Riddles
My neck is white, my head is tawny and so are my sides. I am swift in my stride. I bear weapons of battle. On my back there is hair and the same on my cheeks. Over my eyes two ears stand up. I walk on my toes in the green grass. My doom is certain if anyone finds me, if a slaughterous fighter finds me hidden where I make my home, bold with my bairns. And there I abide with my little family when the stranger comes to my very doors. Death is their doom. I must carry them off, save them by flight with fear in my heart away from my home. If he crowds me hard, moving on his belly, I dare not abide that fierce one in my burrow (that would be surely not a good counsel) but bravely I must with both hands and feet create a path through the high hill. Easily I can save them, my beloved kin, if I can bring my household by a secret way through the hollow hill; for there I need fear never a whit the murderous whelp. If the hateful foe follows me hard through the narrow track he shall have no lack of the clash of battle when we meet in the burrow; when I get to the top of the hill and turn on him with weapons of war, whom I formerly fled from.
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Badger
A youth came along to where he knew she stood in a corner. Forth he strode, a vigorous young man, lifted up her own dress with his hands, thrust under her girdle something stiff as she stood there; worked his will; both of them shook. A thane hurried up, useful at times, a capable servant; nonetheless he grew tired from time to time, though strong at first, weary with work. Beneath the girdle there began to grow what often good men love heartily and buy with money.
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Butter churn
I have heard of something wax in a corner, swell and pop, lift up the covers. A proud-minded woman seized with her hands that boneless thing, a prince’s daughter; covered with her dress the swelling thing.
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Dough
Splendidly it hangs by a man’s thigh, under the master’s cloak. In front is a hole. It is stiff and hard; it has a goodly place. When the young man his own garment lifts over his knee, he wishes to visit with the head of what hangs the familiar hole he had often filled with its equal length.
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A key
I’m a wonderful thing, a joy to women, to neighbors useful. I injure no one. I stand up high and steep over the bed; underneath I’m shaggy. Sometimes ventures a young and handsome peasant’s daughter, a maiden proud, to lay hold on me. She seizes me, red, plunders my head, fixes on me fast, feels straightway what meeting me means when she thus approaches, a curly-haired woman. Wet is that eye.
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An onion
A famous scientist was awarded a government prize for his invention of a new weapon. He decided to invite a number of his friends into a party in his laboratory. For entertainment, he provided a juggler, an opera soprano, and a ballet dancer. At the height of the evening, all present were suddenly and mysteriously killed.
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The soprano sang a high note, exploding a glass beaker of lethal gas – the new weapon the scientist had developed.
One hundred people were traveling down the Amazon river on a flat boat when the boat in calm water capsized and all were drowned.
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A huge snake was sighted hanging over the river from a free branch. The passengers panicked and all of them ran to one side to get away, capsizing the boat.
A murder was committed before thousands of people, but all of them thought it was an accident.
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A trapeze artist who took his cues from the organist for when to start, reach, and land fell to his death. The organist had purposefully changed the tempo in mid-act so as to throw him off.
“Ah! What have I done?” yelled the woman as the phone rang.
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The woman, lonely and despondent, had sat by her phone for months hoping for a friendly call, but never receiving even one. Finally, out of despair, she jumped out of her 20th-story apartment window just as the phone rang.
What is brown, hair, and wears sunglasses?
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A coconut on vacation
Why did the student eat his homework?
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The teacher told him it was a piece of cake.
What did what plate say to the other plate when they picked up the check?
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Dinner is on me.