714 



KIDDLES 



HIDING AND DRIVING 



Kiddles (A.S. ntdelte, from rrfrfan, 'to inter- 

 pret'), or SENSE-RIDDLES, to adopt Dr Tvlor's 

 plira.se, have lieen defined as ' roundabout defini- 

 tion* ol i In- hearer lias to gties what.' They were 

 widely (Mipiilar in dim antiquity, as to-day they 

 are popular among many half civilised race* not 

 absolute savages, for to perceive an analogy de- 

 man<U sonic measure of culture. They may he 

 broadly divide! into two classes riddlM admitting 

 of more or less easy solution, and riddli- whose 

 solution i- beyond any wit of man, unless indeed, 

 an is very often the case, the answer is known 

 already. To the former class belong the enigma 

 propounded by the Sphinx to (Kdiim.- (q.v.), and 

 tliat wliich, according to Plutarch, Homer died of 

 chagrin at not being able to answer. It seems to 

 us easy now, for it was the one about the two boys 

 who went hunting : all they caught they tiling 

 away, and all they could not catch they carried 

 home. Of insoluble ii.Ml.-s Samson's is a good 

 instance, and thU which, in a KH-M.UI folk-tale, is 



Jut by ' Knots' in tlir princess : 'As I came to you 

 saw on tin- way what was bad, and I struck tin- 

 bad with a bad tiling, and of what was bad the 

 bad died.' Naturally the princess could not guess 

 that he had killed a snake with his lance ; she 

 gave it up, and had to marry him. Such propound- 

 ing of riddles for wagers (her hand to his head in 

 this instance) meets us frequently. Josephus 

 relates how Solomon and Hiram, king^ of Tyre, 

 once had a contest, in which Solomon lirst won a 

 large sum of money from Hiram, but presently 

 lost, it all back to Hiram's subject Abdemon. The 



Jueen of Sheba, again, came to pose the wise king 

 with enigmas ('venit tentare emu rcnigmatihus/ 

 so it runs in tin- Vulgate); the trials of skill be- 

 twei-n Virgil's shepherds are a standard classical 

 instance ; and, to come down to later times, the 

 Russian folk-tale has many analogues in other folk- 

 lores and in our own ballad minstrelsy e.g. in 

 'Proud Lady Margaret,' 'Captain Wedderburn,' 

 and 'The Kl'lin Knight.' 



The riddle is found in the Koran, and several 

 collections of riddles exist in Arabic and Persian. 

 They were, it seems, also known to the ancient 

 I piiaii-, while among the Greeks they were 

 alli"d in the earliest times with the oracular 

 responses, and, like Samson's riddle, were gem-r- 

 ally in poetical form. But in Greece they lirst 

 mine into vogue alioiit the time of the 'Seven 

 Sages,' one ot whom, Cleobuliis, was celebrated 

 for the composition of metrical ijrijtlini. Kven tin- 

 greater poeta diil not disdain to introduce them 

 into their writings, or to devote whole poems to 

 the subject e.g. the Syrinx, commonly ascribed to 

 Theocritus. Appuleius wrote a Libtr LtteUeronan 

 el ili-i/iliiii-iiiii, but it is lost ; and almost the only 

 name we can fix upon is a certain Cielius Kirmianus 

 Syniposius, whose riddles, comprising a hundred 

 hexameter triplet^, are termed by St Aldhelm ' rub- 

 bish ' ( 'carmina inepta"). 



The riddle, but more perhaps as an amusement 

 for the baronial hall on winter nights, or for the 

 monkish refectory, than as a serious intellectual 

 cllort, was much cnllhated during the miihlle ages. 

 Many French, Knglish, and Herman riddle-luniks 

 exist in MS., and some were printed at an early 

 period. \Vynkyn de NVorde's Demnnndes Jrtyoin 

 (l.'ill) contains several riddles that are simply 

 coarse jests; Inn others, again, well illnstiatc 

 the simple faith of mediit-val Christendom e.g. 



ii.Hu mil: What liare the best burden that ever 

 was borne? Jletjmtue: The ass that carried our 

 l.ady when she lleil with our Lord into Kgypt.' 

