’, Humour, History and Politics in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, ed. Halsall, G. (Cambridge, 2001), pp. 157–78Google Scholar, at 170, 177), the Collectanea Pseudo-Bedae (see M. Bayless, ‘The Collectanea and Medieval Dialogues and Riddles’, Collectanea Pseudo-Bedae, ed. M. Bayless and M. Lapidge (Dublin, 1998), pp. 13–24, at 22) and De divisionibus temporum, a popular Carolingian revision of an earlier Irish computus manual (see N. Mogford, ‘The Moon and Stars in the Bern and Eusebius Riddles’, Riddles at Work in the Early Medieval Tradition: Words, Ideas, Interactions, ed. M. Cavell and J. Neville (Manchester, 2020), pp. 230–46, at 230).

³ All references to Tatwine’s riddles in this article are to ‘Aenigmata Tatvini’ in Variae collectiones aenigmatum Merovingicae aetatis, pars altera, ed. M. De Marco, CCSL 133 (Turnhout, 1963), 166–208.

⁴ All references to the Exeter Book Riddles in this article are to The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Record, ed. G. P. Krapp and E. V. K. Dobbie, 6 vols. (New York, 1931–42), specifically vol. 3 [hereafter ASPR 3].

⁵ F. Dietrich, ‘Die Rätsel des Exeterbuchs’, Zeitschrift für deutsches Alterthum (1859), 448–490, at 461.

⁶ Holthausen, F., ‘Zu den altenglischen Denkmälern, eine zweite Abwehr und Richtigstellung’, Englische Studien 51 (1917), 180–8Google Scholar, at 185.

⁷ Holthausen, F., ‘Zu altenglischen Dichtungen’, Anglia 44 (1920), 346–56Google Scholar, at 346.

⁸ Shook, L. K., ‘Riddles Relating to the Anglo-Saxon Scriptorium’, Essays in Honour of Anton Charles Pegis, ed. OʼDonnell, J. R. (Toronto, 1974), pp. 215–36Google Scholar, at 226–7.

⁹ Doane, A. N., ‘Three Old English Implement Riddles: Reconsiderations of Numbers 4, 49, and 73’, MP 84 (1987), 243–57Google Scholar, at 247–9.

¹⁰ Tigges, W., ‘Signs and Solutions: a Semiotic Approach to the Exeter Book Riddles’, This Noble Craft: Proceedings of the Xth Research Symposium of the Dutch and Belgian University Teachers of Old and Middle English and Historical Linguistics, Utrecht, 19–20 January 1989, ed. Kooper, E. (Amsterdam, 1991), pp. 59–82 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 77-8.

¹¹ Heyworth, M., ‘The Devil’s in the Detail: a New Solution to Exeter Book Riddle 4’, Neophilologus 91 (2007), 175–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹² Cochran, S. F., ‘The Plough’s the Thing: a New Solution to Old English Riddle 4 of the Exeter Book’, JEGP 108 (2009), 301–9Google Scholar.

¹³ Dale, C., ‘A New Solution to Exeter Book Riddle 4’, N&Q 64 (2017), 1–3 Google Scholar.

¹⁴ J. Neville, ‘Sorting out the Rings in “Þragbysig” (R.4)’, Riddles at Work in the Early Medieval Tradition, ed. Cavell and Neville, pp. 21–39.

¹⁵ Williamson, C., The Old English Riddles of The Exeter Book (Chapel Hill, NC, 1977), pp. 141–3Google Scholar.

¹⁶ Murphy, P. J., Unriddling the Exeter Book (University Park, PA, 2011), p. 74 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁷ Pease, A. S., ‘Notes on Some Uses of Bells among the Greeks and Romans’, Harvard Stud. in Classical Philol. 15 (1904), 29–59, at 423CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁸ Varro, cited in Pliny the Elder, Natural History, VI: Books 20–23, trans. W. H. S. Jones, Loeb Classical Library 392 (Cambridge, MA, 1951), 72.

