d to be riddles
if the names had been clear and intelligible, like those of Helios and
Selene' (i. 92). People, he thinks, in making riddles 'would avoid the
ordinary appellatives, and the use of little-known names in most
mythologies would thus find an intelligible explanation.' Again, 'we can
see how essential it was that in such mythological riddles the principal
agents should not be called by their regular names.' This last remark,
indeed, is obvious. To return to the Norse riddle of the Dark One that
swallows wood and water. It would never do in a riddle to call the Dark
One by his ordinary name, 'Mist.' You would not amuse a rural audience
by asking 'What is the mist that swallows wood and water?' That would be
even easier than Mr. Burnand's riddle for very hot weather:--

My first is a boot, my second is a jack.

Conceivably Mr. Max Muller may mean that in riddles an almost obsolete
word was used to designate the object. Perhaps, instead of 'the Dark
One,' a peasant would say, 'What is the Rooky One?' But as soon as
nobody knew what 'the Rooky One' meant, the riddle would cease to
exist--Rooky One and all. You cannot imagine several generations asking
each other--

What is the Rooky One that swallows?

if nobody knew the answer. A man who kept boring people with a mere
'sell' would be scouted; and with the death of the answerless riddle the
difficult word 'Rooky' would die. But Mr. Max Muller says, 'Riddles
would cease to be riddles if the names had been clear and intelligible.'
The reverse is the fact. In the riddles he gives there are seldom any
'names;' but the epithets and descriptions are as clear as words can be:--

Who are the mother and children in a house, all having bald heads?--The
moon and stars.

Language cannot be clearer. Yet the riddle has not 'ceased to be a
riddle,' as Mr. Max Muller thinks it must do, though the words are 'clear
and intelligible.' On the other hand, if the language is _not_ clear and
intelligible, the riddle would cease to exist. It would not amuse if
nobody understood it. You might as well try to make yourself socially
acceptable by putting conundrums in Etruscan as by asking riddles in
words not clear and intelligible in themselves, though obscure in their
reference. The difficulty of a riddle consists, not in the obscurity of
words or names, but in the description of familiar things by terms, clear
as terms, denoting their appearance and a