What were the riddles for adults in the old days: From Scripture to various versions of fortune telling

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Today we are used to thinking that riddles are fun for children of younger kindergarten age, but this was not always the case. In the history of mankind, there are cases when riddles performed very important functions. For example, they could be answered by an oracle or they became a test in controversial cases. Many famous poets of past centuries have left us examples of real masterpieces in this style.

Despite the huge number of author's riddles, most of them today are classified as folklore. Moreover, ethnographers are sure that it is these small, often rhymed sayings that have a very ancient history. Those images that are stored in riddles reflect the ancient perception of the world by our ancestors, when all phenomena or objects of nature were considered animate and possessing their own will. The 19th century ethnographer Dmitry Sadovnikov wrote that riddles go back to ancient times:. Moreover, often the imagery of the riddle served to explain an incomprehensible phenomenon. For example, one of the most ancient mythical images, scientists consider the representation of the starry sky by a flock of sheep, followed by a month shepherd.

The process of composing riddles is still associated with "linguistic taboos" - that is, they are echoes of those times when especially important phenomena could only be named allegorically. Most likely, in ancient times, riddles were not just a training of the mind and ingenuity, but acted as real "exam questions". Signs of this are found in almost all folk epics and old tales. It is interesting that riddles were known to absolutely all peoples, at whatever stage of development they were. Therefore, the Indian, Scandinavian, Finnish and Russian epics keep quite similar stories about the "divine courts", which were resolved with the help of a riddle test. The main character, having passed them, received a wish fulfillment as a reward, or simply stayed alive.

It is known that the ancient Greeks were very fond of riddles, it was with them, for example, that oracles expressed themselves. Moreover, these poetic sayings, set forth in hexameters, could seriously affect the course of history, because from how the questioner interprets them, he could go on a long campaign or postpone it until more favorable times. Many moral riddles were left to the descendants of the "Seven Wise Men" - the ancient Greek politicians, public figures and thinkers of the 7th-6th centuries BC. NS. For example, one of the riddles of Cleobulus has reached our time:

(In this riddle, if someone hasn't guessed, a year is described)

Later, riddles became an important part of Scripture and took the form of "wise questions" about biblical truths or the origin of everything that exists. In the 17th century, the fashion for secular riddles reappears in Europe. They gradually become just a way to spend time entertainingly and pleasantly, flashing wit and scholarship. Such eminent poets and writers as Fenelon, Boileau, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Schiller and Gauff were fond of these small but capacious works of poetry. In Russia in 1773 a collection was published:. Moreover, our country was not at all a pioneer in this matter. The very first German collection of riddles, for example, was published in Strasbourg back in 1505.

And here is what a truly poetic riddle Friedrich Schiller created, rhyming, by the way, one of the most ancient mythological images:

(Translation: V. A. Zhukovsky)

To solve the mystery of their own life, the ancient Greeks turned to Delphic Oracle: how people trusted their fortunes to fortunetellers.