¹⁹ Plautus, ‘Pseudolus’, The Little Carthaginian. Pseudolus. The Rope, ed. and trans. W. de Melo, Loeb Classical Library 260 (Cambridge, MA, 2012), 278.

²⁰ Suetonius, Lives of the Caesars, II: Claudius. Nero. Galba, Otho, and Vitellius. Vespasian. Titus, Domitian. Lives of Illustrious Men: Grammarians and Rhetoricians. Poets (Terence. Virgil. Horace. Tibullus. Persius. Lucan). Lives of Pliny the Elder and Passienus Crispus, ed. and trans. J. C. Rolfe, Loeb Classical Library 38 (Cambridge, MA, 1914), 282. See also Pease, ‘Notes on Some Uses of Bells’, pp. 32–4.

²¹ Numerous examples in classical literature, too many to list here, can be found of bells for oxen, mules, asses, pigs, and elephants.

²² Pease gives numerous other uses in the Greco-Roman world, such as the celebration of Dionysius, testing the courage of horses, and herding bees (Pease, ‘Notes on Some Uses of Bells’, pp. 29–59).

²³ Pease, ‘Notes on Some Uses of Bells’, p. 43.

²⁴ Martial, ‘Epigram Liber XIV’, Epigrammaton libri, ed. W. Heraeus (Leipzig, 1925), p. 337.

²⁵ Lucian, ‘De mercede conductis’, The Works of Lucian, ed. & trans. A.M. Harmon, Loeb Classical Library 130 (Cambridge, MA, 1960), 452–3.

²⁶ See Pease, ‘Notes on Some Uses of Bells’, p. 35.

²⁷ Sextus Empiricus, Against Logicians, ed. and trans. R. G. Bury, Loeb Classical Library 291 (Cambridge, MA, 1935), 338–9.

²⁸ Pease, ‘Notes on Some Uses of Bells’, p. 34.

²⁹ ‘[I am] rigid, with curved bronze, fashioned in a ring. The moving image of a chattering tongue is inside. Put down, I make no sound; when I am moved, I resound’.

³⁰ Leary, Symphosius, p. 206

³¹ Leary, Symphosius, p. 206.

³² ‘Nomen de sono factum, ut tinnitus aeris, clangor tubarum’ (‘a word made from a sound, as in the jangling of bells and the blast of a trumpet’), Donatus, ‘Ars grammatica’, Grammatici Latini, ed. H. Keil, 8 vols. (Leipzig, 1857–1870), IV, 367–402, at 400; Augustine, De Dialectica, ed. J Pinborg, trans. B. D. Jackson (Dordrecht, 1975), p. 94.

³³ ‘Quid miser expavescis ad clamorem servi, ad tinnitum aeris aut ianuae impulsum?’ Seneca, ‘De ira’, Moral Essays, I: De Providentia. De Constantia. De Ira. De Clementia, trans. J. W. Basore, Loeb Classical Library 254 (Cambridge, MA, 1928), 338.

³⁴ ‘Aeraque tinnitus aere repulsa dabunt’ (‘bells clashing against bells will jangle’), Ovid, Works in Six Volumes, V: Fasti, ed. and trans. J. G. Frazer, rev. ed. G. P. Goold, Loeb Classical Library 253 (Cambridge, MA, 1931), 202.

³⁵ ‘Aut tereti tenues tinnitus aere ciebant’ (‘or they shook a fine jangle with polished bells’), Catullus, Gai Valeri Catulli liber in Catullus. Tibullus. Pervigilium Veneris, ed. and trans. F. W. Cornish, J. P. Postgate and J. W. Mackail, rev. ed. G. P. Goold, Loeb Classical Library 6 (Cambridge, MA, 1913), 64.262, at 114.

³⁶ ‘Nec Dodonaei cessat tinnitus aeni’ (‘Nor does Dodona’s brazen tinkling cease’), Ausonius, Ausonius, II: Books 18–20. Paulinus Pellaeus: Eucharisticus, trans. H. G. Evelyn-White, Loeb Classical Library 115 (Cambridge, MA, 1921), 29.23, at 114.

³⁷ Ibid.