 The Itel'orination checked, if it did not wholly 

 stop, the merry pastime of riddle-making; but in 

 France, in the 17th century, it Imgan to creep back 

 into favour, until at last riddles rivalled in popu 



larity the madrigals and sonnets ol the iicriod. Le 

 I'eie Mi ni-strier, in lti!W, " rote a grave treatise nn 

 the subject; and before that, in 1646, the Ablx- 

 Cotin had published a rtcunl, in the preface to 

 which lie modestly diihlicd himself ' le Pere de 

 I'Knignie.' ' I'nMerity,' adds a French critic, 'has 

 not recognised his paterniiy.' The taste for riddle 

 making grew and grew, and many brilliant French 

 \\riteis. such a- Koileaii, Voltaire, Madame >lu 

 DefTand, and Rousseau, did a little in this line, 

 until finally the Mercure de France Iwcaiiu- a fort- 

 nightly re|>ository of riddles, the solution of which 

 secured a reputation in society. In Germany we 

 have Schiller s delightful extravaganza, Turn mint : 

 and in England Cowper, Fox, Canning, and Praed 

 are a few of the makers of poetical riddles or 



Charades (q.v.). To-day with us the riddle is a 

 mere jeu tfesprit, a conundrum or pun couched 

 question-wise; but among the Irish. German, and 



liiis~ian jH-asantry, the Gypsies, the Zulus, the 

 Sainiians. and many more races, the old-fashioned 

 sense-riddles, often enshrining a mythological 

 germ, still hold their own. Thus, 'in the govern- 

 ment of Pskov, on the occasion of a marriage, the 

 bridegroom and his friends are not allowed to enter 

 the bride's cottage until they have answered all 

 the riddles her friends put to them ; and in one of 

 the villages in the Jaroslav government a bargain 

 of which the bride is the subject is concludcii 

 tween the groomsman and the "seller of the bride " 

 riddles, answered by gestures, instead of words, 

 taking the place of coin.' 



See chap. iii. of Tyler's Primitive Culture (1871); 

 Kalston's .Som/n of the ftuxsian People (1872) ; two articles 

 in Once a Week (18G8); one by D. Fitzgerald in the 

 Gtntlcman't Magazine ( 1881 ) ; Friedreich's lletchichtc da 

 Ratlistlt (I860); Holland's DevineUa ou niime* Popu- 

 lairet, with a preface by Gaston Paris (1877), and a 

 bibliography of fifty other works ; and Blade's Proverbet 

 et DevineUa de la Otucogne ( 1886). 



Killing ( Scand. thrilling or triding, ' third part ' ), 

 a term applied to the three parts into which the 

 county of York is divided, termed respectively 

 East, West, and North Riding. A similar division 

 existed in several other counties in the Anglo- 

 Saxon period, as the laths of Kent, the rdju-.\ of 

 Sussex, the jxtrts of Lincoln. In Doincsiiay J'nnk 

 Yorkshire was divided, as at present, into three 

 ridings, and subdivided into wapentakes. 



RidinK and Driving. The art of riding may 

 lie divided into (Ij ordinary riding, (2) school 

 riding, (3) circus riding, and (4) side-saddle 

 riding. The two objects aimed at in i,rtlint<rit 

 riding (which includes riding on the road, hunting. 

 pig-sticking, stock-driving, breaking in young and 

 freshly handled horses, playing polo, race and 

 steeplechase riding) are to remain in the saddle and 

 to make the animal curry its rider with the greatest 

 possible ease to itself. The former of these objects 

 is the one almost entirely aimed at by the breaker 

 when giving his first lessons; the latter, by the 

 Hat-race jockey. Hence we liml that I he saddle 

 and seat adopted by the Colonial bnokjomping 

 rider are those that are liest suited for 'sticking 

 on." The large pads on the flaps of his saddle are 

 about six incites deep, and are curved backward, 

 so as to lit against his thighs, a little uliove the 

 knees, in a manner similar to that in which the 

 third crutch (or leaping head) acts on tin \:l\'-< 

 left leg in a side saddle. The scat of the jockey, 

 instead of being that in which most security can 

 lie obtained, is the one by which the rider can ln-st 

 conform to the movements of his mount. Hence 

 we find that, even in Australia, many of the best 

 jockevs on the Hat are but very jxmt performers 



on a Imckjumper. In all kinds of riding habit 



rather than grip should be the chief means for 

 retaining one H seat in the saddle, for if muscular 



