The riddle was at times a prominent literary form in the ancient and medieval world, so riddles are extensively, if patchily, attested in our written records from these periods. More recently, riddles have been collected from oral tradition by scholars in many parts of the world.
Babylon According to Archer Taylor, "the oldest recorded riddles are
Babylonian school texts which show no literary polish". The answers to the riddles are not preserved; the riddles include "my knees hasten, my feet do not rest, a shepherd without pity drives me to pasture" (a river? A rowboat?); "you went and took the enemy's property; the enemy came and took your property" (a weaving shuttle?); "who becomes pregnant without conceiving, who becomes fat without eating?" (a raincloud?). These may be riddles from oral tradition that a teacher has put into a schoolbook.
South Asia It is thought that the world's earliest surviving poetic riddles are found in the
Sanskrit Rigveda.
Hymn 164 of the
first book of the
Rigveda can be seen as a series of riddles or enigmas which are now obscure but may have been an enigmatic exposition of the
pravargya ritual. These riddles overlap in significantly with a collection of forty-seven in the
Atharvaveda; riddles also appear elsewhere in
Vedic texts. Taylor cited the following example: '"Who moves in the air? Who makes a noise on seeing a thief? Who is the enemy of lotuses? Who is the climax of fury?" The answers to the first three questions, when combined in the manner of a charade, yield the answer to the fourth question. The first answer is bird (
vi), the second dog (
śvā), the third sun (
mitra), and the whole is
Vishvamitra,
Rama's first teacher and counselor and a man noted for his outbursts of rage'. Accordingly, riddles are treated in early studies of Sanskrit poetry such as
Daṇḍin's seventh- or eighth-century
Kāvyādarśa. Early narrative literature also sometimes includes riddles, most notably the
Mahabharata, which includes the
Yaksha Prashna, a series of riddles posed by a nature-spirit (
yaksha) to
Yudhishthira. The first riddle collection in a medieval Indic language is traditionally thought to be the
riddles of Amir Khusrow (1253–1325), written in
Hindawi verse, using the
mātrika metre. As of the 1970s, folklorists had not undertaken extensive collection of riddles in India, but riddling was known to be thriving as a form of folk-literature, sometimes in verse. Riddles have also been collected in Tamil.
Hebrew, Arabic and Persian While riddles are not numerous in the Bible, they are present, most famously in
Samson's riddle in Judges xiv.14, but also in I Kings 10:1–13 (where the
Queen of Sheba tests
Solomon's wisdom), and in the
Talmud.
Sirach also mentions riddles as a popular dinner pastime, while the Aramaic
Story of Ahikar contains a long section of proverbial wisdom that in some versions also contains riddles. Otherwise, riddles are sparse in ancient Semitic writing. In the medieval period, however, verse riddles, alongside other puzzles and conundra, became a significant literary form in the Arabic-speaking world, and accordingly in Islamic Persian culture and (particularly in
Al-Andalus) in Hebrew. Since early Arabic and Persian poetry often features rich, metaphorical description, and
ekphrasis, there is a natural overlap in style and approach between poetry generally and riddles specifically; literary riddles are therefore often a subset of the descriptive poetic form known in both traditions as
wasf. Riddles are attested in anthologies of poetry and in prosimetrical portrayals of riddle-contests in Arabic
maqāmāt and in Persian epics such as the
Shahnameh. Meanwhile, in Hebrew,
Dunash ben Labrat (920–990), credited with transposing Arabic metres into Hebrew, composed a number of riddles, mostly apparently inspired by folk-riddles. Other Hebrew-writing exponents included
Moses ibn Ezra,
Yehuda Alharizi,
Judah Halevi,
Immanuel the Roman, and
Israel Onceneyra.
