Solomon and Saturn
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Solomon and Saturn is a work in the corpus of Anglo-Saxon literature.
It is cast in the form of a dialogue full of riddles, in which Solomon, the wisest king of the land of Israel, and Saturn, the eldest of the elder gods of Roman mythology, though identified in the poem as a prince of the Chaldeans, quiz each other on Biblical, runic, and similar medieval lore. The entire poem is a "riddle contest" between the two greybearded characters after the manner of the Vafþrúðnismál and Alvíssmál and other similar poems in the Poetic Edda. In Solomon and Saturn, though, by including Christian lore as a source for the riddles, the imagery takes on an exotic cast, speaking of the fallen angels, and using the Lord's Prayer as a battle charm.
The work exists in three versions: a prose version in Cotton Vitellius A.xv, and two versions in alliterative verse, one (in Corpus Christi College, Cambridge MS 422) being interspersed with prose.
One of the poetic versions uses the runic alphabet as a sort of riddling shorthand in which runic characters stand for the words in Old English that name them. From this, we know some of the names for the extended set of runes used to write Old English.
[edit] External link
- One of the Solomon and Saturn poems (Old English)