³⁸ ‘Such a great deluge of words fall, you would think that kettles or bells were being struck’, Juvenal, ‘Satire 6’, Juvenal and Persius, ed. and trans. S. M. Braund, Loeb Classical Library 91 (Cambridge, MA, 2014), 276.

³⁹ ‘A bell never rings by chance. Unless someone pushes or pulls it, it is mute, it is silent’. Plautus, ‘Trinummus’, Stichus. Three-Dollar Day. Truculentus. The Tale of a Traveling-Bag. Fragments, ed. and trans. W. de Melo, Loeb Classical Library 328 (Cambridge, MA, 2013), 224.

⁴⁰ See Jenkins, T. E., ‘At Play with Writing: Letters and Readers in Plautus’, Trans. of the Amer. Philol. Assoc. 135 (2005), 359–392 Google Scholar, at 378–9.

⁴¹ ‘A loquacious band in learned pursuit of foolish speech’.

⁴² ‘The good law of speaking, I am also the hard law of being silent; a rule of an eager tongue and an end of speaking without end’.

⁴³ The Aenigmata, pp. 189–90.

⁴⁴ It is likely that Symphosius is thinking of the pseudo-etymology of dies nefasti (‘public holiday’) from fatus (‘spoken’), as mentioned by Macrobius: Saturnalia, I: Books 1–2, ed. & trans. R A. Kaster, Loeb Classical Library 510 (Cambridge, MA, 2011), 192.

⁴⁵ ‘The ox’s bell, the dog’s bell, and the horn’. ‘Hundredgemot’, Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen, ed. F. Liebermann, 3 vols. (Halle, 1903), I, 192–5, at 194.

⁴⁶ For a seventh-century example, see ‘audivit subito in aere notum campanae sonum, quo ad orationes excitari vel convocari solebant, cum quis eorum de saeculo fuisset evocatus’ (‘she suddenly heard the distinct sound of a bell, which would wake and gather them to prayers, whenever any of them had been called from this world’), Bede, Historia ecclesiastica, in Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People, ed. B. Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford, 1969), xxiii, p. 412 [hereafter HE]. For a tenth-century example, see ‘Quod si ex alio monasterio noto ac familiari frater quis nuntiatus fuerit defunctus, conveniant pulsata tabula undique fratres et, motis uti praediximus omnis signis …’ (‘When news arrives from another well-known and confraternal monastery that a brother has died, once the tabula has been sounded, let the brothers gather from all around, and, as all the bells are rung in the aforementioned manner …’), Regularis Concordia Anglicae Nationis Monachorum Sanctimonialiumque: the Monastic Agreement of the Monks and Nuns of the English Nation, ed. and trans. D. T. Symons (London, 1953) [Hereafter RC], p. 67.

⁴⁷ For example, ‘Inde defertur in ecclesiam, psallentibus cunctis motisque omnibus signis’ (‘and then it [i.e. the body] shall be carried into the church whilst all the psalms are chanted and all the bells are rung’), RC, p. 65. Funerary handbells appear in the scene of the death of Edward the Confessor in the Bayeux Tapestry (c. 1070, Musée de la Tapisserie de Bayeux).

⁴⁸ Arnold and Goodson, ‘Resounding Community’, p. 103.

⁴⁹ Ibid. pp. 104, 110–11.

⁵⁰ M. Shapland, Anglo-Saxon Towers of Lordship (Oxford, 2019), pp. 118–131.

⁵¹ Ibid. pp. 8–16.

⁵² Ibid. pp. 8–11.

⁵³ Ibid. pp. 11–15.

⁵⁴ Ibid, pp. 16–27.

⁵⁵ Ælfric Bata, Anglo-Saxon Conversations: the Colloquies of Ælfric Bata, ed. S. Gawa, trans. D. W. Porter (Woodbridge, 1997), p. 162. Ælfric’s translation of bellhus as cloccarium (‘bell tower’) suggests this was its usual tenth-century meaning (see Shapland, Anglo-Saxon Towers of Lordship, pp. 146–7).