Europe Greek Riddles are known to have been popular in Greece in Hellenistic times, and possibly before; they were prominent among the entertainments and challenges presented at
symposia. Oracles were also represented as speaking in often riddlic language. However, the first significant corpus of Greek riddles survives in an anthology of earlier material known as the
Greek Anthology, which contains about 50 verse riddles, probably put into its present form by
Constantine Cephalas, working in the tenth century CE. Most surviving ancient Greek riddles are in verse. In the second chapter of Book III of Aristotle's
Rhetoric, the philosopher stated that "good riddles do, in general, provide us with satisfactory metaphors: for metaphors imply riddles, and therefore a good riddle can furnish a good metaphor." Literary riddles were also composed in
Byzantium, from perhaps the tenth century with the work of
John Geometres, into the fifteenth century, along with a neo-Byzantine revival in around the early eighteenth century. There was a particular peak around the long twelfth century.
Latin and Romance Two Latin riddles are preserved as graffiti in the Basilica at
Pompeii. The pre-eminent collection of ancient Latin riddles is a collection of 100 hexametrical riddles by
Symphosius which were influential on later medieval Latin writers. The
Bern Riddles, a collection of Latin riddles clearly modelled on Symphosius, were composed in the early seventh century by an unknown author, perhaps in northern Italy. Symphosius's collection also inspired a number of
Anglo-Saxon riddlers who wrote in Latin. They remained influential in medieval Castilian tradition, being the basis for the second set of riddles in the thirteenth-century
Libro de Apolonio, posed by Apolonio's daughter Tarsiana to her father. The perhaps eighth- or ninth-century
Veronese Riddle is a key witness to the linguistic transition from Latin to Romance, but riddles are otherwise rare in medieval
romance languages. However, in the early modern period, printed riddle collections were published in French, including the
Adevineaux amoureux (printed in Bruges by Colard Mansion around 1479); and
Demandes joyeuses en maniere de quolibets, the basis for
Wynkyn de Worde's 1511
Demaundes Joyous.
The Germanic-speaking world Riddles survive only fragmentarily in
Old High German: three, very short, possible examples exist in manuscripts from the
Monastery of St Gallen, but, while certainly cryptic, they are not necessarily riddles in a strict sense. About 150 survive in
Middle High German, mostly quoted in other literary contexts. Likewise, riddles are rare in
Old Norse: almost all occur in one section of
Hervarar saga ok Heiðreks, in which the god
Óðinn propounds around 37 riddles (depending on the manuscript). These riddles do, however, provide insights into
Norse mythology, medieval Scandinavian social norms, and rarely attested poetic forms. By contrast, verse riddles were prominent in
early medieval England, following the seminal composition of
one hundred and one riddles by
Aldhelm (c. 639–709), written in Latin and inspired by the fourth- or fifth-century Latin poet
Symphosius. Aldhelm was followed by a number of other Anglo-Saxons writing riddles in Latin. This prestigious literary heritage contextualises the survival of nearly one hundred riddles in the tenth-century
Exeter Book, one of the main surviving collections of
Old English verse. The riddles in this book vary in subject matter from ribald innuendo to theological sophistication. Three,
Exeter Book Riddle 35 and
Riddles 40/66, are in origin translations of riddles by Aldhelm (and Riddle 35 the only Old English riddle to be attested in another manuscript besides the Exeter Book). Unlike the pithy three-line riddles of Symphosius, the Old English riddles tend to be discursive, often musing on complex processes of manufacture when describing artefacts such as mead (
Exeter Book Riddle 27) or a reed-pen or -pipe (
Exeter Book Riddle 60). They are noted for providing perspectives on the world which give voice to actors which tend not to appear in Old English poetry, ranging from female slaves to animals and plants. In addition, they often subvert the conventions of Old English heroic and religious poetry. While medieval records of Germanic-language riddles are patchy, with the advent of print in the West, collections of riddles and similar kinds of questions began to be published. A large number of riddle collections were printed in the German-speaking world and, partly under German influence, in Scandinavia. Riddles were evidently hugely popular in Germany: a recent research project uncovered more than 100,000 early modern German riddles, with the most important collection being that
