Editing Solomon and Saturn (section)

==The ''Prose Solomon and Saturn''==

The ''Prose Solomon and Saturn'' in the [[Nowell Codex]] (the ''Beowulf'' manuscript) is a question-and-answer text dealing chiefly with issues of biblical or [[Christianity|Christian]] lore. It has many similarities to a later Old English prose dialogue, ''[[Adrian and Ritheus]]''<ref>{{Cite book|last=Cross|first=James E.|title=The Prose Soloman and Saturn and Adrian and Ritheus|last2=Hill|first2=Thomas D.|publisher=University of Toronto Press|year=1982|isbn=0-8020-5472-2|location=Toronto|pages=7}}</ref> and, later still, the [[Middle English]] ''[[Master of Oxford's Catechism]]''.

The ''Prose Solomon and Saturn'' has as one of its riddles: "Who invented letters? Mercurius the giant." The Anglo-Saxons routinely identified [[Mercury (mythology)|Mercury]] with Woden (known in [[Old Norse]] as ''Óðinn'', and widely today as [[Odin]]), who gave his name to [[Wednesday]].<ref name="RYAN">J. S. Ryan  "[https://www.jstor.org/stable/1259026 Othin in England: Evidence from the Poetry for a Cult of Woden in Anglo-Saxon England] ''Folklore'', Vol. 74, No. 3. (Autumn, 1963), pp. 460-480. See p.476.</ref>