Exeter Book Riddle 45

Exeter Book Riddle 45 (according to the numbering of the Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records) is one of the Old English riddles found in the later tenth-century Exeter Book. Its solution is accepted to be 'dough'. However, the description evokes a penis becoming erect; as such, Riddle 45 is noted as one of a small group of Old English riddles that engage in sexual double entendre, and thus provides rare evidence for Anglo-Saxon attitudes to sexuality, and specifically for women taking the initiative in heterosexual sex.

Text and translation
As edited by Krapp and Dobbie, the riddle reads:

Editions

 * Krapp, George Philip and Elliott Van Kirk Dobbie (eds), The Exeter Book, The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records, 3 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1936), p. 205, https://web.archive.org/web/20181206091232/http://ota.ox.ac.uk/desc/3009.
 * Williamson, Craig (ed.), The Old English Riddles of the Exeter Book (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1977), pp. 96-97 [no. 43].
 * Muir, Bernard J. (ed.), The Exeter Anthology of Old English Poetry: An Edition of Exeter Dean and Chapter MS 3501, 2nd edn, 2 vols (Exeter: Exeter University Press, 2000).

Recordings

 * Michael D. C. Drout, 'Riddle 45', performed from the Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records edition (29 October 2007).