Strassburger Rätselbuch, first published around 1500 and many times reprinted. This is one of the most famous riddles of that time: That is, "the snow (featherless bird) lies on a bare tree in winter (leafless tree), and the sun (speechless maiden) causes the snow to melt (ate the featherless bird)". Likewise, early modern English-speakers published printed riddle collections, such as the 1598
Riddles of Heraclitus and Democritus, which includes for example the following riddle: First I was small, and round like a pearl; Then long and slender, as brave as an earl; Since, like an hermit, I lived in a cell, And now, like a rogue, in the wide world I dwell. After the
early Middle Ages, the riddle was seldom used as a literary form in English. Tellingly, while
Jonathan Swift composed at least eight verse riddles on themes such as a pen, gold, and the privy, this was seen as a lapse in taste by many of his contemporaries. However, although riddles are seldom used today as a literary form in their own right, they have arguably influenced the approach to poetry of a number of twentieth-century poets, such as
Francis Ponge,
Wallace Stevens,
Richard Wilbur,
Rainer M. Rilke, and
Henrikas Radauskas. The famed
Transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote "All is a riddle, and the key to a riddle ... is another riddle". Riddles continued to flourish until recently as an oral form of entertainment, however; the seminal collection of Anglophone riddles from the early modern period through to the twentieth century is
Archer Taylor's. Riddles are, for example, prominent in some early-modern
ballads collected from oral tradition. Some of those included in the
Child Ballads are "
Riddles Wisely Expounded" (Child 1), "
The Elfin Knight" (Child 2), "
King John and the Bishop" (Child 45), "
Captain Wedderburn's Courtship" (Child 46), and "
Proud Lady Margaret" (Child 47). Contemporary English-language riddles typically use
puns and
double entendres for humorous effect, rather than to puzzle the butt of the
joke, as in "Why is six afraid of seven?" "Because seven eight nine (eight can be replaced with ate)." These riddles are now mostly children's
humour and
games rather than literary compositions. Some riddles are composed of foreign words and play on similar sounds, as in: :
"There were two cats, one two three cat and un deux trois cat. They had a swimming race from England to France. Who won?" :
"One two three cat, because un deux trois quatre cinq (un deux trois cat sank)." This plays on the fact that the French words for four and five are pronounced similarly to the English words
cat and
sank.
The Celtic-speaking world Few riddles are attested in medieval Celtic languages, though this depends on how narrowly a riddle is defined; some early medieval Welsh and Irish juridical texts have been read as being riddles. One undisputed riddle is attested in medieval
Welsh, an elaborate text entitled 'Canu y Gwynt' ('song of the wind') in the fourteenth-century
Book of Taliesin probably inspired by Latin riddles on the same theme. However, this record is supplemented by Latin material, apparently from a
Brittonic cultural background in North Britain, about
Lailoken: in a twelfth-century text, Lailoken poses three riddles to his captor King Meldred. The earliest riddles attested in Irish are generally held to be found in a short collection from the fifteenth-century Book of Fermoy. However, other forms of wisdom contest do occur in Irish literature, such as
The Colloquy of the Two Sages, first attested in twelfth-century manuscripts, and in one such contest, in
Imthecht na Tromdaime, first attested in the fifteenth century, at least one riddle is arguably posed. Even research on the post-medieval Celtic-speaking world has yielded a "comparatively meagre corpus".
The Finnic-speaking world The corpus of traditional riddles from the
Finnic-speaking world (including the modern Finland, Estonia, and parts of Western Russia) is fairly unitary, though eastern Finnish-speaking regions show particular influence of Russian Orthodox Christianity and Slavonic riddle culture. The Finnish for "riddle" is
arvoitus (pl.
arvoitukset), related to the verb
arvata ("guess"). Finnic riddles are noteworthy in relation to the rest of the world's oral riddle canon for their original imagery, the abundance of sexual riddles, and the interesting collision of influences from east and west; along with the attestation in some regions of an elaborate riddle-game. Riddles provide some of the first surviving evidence for Finnish-language literature.
