About
‘Aldhelm’ has been my crossword-compiling pseudonym for many years. I chose it because I was taken by the tales associated with St Aldhelm, an Anglo-Saxon scholar, cleric, poet, harper and riddler. You can find out more about him here, but I liked the fact that he wrote riddles, that he wrote in both Latin and the vernacular tongue, and that, in order to drum up a congregation in Malmesbury, he would stand on a bridge singing ballads at the top of his voice.
The coastline at the top of this page shows St Aldhelm’s Head in Dorset, while the picture on the right is of an elegant modern statue of St Aldhelm by sculptor Maria Colonna. You can find it in Sherborne Abbey, which is also in Dorset.
It seemed right to choose the name of a riddler as a crossword pseudonym, although his riddles are more poetic and less cryptic than the modern crossword clue. They still retain a charm, though, as this riddle – translated from Latin – shows:
From cracks of stone I came in molten flood,
While flames were battering the rocky core,
And the loud-roaring furnace brightly glowed.
Now clear as ice am I, capricious too,
And very brittle; men may break my neck,
Taking my slippery body in their hands.
Yet wits I alter, when I kiss men’s lips,
And fill their cheeks with Bacchic sweets, and make
Their tottering footsteps bring them to the ground.
(The answer is at the bottom)
I won’t be indulging in this sort of riddle, but in a whole range of themes and subjects which involve apparent paradoxes, insoluble problems and wilful misunderstandings. Some of these topics are hotly debated, others are trivial, but all of them I hope will benefit from a bit of clear thinking, which is all we can ask.
I aim to post about once every few weeks, but we’ll see how that goes. I’d rather make sure I’m saying what I want to say than rush my thoughts for the sake of an arbitrary deadline. I hope you enjoy the arguments – please feel free to jump in and respond, as disagreement is essential to any debate. Hoping for clear-headed debate in the blogosphere might appear deluded but, as John Cleese’s frustrated character in Clockwise so memorably put it, “I can take the despair. It’s the hope I can’t stand…”
And the answer to the riddle? It’s a wine-glass – cheers!
