"Riddles Wisely Expounded" is a traditional English song, dating at least to 1450. It is Child Ballad

Child Ballads

The Child Ballads are a collection of 305 ballads from England and Scotland, and their American variants, collected by Francis James Child in the late nineteenth century...

 1 and Roud

Roud Folk Song Index

The Roud Folk Song Index is a database of 300,000 references to over 21,600 songs that have been collected from oral tradition in the English language from all over the world...

 161, and exists in several variants. The first known tune was attached to it in 1719.

Synopsis

In the earliest surviving version of the song, Inter diabolus et virgo, "between the devil and the maiden" (mid-15th century), the "foul fiend" proposes to abduct a maiden unless she can answer a series of riddles. The woman prays to Jesus for wisdom, and answers the riddles correctly.

In later versions, a knight puts a woman to test before he marries her (sometimes after seducing her), or a devil disguised as a knight tries to carry her off. The woman knows the answers, and thus either wins the marriage or is free of the devil. In the latter case, the last riddle is often "what is worse than woman?" (the devil).

The riddles vary, but typical ones include

• What is longer than the way? -- love
• What is deeper than the sea? -- hell
• What is louder than the horn? -- thunder
• What is sharper than a thorn? -- hunger
• What is whiter than milk? -- snow
• What is softer than silk? -- down

Commentary

The motif of riddling in folklore is very ancient, the stories of Oedipus

Oedipus

Oedipus was a mythical Greek king of Thebes. He fulfilled a prophecy that said he would kill his father and marry his mother, and thus brought disaster on his city and family...

 and Samson

Samson

Samson, Shimshon ; Shamshoun or Sampson is the third to last of the Judges of the ancient Israelites mentioned in the Tanakh ....

 giving two early examples. The particular form used here matches the folktale Aarne-Thompson type 875 The Clever Girl where a woman wins a husband by her clever answers to riddles. Other tales of this type include What Is the Fastest Thing in the World?

What Is the Fastest Thing in the World?

What Is the Fastest Thing in the World? is a Greek fairy tale collected by Georgios A. Megas in Folktales of Greece.It is Aarne-Thompson type 875 and has many Greek and Slavic variants, generally revolving about the exchange of clever answers. This type of tale is the commonest European tale...

and The Wise Little Girl

The Wise Little Girl

The Wise Little Girl is a Russian fairy tale collected by Alexander Afanasyev in Narodnye russkie skazki.This type of tale is the most common European tales to deal with witty exchanges.-Synopsis:...

.

In this ballad, the words of each verse are interspersed with a chorus phrase "lay the bent to the bonny broom". A. L. Lloyd

A. L. Lloyd

Albert Lancaster Lloyd , usually known as A. L. Lloyd or Bert Lloyd, was an English folk singer and collector of folk songs, and as such was a key figure in the folk music revival of the 1950s and 1960s....

  euphemistically describes this as a phrase of "physiological significance", explaining that the word "bent" means a horn. "Broom" most likely refers to the flowering shrub

Broom (shrub)

Brooms are a group of evergreen, semi-evergreen, and deciduous shrubs in the subfamily Faboideae of the legume family Fabaceae, mainly in the three genera Chamaecytisus, Cytisus and Genista, but also in many other small genera . All genera in this group are from the tribe Genisteae...

.

There are many German variants of this ballad, and a Gaelic form was widespread among both Scots and Irish.

Modern retellings

• Juniper, Gentian and Rosemary by Pamela Dean
  Pamela Dean
  Pamela Dean Dyer-Bennet is an American fantasy author whose most notable book is Tam Lin, based on the Child Ballad of the same name, in which the Scottish fairy story is set on a midwestern college campus loosely based on her alma mater, Carleton College in Minnesota.She was a member of the...
  
  
• "A Diorama of the Infernal Regions, or the Devil's Ninth Question," by Andy Duncan
  Andy Duncan (writer)
  Andy Duncan is an award-winning American science fiction and fantasy writer whose work frequently deals with Southern U.S. themes. He was born in Batesburg, South Carolina in 1964. He graduated from high school from W. W...
  
  

Recordings

Album/Single	Performer	Year	Variant	Notes
Waxed	The Demon Barbers	2005	Noble Riddle Wisely Expounded	-

See also

• The Fause Knight Upon the Road
  The Fause Knight Upon the Road
  The False Knight Upon the Road is a British ballad, collected and published as Child ballad 3, Roud 20. It features a riddling exchange between a schoolboy and a "false knight," the devil in disguise.-Synopsis:...
  
  
• The Elfin Knight
  The Elfin Knight
  "The Elfin Knight" is a traditional Scottish folk ballad of which there are many versions, all dealing with supernatural occurrences, and the commission to perform impossible tasks.-Synopsis:...
  
  
• Proud Lady Margaret
  Proud Lady Margaret
  "Proud Lady Margaret" is Child ballad 47, existing in several variants.-Synopsis:A man arrives at the heroine's castle to woo her. She is frequently critical of him, on the grounds that his clothing shows him to be no gentleman. In most variants, he taxes her with riddles such as "What's the...
  
  
• The Riddle Song
  The Riddle Song
  "The Riddle Song," also known as "I Gave My Love a Cherry" is an English folk song, apparently a lullaby, which was carried by settlers to the American Appalachians. It descends from a 15th-century English song in which a maiden says she is advised to unite with her lover. It is related to Child...
  
  

External links

• Riddles Wisely Expounded with 18th- and 19th-century melodies, and text to "Inter diabolus et virgo"
• An MP3 of Riddles Wisely Expounded by Kentucky ballad singer Daniel Dutton