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1. THE STUDY AND HISTORY OF RIDDLES IN ENGLISH
A riddle is a word game or joke, comprising a question or statement couched in deliberately puzzling terms, propounded for solving by the hearer/ reader using clues embedded within that wording.1
The word ‘riddle’ has the same origin as the word ‘read’. It is the Old English word ræ̅dan, which meant interpret or guess. Ræ̅dan also had counterparts in other Indo-European languages like German (Old Frisian riedsal, Old Saxon radisli, German Rätsel) and Dutch (Middle Dutch raetsel, Dutch raadsel). It always revolves around the same meaning of ‘to understand or interpret the symbols’, like the old Germanic runes. From runes to modern English, the semantic field of ‘riddle’ hasn’t changed that much.2
So far a number of different definitions and explanations also have been given to riddles and riddling by scientists and writers. The first well-known definition to a riddle was made by Aristotle, in his work he emphasizes the similarity between a riddle and metaphor: “Good riddles do, in general, provide us with satisfactory metaphors: for metaphors imply riddles, and therefore a good riddle can furnish a good metaphor.” 3The same link with the metaphor is also evident in Potter’s work4. The second reoccurring line of thought underlines the incompatible contradiction appearing in riddles, a feature that was likewise reported by Aristotle in his work ‘‘On Poetics’’: “The very nature indeed of a riddle is this, to describe a fact that in an impossible combination of words (which cannot be done with the real names for things, but can be with their metaphorical substitute...)”.5
Ludwig Wittgenstein noted the following views about riddling:
“The riddle does not exist.
If a question can be framed at all, it is possible to answer it”.6
Abrahams and Dundes gave another definition to riddles: “Riddles are questions that are framed with the purpose of confusing or testing the wits of those who do not know the answer”.7
The riddles are further called “a mosaic of the actualities of daily experience” by Charles Kennedy.8 Due to his opinion riddles give a glimpse of the daily life of Anglo-Saxon society, but these riddles are not a means of normal, daily description. They deceive listeners or readers; they provide a glance at a daily object or anything else they describe. The reality is sometimes too far to seek through the continuous ambiguity of the enigmatic definitions that they are.9
The various views, definitions and criticism given to riddles above show that how difficult it is to make certain allowance for all levels relating to the riddle and possibly riddling.
Riddles are very old linguistic phenomenon. Historical records revealed that it is as old as language. Riddles are known to have existed since very old time, for the first documents date back to ancient cultures of India, Palestine, Mesopotamia and Greece.10
The oldest preserved riddle is from ancient Mesopotamia. An ancient Sumerian clay tablet from Lagash (ca. 2350 BC) records the following riddle:
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“Its canal is A, its god is B, its fish is C, its snake is D.
You are looking for a city that lies on canal A, whose local god is B and whose symbolic animals are C and D. Another Sumerian riddle asks the answerer to name a certain institution, maybe you can guess:
“There is a house. One enters it blind and comes out seeing. What is it?”11
Another variant of the earliest known riddles is inscribed on an ancient tablet believed to date from Babylonian times, and reads as follows:
Who becomes pregnant without conceiving?
Who becomes fat without eating? to which the answer is ‘clouds’.12
Archer Taylor also implied that "the oldest recorded riddles are Babylonian school texts which show no literary polish". For example: "You went and took the enemy's property; the enemy came and took your property". Answer: (a weaving shuttle).13
The riddles appear in numerous early manuscripts, of which the oldest is the Salmasianus, belonging to the seventh or eighth century. A number of them were added to the Historia of Apollonius of Tyre by Latin translator. Another one was the Riddles of Symphosius, which consists of a Preface and one hundred riddles, supposed to have been written for a feast at the time of the Saturnalia. Aldhelmus, abbot of Malmesbury in the seventh century, modeled his own book of one hundred riddles very closely on that of Symphosius; Alcuin used a prose version in teaching Latin to his royal pupil Pepin the Short, son of Charlemagne. Moreover, at that time in the manuscript of Ausonius some riddles were evident in Latin, in which word game was used to find the answer. Here are some examples:
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