TCG Letter #69

Tolkien sends a postcard to Henry Bradley. Tolkien had worked with Bradley on the Oxford English Dictionary. He hopes Bradley has recovered from his recent illness. Tolkien also includes a riddle in Old English verse based on a nursery rhyme, ‘Enigma Saxonicum nuper “inventum”’.^{A version of the riddle was published in A Northern Venture with minor differences, mainly in punctuation. Later the riddles were both reprinted in The Annotated Hobbit (rev. and expanded edn. 2002), pp. 124–5.[1] Translated as 'a recently found Saxon riddle' in The Ring of Words.[2]}