In Marble Walls as White as Milk

DESCRIPTION: Riddle: "In marble halls as white as milk, Lined with a skin as soft as silk, Within a fountain crystal-clear, a golden apple doth appear. No doors there are to this stronghold, Yet thieves break in and steal the gold." Answer: an egg.
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1844 (Halliwell), with a manuscript version from around 1810, according to the Opies; Jack dates it to 1765 and _Mother Goose's Melody_
KEYWORDS: riddle nonballad food | egg
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (5 citations):
Opie/Opie-OxfordDictionaryOfNurseryRhymes 199, "In Marble Halls as White as Milk" (1 text)
Baring-Gould-AnnotatedMotherGoose #673 note 7, p. 270, "(In Marble Halls as White as Milk)"
Jack-PopGoesTheWeasel, p. 85, "In Marble Walls as White as Milk" (1 text)
Dolby-OrangesAndLemons, p. 185, "In Marble Walls As White As Milk" (1 text)
Greenway-FolkloreOfTheGreatWest, p. 64, "(Within a fountain crystal clear)" (1 text)
NOTES [147 words]: Although this doesn't seem to be well known in folk circles today, it was famous enough in the last century that J. R. R. Tolkien indirectly testified that it was the basis for one of the riddles in The Hobbit. And Tolkien rewrote it in Old English; Tolkien's version opens "Meolchwitum sind marmanstane" and ends "saga hwæt ic hatte" -- "Say what I have." See J. R. R. Tolkien, The Annotated Hobbit, annotated by Douglas A. Anderson, second edition, Houghton Mifflin, 2002, pp. 123-125, n. 19.
According to Christina Scull & Wayne G. Hammond, The J. R. R. Tolkien Companion and Guide: Reader's Guide, Houghton Mifflin, 2006, that piece was published in the 1923 Leeds English School publication "A Northern Venture," in an article titled "Enigma Saxonica Nuper Inventa Duo" ("Two Saxon Riddles Newly Discovered"). The other riddle was a version of "Little Nancy Etticoat." - RBW
Last updated in version 6.6
File: OO2199

Go to the Ballad Search form
Go to the Ballad Index Song List

Go to the Ballad Index Instructions
Go to the Ballad Index Bibliography or Discography