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]

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.

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.

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