It wasn’t all nasty, brutish and short

I came across your article while researching if this very thing —profane riddles, existed in other languages, other than my native Russian. What is of significance is that these riddles are still very much alive in modern English among young kids. Here is a one that all Russian kids know: Forward and back And forward again What gives so much pleasure To you and me? Naturally, the answer is a double swing. While I was researching the origin of these, I’ve found that these riddles (Not the ones that the kids share today. This is simply child play) are surviving parts of Ancient Greek rituals to which we owe the development of modern theatre. In Ancient Greece, the first early plays were actually rituals performed by a single actor —the priest and a chorus of other priest dressed as goats (councidently, words tragedy and comedy relate to the word goat). After a few hundred years these developed into multiple actor plays and theater was born. One of the favorite plays was about Oepid, where a significant part was his salving the riddle of the Sphinx. I don’t want to go into ritual significance of the Sphinx riddle and the Dionysus cult, but evidently, riddles were included as a part of sacred/spiritual ritual and served to prepare participant for communion with the divine. Not all were profane. This one is from old Slavonic: Has horses legs that stump The voice that rings copper In the field or a town He spils the blood of many ( Mosquito) Your guess is as good as mine as to the purpose of these but the fact that they’ve survived I’m different languages for so long points to now lost profound sacral meaning of these.