⁵⁶ Byrhtferth of Ramsey, ‘The Life of Oswald’, The Lives of St Oswald and St Ecgwine, ed. and trans. M. Lapidge (Oxford, 2000), p. 46.

⁵⁷ Wulfstan of York, ‘Geþyncðo’, Gesetze I, 456–9 (456).

⁵⁸ Shapland, Anglo-Saxon Towers of Lordship, pp. 34–105.

⁵⁹ As recognised by E. von Erhardt-Siebold, Die Lateinischen Rätsel der Angelsachsen (Heidelberg, 1925), pp. 139–40 and M. J. McDonald Williams, ‘The Riddles of Tatwine and Eusebiu’ (unpubl. PhD dissertation, Univ. of Michigan, 1974), p. 113.

⁶⁰ Ibid. However, McDonald Williams is wrong in thinking that Tatwine coins the term tintinnus himself (see the examples from sixth-century Gaul in J. N. Adams, The Regional Diversification of Latin, 200 BC–AD 600 (Cambridge, 2007), p. 321).

⁶¹ See ‘Continuatio Bedae’ in Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People, ed. Colgrave and Mynors, pp. 572–7, at 572).

⁶² ‘Once I was known as ‘Caesar’ and princes wished to see my face. Now instead I dwell above, hanging in the air. And, once struck, I am forced to send out lamentations far and wide, when the crowd returns to the wailing ever so quickly. Instead, I bite the biter with my toothless lips’.

⁶³ Buecheler, F., ‘Coniectanea’, Rheinisches Museum für Philologie 36 (1881), 329–342, at 342Google Scholar. The idea is endorsed by von Erhardt-Siebold, Die Lateinischen Rätsel, p. 144.

⁶⁴ See Isidore, Etymologarium sive origunum Librei XX, ed. W. M. Lindsay, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1912), II, IX.ii.3.

⁶⁵ ‘I hang on a long noose like a guilty thief’, Aenigmata Laureshamensia, CCSL 133, 345–358, at 356.

⁶⁶ ‘I heard the dead speaking a great deal’; ‘Not truly unless they are hung in the air’, Bayless, ‘Alcuin’s Disputatio Pippini’, p. 175.

⁶⁷ Orchard, A., A Commentary on the Old English and Anglo-Latin Riddle Tradition (Cambridge, MA, 2021), p. 146 Google Scholar.

⁶⁸ ‘I bite the biter […] and I have no teeth’. The phrase proved popular for subsequent riddle authors, and it crops up in Bern Riddles 37 and 41, as well as in Aldhelm’s ‘Riddle 46’ and ‘Exeter Riddle 65’ in modified form. See Orchard, A., ‘Enigma Variations: the Anglo-Saxon Riddle-Tradition’, Latin Learning and English Lore: Studies in Anglo-Saxon Literature for Michael Lapidge, ed. O’Keeffe, and Orchard, (Toronto, 2005), pp. 284–304, at 295–7Google Scholar.

⁶⁹ The connection of nola to the town of Nola is mentioned as early as the ninth century, in Strabo, Walafrid, Libellus de exordiis et incrementis quarundam in observationibus ecclesiasticis rerum: a Translation and Liturgical Commentary, ed. and trans. Harting-Correa, A. L. (Leiden, 1996), p. 62 Google Scholar.

⁷⁰ See Polydore Virgil, De rerum inventoribus, ed. and trans. J. [sic. T.] Langley (New York, NY, 1868), p. 190.

⁷¹ ‘Four handbells and six hanging bells’: ‘Inventory of Church Goods at Sherburn-in-Elmet’, Anglo-Saxon Charters, ed. and trans. A. J. Robertson, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, 1956) [hereafter ASChart], p. 248.

⁷² ‘Before [Leofric’s restoration of Exeter] there were only 7 hanging bells, but now there are 15 hanging bells and 12 handbells’: ‘The Gifts of Bishop Leofric to Exeter’, ASChart, p. 228.

