The ‘Cuckoo’ in the Collectanea of Pseudo-Bede—An Unnoticed Latin Analogue to Exeter Book Riddle 9

The pseudo-Bedan Collectanea is an anonymous miscellany of predominantly Irish and Anglo-Saxon materials from the eighth century, apparently compiled for the monastic classroom. Its loosely arranged items consist of short prose puzzles, riddle-questions, witty paradoxes, and proverbs in conversational form, mostly drawn from biblical lore and didactic sources, which are conflated with excerpts from Aldhelm's Enigmata and five verse riddles by the Late Roman poet Symphosius. Here, Bitterli discusses the Collectanea in the context of the Anglo-Saxon riddle tradition and examines the mini-riddle, Collectanea no. 196.