Featherless bird-riddle

The featherless bird-riddle is an international riddle type that compares a snowflake to a bird. In the nineteenth century, it attracted considerable scholarly attention because it was seen as a possible reflex of ancient Germanic riddling, arising from magical incantations.^[1][2] Although the language of the riddle is reminiscent of European charms,^[3] later work, particularly by Antti Aarne, showed that it occurred widely throughout Europe─particularly central Europe─and that it is therefore an international riddle type.^[4] Archer Taylor concluded that 'the equating of a snowflake to a bird and the sun to a maiden without hands is an elementary idea that cannot yield much information about Germanic myth'.^[5]

Snowflakes falling on a handrail

Versions

The riddle is first attested in Latin, as the fourth of six anonymous 'enigmata risibilia' ('silly riddles'), known today as the Reichenau Riddles, found in the early tenth-century manuscript Karlsruher Codex Augiensis 205, copied at Reichenau Abbey:

Volavit volucer sine plumis;
sedit in arbore sine foliis;
venit homo absque manibus;
conscendit illum sine pedibus;
assavit illum sine igne;
comedit illum sine ore.^[6]

Translation:

It flew on wings without feathers;
sat in a tree without leaves;
a person came without hands;
set it in motion without feet;
roasted it without fire;
consumed it without a mouth.

That is, the snowflake was blown by the wind and melted by the sun.

A representative early-modern German version is:

Es kam ein Vogel federlos,
saß auf dem Baume blattlos,
da kam die Jungfer mundlos
und fraß den Vogel federlos
von dem Baume blattlos.

Translation:

There came a bird featherless
sat on the trees leafless
There came a maiden speechless
And ate the bird featherless
From off the tree leafless.

That is, 'the snow (featherless bird) lies on a bare tree in winter (leafless tree), and the sun (speechless maiden) causes the snow to melt (ate the featherless bird)'.^[7]

The best known English example runs

White bird featherless
Flew from Paradise,
Perched upon the castle wall;
Up came Lord John landless,
Took it up handless,
And rode away horseless to the King's white hall.^[8]

An Icelandic example runs:

Fuglinn flaug fjaðralaus,
settíst á vegginn beinlaus,
þá kom maður handlaus,
og skaut fuglinn bogalaus.

Translation:

The bird flew featherless,
set itself on a wall legless;
then came a handless person,
and shot the bird bowless.^[9]