⁷³ Amalar of Metz mentions having encountered the practice in Rome, where the tabula is used ‘non propter aeris penuriam, sed propter vestutatem’: Amalar of Metz, ‘De Ecclesiasticis Officis Libri IV’, Theodulfi opera omnia, ed. J. P. Migne, PL 105 (Paris, 1864), 985a–1243c (1201b–c).

⁷⁴ RC, pp. 20, 22, 30.

⁷⁵ Ibid. p. 22. The maundy, a monastic practice of daily and weekly foot-washing of the poor (from which the title of Maundy Thursday is derived) is the subject of two chapters in RC (pp. 61–3). See also Benedict of Nursia, Regula Benedicti, ed. R. Hanslik, CSEL 75 (Vienna, 1960), 46.

⁷⁶ RC, pp. 64–5.

⁷⁷ The difference between the jangling tintinnabulum and a regular bell is also alluded to a short epigram by Alcuin (Alcuin of York, ‘Carmina CVIII’, Alcuini Opera Omnia, ed. J. P. Migne, PL 101 (Paris, 1851), 754c.

⁷⁸ RC, pp. 13, 15, 33.

⁷⁹ Ibid. p. 49.

⁸⁰ Ibid. p. 20.

⁸¹ Ibid. p. 38.

⁸² Ibid. pp. 29–30.

⁸³ ‘As if one were ringing a hanging bell’: Monasteriales Indicia: the Anglo-Saxon Monastic Sign Language, ed. D. Banham (Pinner, 1991), p. 22.

⁸⁴ ‘The church-wardens should be well aware of the hours, so that they ring the bell at the right times’: ‘Institutio Canonicorum Concilii Aquisgranensis’, The Chrodegang Rules, ed. J. Bertram (Aldershot, 2005), pp. 96–131, at 118.

⁸⁵ ‘Must mark out the hours with the bells’: Ælfric of Eynsham, ‘Pastoral Letter for Wulfsige’, Councils & Synods with other Documents Relating to the English Church, I: AD 871–1204, ed. D. Whitelock, M. Brett and C. N. L. Brooke, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1981), I, 191–226 (no. 202).

⁸⁶ ‘No one should presume to do anything at all, however small, on his own inspiration […] but let everything be done at the correct time and according to custom’, RC, p. 63.

⁸⁷ ‘Once the bell has been rung, let them go and put their day-shoes on. None should do this before the bell is heard except the priests, nor should they fail to do this without permission, lest the service of obedience be clouded over by reckless presumption’, ibid. pp. 14–16.

⁸⁸ ‘If someone, in the fervour of devotion, wishes to pray any longer, let him do so. But, having heard the bell of the sacristan call back those who remain, let him not delay’, ibid. p. 24.

⁸⁹ ‘When the customary signal of Nocturns sounded out in the monastery, he woke and sat up with that very sound’, Bede, ‘Vita Cuthberti’, Two Lives of Saint Cuthbert: a Life by an Anonymous Monk of Lindisfarne and Bede’s Prose Life, ed. and trans. B. Cosgrave (Cambridge, 1940), p. 300.

⁹⁰ For the passive and active aspects of monastic obedience in the Reform period, see O’Keeffe, K. O’Brien, Stealing Obedience: Narratives of Agency and Identity in Later Anglo-Saxon England (Toronto, 2012), pp. 3–26, 46–54, 55–93Google Scholar.

⁹¹ Most of the homily is derived from other sources, but this passage is not. See Scragg, D. G., ‘The Corpus of Vernacular Homilies and Prose Saints’ Lives before Ælfric’, ASE 8 (1979), 223–77, at 245–7Google Scholar.

⁹² ‘The devil preaches sleep and exiles us into sloth, so that we cannot hear the bright signal of the bell’, ‘Homily XI’, Angelsächsische Homilien und Heiligenleben, ed. B. Assmann (Kassel, 1889), p. 168.

⁹³ ‘God enjoins us to wake and sends us with pure heart, because he wants us to attend church very often,’ ibid.

