THE IGIL AND EXETER BOOK RIDDLE 15Riddle 15 is one of the longest and most elaborate animal-riddles in the tenth-century Exeter Book of Old English poetry. 1 The debate over which animal appears in this compelling tale of a family's flight and the mother's final stand against their canine attacker has not yet been put to rest. In a recent, comprehensive analysis of this riddle, Dieter Bitterli comes to the conclusion that the creature in question is a porcupine. 2 However, given the fox's rivalry with dogs and wolves, this animal (or, specifically, a vixen 3 ) also receives wide support. 4 I am of the opinion that both 1 According to the numbering system in George Philip Krapp and Elliott van Kirk Dobbie, eds, The Exeter Book, Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records 3 (New York, 1936).2 'Exeter Book Riddle 15: Some Points for the Porcupine', Anglia, cxx (2002), 461-87. This solution was initially suggested by John A. Walz, 'Notes on the Anglo-Saxon Riddles', Harvard Studies and Notes, v (1896), 261-8, at 261-3. 3 The central creature's sex may be indicated by the feminine form of the adjective onhaele (hidden) in line 7a. See Craig Williamson, ed., The Old English Riddles of the Exeter Book (Chapel Hill, 1977), 176. 4 For a thorough discussion of this solution, see Audrey L. Meaney, 'The Hunted and the Hunters: British Mammals in Old English Poetry', Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeology and History, xi (2000), 95-105; and Marijane Osborn, 'Vixen as Hero:Solving Exeter Book Riddle 15', in The Hero Recovered: Essays on Medieval 7 As Niles discusses in Old English Enigmatic Poems, 101-48. This is not an issue for 'fox', of course, which remains the same in Old and modern English.8 Krapp and Dobbie, Exeter Book, 188. All translations are my own. 9 'Exeter Book Riddle 15', 484.