"The Three Riddles"- Florence Mixer 1934
Version of Riddles Wisely Expounded Child 1
[Appears in Bronson; Barry and Bayard, BFSSNE, No. 10 (1935), p. 8 and No. 12 (1937), p.8. Also The Ballad Book, w/ tune. Sung by Florence Mixer, Stonington, Maine, 1934; learned from her father. If this be a genuine tune, and no mere singsong, it may bear some comparison with "Newmill" in the Greig MSS., Tune-book I, p.91. As Barry explains, the text derives from Aytoun's translation of Herder's translation of D'Urfey's broadside version. Key Am; Bronson has the key as "C Anomalous."
Of the history of this and other songs sent in by her, Miss Mixer writes:
"My father, Frank S. Mixer, was born in 1853, and most of them he learned from old people in the family when he was a boy. His father was born in Hebron, Maine, in 1816, and his mother at Cape Elizabeth in 1819. During my father's early boyhood, he lived in Minot, and then the family moved across the town line, to Wilcomb's corner in Auburn where he lived the rest of his life.
"My father's family were all very musical, and they entertained themselves evenings singing such songs as these. As children, all his brothers and sisters were interested in the songs, but I think my father kept up his interest longer and added to his collection more than the rest."
The family tradition of The Three Riddles, which Mr. Mixer learned from his uncle, Mr. John McKenney, may with good assurance be traced back a full century. Riddles Wisely Expounded is known to have been current in the Northeast: the fragments identified by Mr. George F. Omar, St. Stephen, New Brunswick (British Ballads from Maine, p. 430), and the couplet-word for word identical with Child B, 2-quoted as sung by one of the characters in Robert P. Tristram Coffin's Lost Paradise, p. 199, are clear evidence. Miss Mixer's text, the first and only complete version recorded in the Northeast, is important, not only for the textual criticism of Child 1, but also for the history of one of the most recent ballads in Child's corpus, Captain Wedderburn's Courtship (Child 46), to which it stands in closer relation than any other known version of Riddles Wisely Expounded.
The oldest version of Child 1, the text A* from Rawlinson MS. D. 328, assigned by Kittredge to its proper place in the tradition of the ballad, is a homily and nothing else, as its title, Inter diabolus et virgo, shows. Three of Child's five texts C, b; and especially E, together with the Virginia version (Davis, pp.59-60) and the Georgia cante-fable in JAFL, XII, 129, ff., are likewise homilies, though, as in the romantic versions, the number of maids in Child C, E, is increased to three. The change from homily to romance--analogous to the recreation which changed The Deil's Wo'oing (Motherwell MS, p. 309; Child MSS., I, PP. 86-8), to the form of The Kegs of Canterbury and, the familiar Paper of Pins--is seen in Child A, B, and. in Maine A. How much Part Thomas D'Urfey had in making the change, we do not yet choose to say: it was he who first printed Child Ad, with its air, to which the melodies of Child B, E-- a romantic and a homiletic version, respectively-- are related, as collateral or derived sets; the older broadside versions, Child Aa, licensed, March 1, 1675, Ab, were printed during his lifetime. We here reprint D'Urfey's set from Pills to Purge Melancholy, ed. 1719, IV, 129, on the chance that it may aid some collector in recovering more traces of the tradition of Child A, since D'Urfey's book circulated in New England.
In the homily, Child A*, which will be our master-text, the riddles are in seven pairs of proverbial phrases: higher than a tree, deeper than the sea; sharper than a thorn, louder than a horn; longer than the way, redder than the day; better than bread, sharper (stronger?) than the dead (death?) ; greener than the wood, sweeter than the nut; swifter than the wind, richer than the king; yellower than wax, softer than flax; to which the answers are, respectively Heaven, Hell, hunger, thunder, sight, sin, the Host, pain, grass, love, thought, Jesus, sulfur, silk. The survival of the poison-Devil riddles both in the homiletic Child C, D, Davis A (the Devil only), and in the romantic Child A, Maine A, together with the fact that the fiend's stupidity and woman's cleverness are universal traits of folk-lore, leaves no doubt that these riddles also were part of the original homily, of which Child A* should not be supposed. to be the only version that existed. The manner in which the original series of riddles have been telescoped in tradition is evident; "sight, longer than the way," is replaced by "love" in Child A, B, Maine A; by "wind," in Child D, while the substitution of "shame" for "thunder" in Child C, 17, and of "rumor" in Child E, 14, is more homiletic than the original homily itself, and points to the survival of another tradition. Since the change from "sight" to "love" as being "longer than the way," is confined to the tradition of the romance, we suspect the influence of the proverb "out of sight, out of mind," in its Latin form: dextera langorem, visus comitatur anorem (J. Werner Lateinische Sprichworter and Sinnspruche des Mittelatters, D, 72 ), with a possible misreading of loukynge (Child A*, 17) as louynge, "loving," as a contributory cause.
Collation of Child"'s texts with Davis A and Maine A shows the following results in the tabulation of the three pairs of riddle questions:
Way : Love Child A (B) _ _ _ Davis _ Maine A
Sea : Hell
Horn : Thunder
Thorn : Hunger
Grass : Poison
'Woman : Devil
Maine A is thus shown to be closest to Child A : it has only the three pairs of questions in Child A, with the same answers. Child B is defective at the point where the third pair should come in; more-over, it has "broader, instead of longer," in the comparison of "love" and "the way." We have excluded Child F (ESPB, V, 205), since it clearly belongs to the tradition not of Riddles Wisely Expounded, but of the late journalistic ballad, Captain Wedderburn's Courtship (Child 46; compare A, 12; C 8). The same disposition should be made of the supposed Michigan fragment of Child 1 (B. L. Jones, in Kalamazoo Normal Record, May, 1914, P. 300).
P. B.
The Three Riddles- Sung by Florence Mixer, Stonington, Maine, 1934*; learned from her father.
'Twas of a gay young cavalier,
of honour and renown;
All for to seek a lady fair,
He rode from town to town.
'Twas at a woman widow's door
He drew his rein so free
For by her side the knight espied
Her comely daughters three
Small marvel if his gallant heart
Beat quick within his breast;
'Twas hard to choose, yet hard to loose,
Which might he wed the best.
"Come maidens, pretty maidens,
Come read my riddles three;
And she who reads the best of all
My loving bride shall be;
"Oh tell me what is longer
Than the longest path there be;
And tell me what is deeper
Than is the deepest sea.
"And tell me what is louder
Than is the loudest horn;
And tell me what is sharper
Than is the sharpest thorn.
"And tell me what is greener
Than the grass on yonder hill,
And tell me what is crueller
Than a wicked woman's will."
The eldest and the second maid
They sat and thought a while
The youngest she looked up at him
And said with a merry smile;
"Love, surely it is longer
Than the longest path there be;
And Hell, they say is deeper
Than is the deepest sea;
"Thunder, I know is louder
Than is the loudest horn;
And hunger it is sharper
Than is the sharpest thorn;
"I know a deadly poison, greener
than the grass on yonder hill;
And a foul fiend is crueller
Than a wicked woman's will."
Now scarcely had she spoke these words
When the youth was at her side;
'Twas all for what she answered him
He claimed her for his bride.
The eldest and the second maid,
They pondered and were dumb;
And they, perchance are waiting yet,
Some other one to come.
Now maidens, pretty maidens,
Be neither coy nor shy
But always, when a lover speaks,
Look kindly and reply.
*this is dated 1934 and then 1936 in two other sources, since it was published in 1935, I assume 1934 is the correct date- I don't have a copy of the original.