Like many storytellers I like to add a riddle or two to my sessions to add a bit of interest. They are particularly good when waiting for a crowd to arrive. I often use them to set up a particular tale and as a means for an audience to 'earn a story. If they get the riddle right, they get a story or two. If they cannot answer the riddle, they must stay behind till the end, help me pack up and carry all my skins, tent and other stuff back to Norwich!
Some riddles like many of the Saxon examples collected in the Exeter Riddle Book are very complicated. So complicated we don't now know the answers to all of them. But others are easier and far more silly like this one adapted for a week of storytelling in Sherwood Forest this coming August...
Friar Tuck was baking some pies for Robin of the Hood and his very Merry Men. But what did the Friar Tuck and his helpers put in the pies to stop them going rotten?
The answer to this riddle is cunningly hidden on my latest blog post about the travels of an itinerant storyteller in the New Forest....
