Featherless bird-riddle

The featherless bird-riddle is an international riddle type that compares a snowflake to a bird. In the nineteenth century, it attracted considerable scholarly attention because it was seen as a possible reflex of ancient Germanic riddling, arising from magical incantations.^[1][2] Although the language of the riddle is reminiscent of European charms,^[3] later work, particularly by Antti Aarne, showed that it occurred widely throughout Europe─particularly central Europe─and that it is therefore an international riddle type.^[4] Archer Taylor concluded that 'the equating of a snowflake to a bird and the sun to a maiden without hands is an elementary idea that cannot yield much information about Germanic myth'.^[5]

Snowflakes falling on a handrail

Versions

The riddle is first attested in Latin, as the fourth of six anonymous 'enigmata risibilia' ('silly riddles'), known today as the Reichenau Riddles, found in the early tenth-century manuscript Karlsruher Codex Augiensis 205, copied at Reichenau Abbey:

Volavit volucer sine plumis; sedit in arbore sine foliis; venit homo absque manibus; conscendit illum sine pedibus; assavit illum sine igne; comedit illum sine ore.[6]

It flew on wings without feathers; sat in a tree without leaves; a person came without hands; set it in motion without feet; roasted it without fire; consumed it without a mouth.

That is, the snowflake was blown by the wind and melted by the sun.

A representative early-modern German version is:

Es kam ein Vogel federlos, saß auf dem Baume blattlos, da kam die Jungfer mundlos und fraß den Vogel federlos von dem Baume blattlos.

There came a bird featherless sat on the trees leafless There came a maiden speechless And ate the bird featherless From off the tree leafless.

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)'.^[7]

The best known English example runs

White bird featherless
Flew from Paradise,
Perched upon the castle wall;
Up came Lord John landless,
Took it up handless,
And rode away horseless to the King's white hall.^[8]

An Icelandic example runs:

Fuglinn flaug fjaðralaus, settíst á vegginn beinlaus, þá kom maður handlaus, og skaut fuglinn bogalaus.

The bird flew featherless, set itself on a wall legless; then came a handless person, and shot the bird bowless.[9]

References

1. Éva Pócs, 'Miracles and Impossibilities in Magic Folk Poetry', in Charms, Charmers and Charming, ed. by Jonathan Roper, Palgrave Historical Studies in Witchcraft and Magic (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), pp. 27–53 (pp. 34–35). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230583535_3. ISBN 978-1-349-36250-9.
2. Tomas Tomasek, Das deutsche Rätsel im Mittelalter, Hermea: Germanistische Forschungen, Neue Folge, 69 (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1994), pp. 119–22.
3. Éva Pócs, 'Miracles and Impossibilities in Magic Folk Poetry', in Charms, Charmers and Charming, ed. by Jonathan Roper, Palgrave Historical Studies in Witchcraft and Magic (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), pp. 27–53 (pp. 34–35). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230583535_3. ISBN 978-1-349-36250-9.
4. Antti Aarne, Vergleichende Rätselforschungen, 3 vols, Folklore Fellows Communications, 26–28 (Helsinki/Hamina: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, 1918–20), III 3–48.
5. Archer Taylor, 'The Riddle', California Folklore Quarterly, 2.2 (April 1943), 129-47 (pp. 141-42).
6. Tomas Tomasek, Das deutsche Rätsel im Mittelalter, Hermea: Germanistische Forschungen, Neue Folge, 69 (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1994), p. 119. For another edition and English translation, see The Old English and Anglo-Latin Riddle Tradition, ed. and trans. by Andy Orchard, Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library, 69 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2021), pp. 602-3.
7. Dominik Landwehr, review of Simpliciana: Schriften der Grimmelshausen Gesellschaft 2014, ed. by Peter Heßelmann (Berlin: Peter Lang, 2015), in Cryptologia, 41 (2017), 92–96.
8. Jón Árnason, Íslenzkar gátur, skemtanir, vikivakar og Þulur, I (Kaupmannahöfn: Hið Íslenzka bókmenntafélag, 1887), http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/IcelOnline/IcelOnline-idx?type=HTML&rgn=DIV2&byte=187436.
9. Jón Árnason, Íslenzkar gátur, skemtanir, vikivakar og Þulur, I (Kaupmannahöfn: Hið Íslenzka bókmenntafélag, 1887), http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/IcelOnline/IcelOnline-idx?type=HTML&rgn=DIV2&byte=187436.