I am a wondrous creature, a joy to women, a help to neighbors; I sit high and hairy
A thousand-year-old Old English riddle, preserved in the Exeter Book, describes a creature that grows upright in a bed, is hairy below, and makes the woman who grabs it weep, only for her to find relief in having it. Scholars have debated its 'solution' for over a century, with some readings leaning bawdy and others purely literal.
Reveal the answer
The accepted answer is an onion: it sits upright in a garden bed, has a hairy root, and makes whoever handles it cry from its fumes. The riddle, number 25 in the Exeter Book (a 10th-century Old English manuscript held at Exeter Cathedral), is famous for its deliberate double meaning, which many scholars read as an innuendo describing something else entirely.
— Anonymous Anglo-Saxon poet(s), Exeter Book, Riddle 25 — Exeter Cathedral manuscript, 10th century