Old English Riddles

The Old English Riddles survive through a manuscript of about the year 1000 left to Exeter Cathedral by Leofric, its first bishop. Unlike most of the poetry preserved in the "Exeter Book", the Riddles are secular poems, robustly celebrating the familiar objects and natural world of eighth-century England. In this newly revised edition of his popular collection, Michael Alexander presents a selection of these ingenious and enigmatic poems in versions which capture their peculiar concision, humour and vigour of language.