⁹⁴ ‘When hard at work, held together with rings, I must be most obedient to my servant, I must break my bed and announce with a crash that a lord gave me a neck-ring. Often a man or woman touches sleep-weary me. Winter-cold, I reply to those grim-hearted ones. At times a warm limb bursts the bound ring. Although that very thing will be agreeable to my servant, an unwise man, and to me, if I could understand anything and tell my story successfully’. Note the correction of MS ‘hringan’ in line 2 of the edition in ASPR 3.

⁹⁵ An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary based on the Manuscript Collections of the late Joseph Bosworth, ed. T. N. Toller (Oxford, 1898), s. v. þrag.

⁹⁶ ‘Homily XI: On þa halgan þunres Dei’, The Blickling Homilies of the Tenth Century, ed. R. Morris, EETS 73 (London, 1880), 114–31, at 117.

⁹⁷ Acts 1:7.

⁹⁸ Dictionary of Old English Web Corpus (2016), University of Toronto, ed. A. Cameron, A. C. Amos, A. D. Healey et al. [hereafter DOE].

⁹⁹ Cochran writes: ‘this calendar [of crop rotation] befits two separate but related meanings of OE þrag, both “time” or “routine” and “season”’, ‘The Plough’s the Thing’, pp. 305–6. Likewise, Harleman writes, ‘since the noun þrag has the meanings “time” and “season”; we can translate þragbysig as “busy with the season” or “afflicted by the season”, reflecting the fact that the ice which forms in winter is an affliction or “busyness” imposed by the time of year and the weather’, Stewart, A. H., ‘The Solution to Old English Riddle 4’, SP 78 (1981), 52–61, at 58Google Scholar).

¹⁰⁰ For example, ‘Hu seo þrag gewat, | genap under nihthelm, swa heo no wære’ (The Wanderer, lines 95b–96, ASPR III), is unambiguously ‘how that time has gone, darkened under the shadow of night, as if it never were,’ and not ‘how that moment has passed …’ or ‘how time has passed …’.

¹⁰¹ On several occasions when verbs can be both transitive and intransitive, it is unclear whether þrage is an adverbial or the object of the verb.

¹⁰² For example, the length from Creation to the present day in the Old English Boethius (The Old English Boethius with Verse Prologues and Epilogues Associated with King Alfred, ed. and trans. S. Irvine and M. Godden (Cambridge, MA, 2012), M20, line 134), the lifetime of Methuselah in ‘Genesis A’ (ASPR 1, 1217) or the period during which a corpse must spend in the earth before its resurrection at the Last Judgement in ‘Guthlac A’, line 1178, ASPR III.

¹⁰³ Anglo-Saxon and Old English Vocabularies, ed. T. Wright (London, 1884), p. 26.

¹⁰⁴ For example, ‘þunar byð þragum hludast’ (‘Maxims II’, line 4a, ASPR III) means something like ‘sometimes thunder is loudest’. Likewise, I would argue that ‘… ðonne hy of waþum werge cwoman | restan ryneþragum owe gefegon’ (‘Guthlac A’, lines 212–3) is best understood as ‘then they, weary of wandering, briefly rested several times’.

¹⁰⁵ ‘Courage is best for him who most often must endure lord-death, deeply ruminate on the oppression of separation from a master, when the time has come, woven by the words of fate’, ‘Guthlac B’, 1348–51a, ASPR III.

¹⁰⁶ ‘Juliana’, lines 446 and 464, ASPR III.

¹⁰⁷ OE Boethius, M1, line 77a.

¹⁰⁸ Klaeber’s Beowulf and the Fight at Finnsburg, ed. F. Klaeber, R. D. Fulk, R. E. Bjork, and J. D. Niles, 4th ed. (Toronto, 2008) [hereafter Beowulf], line 283b.

¹⁰⁹ ‘Læce Boc II’, Leechdoms, Wortcunning, and Starcraft of Early England, ed. and trans. T. O. Cockayne, 3 vols. (London, 1864–1866), II, 158–299, at 338.

¹¹⁰ ‘Homily XII: In die Pentecoste’, The Blickling Homilies, pp. 131–7, at 131.

