Q is for Questions

         (My A to Z Challenge theme this year is How to Make a Fantastical Creature, in which I explore 26 traits that are widely shared among the monsters and marvels of fantasy and folklore.)

        I’ve mentioned Knowledge and I’ve mentioned Language, and another trait that ties in with these is the propensity of mythical beings to ask Questions… especially riddles.  The most famous  of these is the Greek Sphinx, who had the body of a lion, the wings of an eagle, and the head of a woman (flashback to C).  She hung out outside the city of Thebes and famously challenged travellers with her riddle.  All those who failed to guess the answer were savagely devoured (flashback to A).  When Oedipus guessed her riddle (or, in some versions, her three riddles), the Sphinx killed herself, and as she was unique (flashback to O), that was the end of that.

        In The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien, the creature Gollum uses riddles in much the same way.  He threatens to eat Bilbo if the hobbit fails to guess his riddles.  At least Bilbo had the chance to make Gollum guess, too.  Bilbo’s final question (“What have I got in my pockets?”) is kind of a cheating riddle, but is necessary to save his life, and this is actually a common motif in folktales.  Such cheating “riddles” that are posed to save the competitor’s neck and which require knowledge the opponent could not possibly have, are sometimes called “neck riddles.”

        The Blue Men of the Minch are a sort of mermen particular to the strait between Scotland and the Outer Hebrides.  They have the power to cause storms (flashback to N) and enjoy capsizing ships, but sometimes they’ll challenge the sailors with lines of poetry.  If the captain can complete the verses, the ship will be allowed to pass; if the ship’s master isn’t much of a poet, they’re all doomed.  One account from 1917 gives the following exchange:

   Blue Chief: Man of the black cap what do you say

          As your proud ship cleaves the brine?

   Skipper: My speedy ship takes the shortest way

          And I'll follow you line by line.

   Blue Chief: My men are eager, my men are ready

          To drag you below the waves!

   Skipper: My ship is speedy, my ship is steady;

          If it sank, it would wreck your caves.

        In the Sanskrit epic the Mahabharata a series of over 100 riddles(!) are posed to our hero by a yaksha, which is a sort of nature spirit (another flashback to N), in this case disguised at first as a crane.

        Wicked witches, ogres, and giants also have a tendency to ask questions - not ones that are intrinsically difficult, but questions which may nevertheless require a certain amount of cunning to answer.  That’s because you’ll be wanting to escape from the lairs of these monsters, but they keep on calling out questions to keep tabs on you: Where are you?  What are you doing?  Is my dinner almost ready?  That sort of thing.  The secret in these situations is to use some sort of enchanted object such as beans, perhaps, or drops of blood, or even one or more of those helpful talking animals mentioned at the letter L.  These can be left with instructions to answer questions on your behalf, while you make your getaway.  When the wicked ogre asks, “Where are you?” the enchanted bean can reply in your voice, “Just sweeping the hearth,” thus gaining you a head start before your captor comes after you.  Three seems to be about the right number to gain you the most amount of time before the monster gets suspicious, discovers your ruse, and comes after you.  (Hopefully you have an extremely swift horse, or some other enchanted items up your sleeve, as well.)

        Prophecies are often given in the form of riddles, which means that wicked witches, fairies, and other sorts of magical beings also use them.  The weird sisters’ “no man born of woman” and “Birnham Wood shall come” prophecies for Macbeth are really riddles.  You can read a prior post about this sort of riddle here.

        The moral of this story is that you need to be quick-witted and creative when dealing with magical beings!  A Pro Tip for riddlers is to ask your questions in areas of knowledge with which your opponent won’t be so familiar.

        And my three questions for today are: Where does an emperor keep his armies?

                 What do you call two crows hanging out together?

                 Where can you always find comfort and sympathy?

[Pictures: Sphinx, marble finial from Greece, c. 530 BCE (Image from The Met);

Gollum, ink illustration by Carlos Magana, 2018 (Image from @carlsmagana);

Blue Man of the Minch (actually a Ganges dolphin!), wood block print (colored by me) from Ortus Sanitatis published by Jacob Meydenbach, 1491 (Image from Internet Archive);

Witches, wood engraving from Macbeth by Shakespeare, 19th century (Image from Wikimedia Commons).]