East Asia China In modern Chinese, the standard word for 'riddle' is
mi (謎, literally "to bewilder"). Riddles are spoken of as having a
mian (面, "surface", the question component of the riddle), and a
di (底, "base", the answer component). Ancient Chinese terms for 'riddle' include
yin (讔) and
sou (廋), which both mean "hidden". Literary riddles in China first begin to be attested in significant numbers around the second century CE. One example is the riddle "千 里 会 千 金"; these characters respectively mean 'thousand kilometre meet thousand gold'. • The first stage of solving the riddle is verbal: • In Chinese culture, "it is said that a good horse can run thousands of kilometers per day", so "千 里" (thousand kilometer) is resolved as "马" (horse). • Meanwhile, because "a daughter is very important in the family", in Chinese culture it is possible to resolve "千 金" (thousand gold) as "女" (daughter). • The second stage of solving the riddle is visual: combining the radical "马" (horse) with the radical "女" (daughter) produces the character "妈" (mother). Thus the answer to "thousand kilometres meet thousand gold" is "妈" (mother). The posing and solving of riddles has long been an important part of the Chinese
Lantern Festival. China also contributed a distinctive kind of riddle known in English as the
kōan (), developed as a teaching technique in
Zen Buddhism in the
Tang dynasty (618–907). In this tradition, the answer to the riddle is to be established through years of meditation, informed by Zen thought, as part of a process of seeking
enlightenment. In the twentieth century, thousands of riddles and similar enigmas have been collected, capitalising on the large number of homophones in Chinese. Examples of folk-riddles include: • There is a small vessel filled with sauce, one vessel holding two different kinds. (Egg) • Washing makes it more and more dirty; it is cleaner without washing. (Water) • When you use it you throw it away, and when you do not use it you bring it back. (Anchor)
The Philippines Quite similar to its English counterpart, the riddle in the
Philippines is called
Bugtong. It is traditionally used during a
funeral wake together with other games such as
tong-its or the more popular
sakla; later generations use
Bugtong as a form of past time or as an activity. One peculiarity of the
Filipino version is the way they start with the
phrase Bugtong-bugtong before saying the riddle; usually it is common to create riddles that
rhyme. This is an example of a
Tagalog Bugtong: Further south, in
Sulawesi, Indonesia, among the
Pendau, riddles are also used at funeral gatherings.
Africa Anthropological research in Africa has produced extensive collections of riddles over the last century or so. Riddles have been characterised as "one of the most important forms of oral art in Africa"; Hamnett analyzes African riddling from an anthropological viewpoint; Yoruba riddles have enjoyed a recent monograph study. Wambi Cornelius Gulere wrote his doctoral project at
Makerere University, titled
Riddle Performance and Societal Discourses: Lessons from Busoga. He argues for recognition of the importance of the riddling act, not merely gathering and studying lists of riddles. Grivas Muchineripi Kayange has seen African riddles as a window into
African philosophy.
The Americas Native American traditions Riddles in the Americas are of particular interest to scholarship because it was long thought that native American cultures had no autochthonous riddle traditions (as opposed to riddles inspired by European culture, as with the twenty-two
Aztec riddles collected by
Bernardino de Sahagún in the sixteenth century, in the famous
Florentine codex). If so, this would have suggested that riddles are not a universal art form. However, Hieronymus Lalemant gave a fairly detailed account of a riddle-contest among the
Huron around 1639 as part of a healing ritual. Someone will say, "What I desire and what I am seeking is that which bears a lake within itself;" and by this is intended a pumpkin or calabash. Another will say, "What I ask for is seen in my eyes—it will be marked with various colors"; and because the same Huron word that signifies "eye" also signifies "glass bead", this is a clue to divine what he desires—namely, some kind of beads of this material, and of different colors. Accordingly, during the twentieth century, progressively more substantial collections of Native American riddles were made, including from the
Alaskan Athabaskans (Ten'a) people in
British Columbia;
Amuzgo people in Central America; and
Quechua people in South America. Thus, while data remains rather thin, it seems clear that riddling did exist in the Americas independently of European culture.
Colonial traditions Riddles are found extensively in the settler-colonial cultures of the Americas. One form of riddle features in
payada de contrapunto ("counterpoint payada"), a
Rioplatense musical genre in which guitar players compete in a symbolic duel. Two guitar players challenge each other in song by asking a riddle-like question and/or answering the opponent's questions. This is performed through several successive rounds of witty exchanges which may include banter and even insults—typically with a humorous intent. The most famous literary example of counterpoint payada comes from
Martín Fierro, Part 2, Song 30, verses 6233–6838. ==Riddle-contests==