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"Friar Andrew," quoth the Lord Abbot, as he lay a-dying, "methinks I
could now rede thee the riddle of riddles--an I had--the time--and--" The
good friar put his ear close to the holy Abbot's lips, but alas! they
were silenced for ever. Thus passed away the life of the jovial and
greatly beloved Abbot of the old monastery of Riddlewell.
The monks of Riddlewell Abbey were noted in their day for the quaint
enigmas and puzzles that they were in the habit of propounding. The Abbey
was built in the fourteenth century, near a sacred spring known as the
Red-hill Well. This became in the vernacular Reddlewell and Riddlewell,
and under the Lord Abbot David the monks evidently tried to justify the
latter form by the riddles they propounded so well. The solving of
puzzles became the favourite recreation, no matter whether they happened
to be of a metaphysical, philosophical, mathematical, or mechanical kind.
It grew into an absorbing passion with them, and as I have shown above,
in the case of the Abbot this passion was strong even in death.
It would seem that the words "puzzle," "problem," "enigma," etc., did not
occur in their vocabulary. They were accustomed to call every poser a
"riddle," no matter whether it took the form of "Where was Moses when the
light went out?" or the Squaring of the Circle. On one of the walls in
the refectory were inscribed the words of Samson, "I will now put forth
a riddle to you," to remind the brethren of what was expected of them,
and the rule was that each monk in turn should propose some riddle weekly
to the community, the others being always free to cap it with another if
disposed to do so. Abbot David was, undoubtedly, the puzzle genius of the
monastery, and everybody naturally bowed to his decision. Only a few of
the Abbey riddles have been preserved, and I propose to select those that
seem most interesting. I shall try to make the conditions of the puzzles
perfectly clear, so that the modern reader may fully understand them, and
be amused in trying to find some of the solutions.