Wednesday, 5 February 2025

Riddle; ding?

In BF I quote Molly Vogel’s poem:

Silent is my dress when I bow to earth; pluck me
for pleasure and watch me blush; witness the birth of neither
nymph nor satyr. I am barren with seeds; watch me dismantle
my own throat. Who savours me pressed in wind? My vellum
pinion spews life. Shorn, my woolly husk unfurls like a mollusk.
I stand singular with many, mimic of mimicry.

- but could not propose a solution to the riddle. Robert Hampson emailed me.
"Dear Andrew,

I am currently working my way through your Beautiful Feelings. I have a former colleague who is an expert on Anglo-Saxon riddles, and she was very taken by the poem by Molly Vogel, which I sent her.
She noted it as a response to Exeter Book riddle 7 - and suggested the solution might be the Medusa Mushroom?  She found this page with some details that seemed suggestive - particularly about the cluster and the blushing:
https://www.wildfooduk.com/mushroom-guide/medusa/ “

Riddle 7 is taken to be about a swan. It contains a line about silence, but also refers to dress which makes a sound (swogan). This is taken to refer to the creaking of feathers when the swan is flying. The word ‘hraegl’ refers to feathers rather than more generally to ’array’. Robert says further:

“The opening lines riff off Riddle 7 (where the solution is 'a swan' - hence, perhaps, 'pinions' later (with 'vellum pinions' as the constraints of the medieval page). The transformation of swan into mushroom would link to the reference to Ovid - and I wonder if transformation is the key to 'Medusa'. (Medusa also features in Ovid's Metamorphoses.)

Do mollusks unfurl? I imagine a snail emerging from its shell - and then I wonder about the 'woolly husk'. If I google 'shorn woolly husks', Google gives me advice about cutting the fur of woolly huskies ... From swan to mushroom, from swan to husky - 'singular with many'.

Mollusks have 'great morphological diversity' - which seems appropriate. Their body is called a 'mantle'  ('Watch me dismantle my own throat'). The soft bodies, the gills ... remind me of mushrooms.”

My colleague, Jennifer Neville, has written quite a bit about OE Riddles.”

How a mushroom can be like the Medusa I am unclear.  
I am not sure we have hit the jackpot here. Where is the “shorn/ my woolly husk”? But the ”blush” is the red tinge when the Medusa is bruised. The state of being neither nymph nor satyr would refer to an organism neutral in gender, so a mushroom rather than a plant, since plants have gender. I looked up the Medusa and it is one of the Amanita family. I am familiar with Amanita muscaria but that does not seem to fit well. I think the answer may be a book, and the 'vellum pinions" are indeed pages of a manuscript. (Pinions would mean wings rather than bonds.) 'Singular with many' could refer to the pages of a library. Hides have hair on one side which gets shorn off to make vellum for writing, so that could be the "woolly husk". The 'blush' could be rubrication, red-letters. I am not getting a real "ding ding ding feeling" about this solution.