¹¹¹ Heyworth, ‘The Devil’s in the Detail’, p. 177.

¹¹² See ‘bysig’ and related entries in DOE.

¹¹³ For example, ‘Hu he frod ond god feond oferswyðeþ’ (‘how he, wise and good, overcomes the enemy’), Beowulf, line 279.

¹¹⁴ ‘Whenever I rise, strong’, ‘Exeter Riddle 1’, line 3a.

¹¹⁵ ‘Whenever I, fighting, cover up the mighty ocean and stir up the earth’, ‘Exeter Riddle 2’, lines 8b–9.

¹¹⁶ ‘I who, living, ravage the land, and, after death, serve men’, ‘Exeter Riddle 12’, lines 14–15.

¹¹⁷ ‘Unbound, I obey no one unless properly tied’, ‘Exeter Riddle 23’, lines 15–16a.

¹¹⁸ ‘When I, girded with rings, must hit …’, ‘Exeter Riddle 91’, line 3.

¹¹⁹ ‘Sometimes I sing the gull’s song, when I sit, cheerful’, ‘Exeter Riddle 24’, lines 6b–7a.

¹²⁰ See Callaway, M., ‘The Appositive Participle in Anglo-Saxon’, PMLA 16 (1901), 141–360, at 153Google Scholar; Mitchell, B., Old English Syntax, 2 vols. (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1985), I, 160, at 75CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Haumann, D., ‘Adnominal Adjectives in Old English’, Eng. Lang. & Ling. 14 (2010), 53–81 Google Scholar.

¹²¹ Donne, ‘Three Old English Implement Riddles’, p. 246; Stewart, ‘The Solution to Old English Riddle 4’, p. 57; Cochran, ‘The Plough’s the Thing’, p. 305.

¹²² Stewart, ‘The Solution to Old English Riddle 4’, p. 57; Heyworth, ‘The Devil’s in the Detail’, pp. 179–80.

¹²³ Murphy, Unriddling, p. 73.

¹²⁴ O’Brien O’Keeffe, Stealing Obedience, p. 248.

¹²⁵ Ibid. p. 72.

¹²⁶ The Old English Version of the Enlarged Rule of Chrodegang together with the Latin Original, ed. A. Napier (London, 1916), pp. 21–2, 32, 77.

¹²⁷ Murphy, Unriddling, p. 73.

¹²⁸ ‘In atomo, in breahtme’, in the First and Third Cleopatra Glossaries (Anglo-Saxon and Old English Vocabularies, ed. T. Wright (London, 1884), pp. 424, 495).

¹²⁹ Note that the term could be understood in the plural too.

¹³⁰ Tupper, Riddles, p. 79.

¹³¹ See Heyworth, ‘The Devil’s in the Detail’, p. 182.

¹³² It is first mentioned in the early sixth century Regula Magistri: La Règle du maître, ed. A. de Vogüé, 2 vols. Sources Chrétiennes 105–106 (Paris, 1964), II, 166.

¹³³ See the examples of gretan to describe harp-playing in ‘The Gifts of Men’ (line 49), ‘Maxims 1’ (line 169), Beowulf (lines 1063 & 2107), and the OE Pastoral Care (King Alfred’s West-Saxon Version of Gregory’s Pastoral Care, ed. H. Sweet, EETS 45 (London, 1871), 175).

¹³⁴ See Murphy, Unriddling, p. 74.

¹³⁵ For example, Heyworth, ‘The Devil’s in the Detail’, pp. 188–9; Murphy, Unriddling, p. 75; Dale, ‘A New Solution’, p. 3.

¹³⁶ Tupper, Riddles, p. 79; Murphy, Unriddling, p. 74.

¹³⁷ DOE s. v. berstan.

¹³⁸ ‘Biersteð hlude | heah hloðgecrod’ (‘the cloud crashes loudly’), ‘Exeter Riddle 3’, lines 62b–63a.

¹³⁹ ‘Brim berstende’ (‘the breaking sea’), ‘Exodus’, ASPR 1, line 478a.