riddles & research
Riddles are one of the oldest forms of wordplay. We think of Gollum’s riddles in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and J K Rowling’s Harry Potter series, but the first recorded riddles were found in Ancient Babylon. A riddle is a question – Who Am I? – composed in a puzzling, obscure way. Playing around with hidden meanings struck me as the perfect theme for a murder mystery in which my heroine must unmask a killer. As Nat Starling, a Cambridge-educated writer explains:
‘The origin of the word “riddle” is “dark saying” in Old English,' said Nat. 'It means veiled, like the Greek term “enigma” – “to speak obscurely”. So I’m afraid “murderer” is too simple a solution.’
‘Why so?’ asked Tabitha.
‘A riddle must have two aspects: a deceptive cloak masking an inner truth. “Murderer” lacks the twisting wordplay, the flourishing of the cloak being swept aside.’
Like the answer to a whodunit, the solution can seem obvious once you read it. Yet it has been interesting to hear the book's readers do find Georgian riddles a brain-teasing challenge.
‘The origin of the word “riddle” is “dark saying” in Old English,' said Nat. 'It means veiled, like the Greek term “enigma” – “to speak obscurely”. So I’m afraid “murderer” is too simple a solution.’
‘Why so?’ asked Tabitha.
‘A riddle must have two aspects: a deceptive cloak masking an inner truth. “Murderer” lacks the twisting wordplay, the flourishing of the cloak being swept aside.’
Like the answer to a whodunit, the solution can seem obvious once you read it. Yet it has been interesting to hear the book's readers do find Georgian riddles a brain-teasing challenge.
By the 18th century almanacs were evolving to meet a largely middle-class desire for amusement and instruction. The Ladies’ Diary, founded in 1704, successfully featured essays on famous women, ferociously difficult mathematical problems, and rhyming riddles or ‘enigmas’. Soon ‘riddlemania’ gripped British readers. Unlike cryptic crosswords or sudoku, riddling was often a communal activity, as we see in Jane Austen’s Emma, when the Hartfield party is invited to contribute ‘any really good enigmas, charades or conundrums,’ to form a written collection. Jane Austen herself was a very clever writer of riddles – along with Jonathan Swift, Goethe, Edgar Allan Poe and many other great literary minds. Such puzzles leave me impressed – if not shamed - by the mental dexterity of our ancestors. Needless to say, with solutions to hand, I thoroughly enjoyed setting one of fifty historical riddles to open each chapter in the book - along with fifty solutions, of course.
Here is a riddle for you to try:
Here is a riddle for you to try:
I’m a strange contradiction: I’m new and I’m old,
I’m sometimes in tatters and sometimes in gold,
Though I never could read, yet lettered I’m found,
Though blind, I enlighten, though free, I am bound.
I often die young, though I sometimes live ages,
Like a Queen I’m attended by so many pages.*
* Answer at the bottom of the page
I’m sometimes in tatters and sometimes in gold,
Though I never could read, yet lettered I’m found,
Though blind, I enlighten, though free, I am bound.
I often die young, though I sometimes live ages,
Like a Queen I’m attended by so many pages.*
* Answer at the bottom of the page
my research
One of my pleasantest research trips was becoming a ‘farmer’s wife’ at Acton Scott Museum, Shropshire, the home of the BBC’s Victorian Farm. The butter churning took as long as the cream needed to turn, and collecting eggs took as long as I needed to find them in the straw. A happy band of history fans washed, cooked, tended to livestock, and when our tasks were done, we chatted and sewed around a parlour table. As the shadows of a winter's afternoon lengthened, time seemed to stretch far longer than usual.
This got me thinking that there may be some truth in the notion that time ran slower in the past. While writing from the almanack’s perspective I followed a mass of red-lettered Saints days, the lunar and solar year, the planets, high days and holidays. I began to notice the distinctions between the local hay, barley, and corn harvests, and how the harvest moon swings close to the earth like a gigantic lamp. I searched out All Hallows mummers in Chester’s pubs and tried to commemorate the circling year.
I wasn’t very good at telling the time by the Seven Stars (even with a modern app like Star chart), but I can now recognise the phases of the moon and spot the major constellations. My novel became a pleasure to write, as I abandoned social media to spend evenings updating Georgian riddles and charting the night sky circa 1752. And yes, it felt like a slower and more melancholically beautiful year, especially given the recent news that Britain has lost half of its wildlife since the 1960s. Maybe more of us need to connect to the natural time of the past again - for the sake of all our futures.
* THE RIDDLE ANSWER IS:
A BOOK
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