Exeter Book Riddle 51

Exeter Book Riddle 51 (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 'quill pen and three fingers', 'whose figurative "journey" leaves a dark track of letters and words on the page'^[1] and it stands accordingly as an important literary example of the international riddle type, the Writing-riddle, whose most basic form is 'white field, black seeds'. In the reading of Helen Price, the riddle suggests that 'writing is a journey, but it is not one of a human being alone. The riddle is self consciously aware of the connected nature of human, tool, and animal'.^[2]