Modern ethnicities
43-468: Pokot or Pökoot may refer to: the Pokot people the Pokot language Spoor (film) , a 2017 Polish film See also [ edit ] West Pokot County , Kenya Topics referred to by the same term [REDACTED] This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the title Pokot . If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change
86-766: A form of folk-literature, sometimes in verse. Riddles have also been collected in Tamil. While riddles are not numerous in the Bible, they are present, most famously in Samson's riddle in Judges xiv.14, but also in I Kings 10:1–13 (where the Queen of Sheba tests Solomon 's wisdom), and in the Talmud . Sirach also mentions riddles as a popular dinner pastime, while the Aramaic Story of Ahikar contains
129-560: A good riddle can furnish a good metaphor." Literary riddles were also composed in Byzantium , from perhaps the tenth century with the work of John Geometres , into the fifteenth century, along with a neo-Byzantine revival in around the early eighteenth century. There was a particular peak around the long twelfth century. Two Latin riddles are preserved as graffiti in the Basilica at Pompeii . The pre-eminent collection of ancient Latin riddles
172-641: A local scale, and across great distances. Kofi Dorvlo gives an example of a riddle that has been borrowed from the Ewe language by speakers of the neighboring Logba language : "This woman has not been to the riverside for water, but there is water in her tank". The answer is "a coconut". On a much wider scale, the Riddle of the Sphinx has also been documented in the Marshall Islands , possibly carried there by Western contacts in
215-709: A long section of proverbial wisdom that in some versions also contains riddles. Otherwise, riddles are sparse in ancient Semitic writing. In the medieval period, however, verse riddles, alongside other puzzles and conundra, became a significant literary form in the Arabic-speaking world, and accordingly in Islamic Persian culture and in Hebrew — particularly in Al-Andalus . Since early Arabic and Persian poetry often features rich, metaphorical description, and ekphrasis , there
258-483: A number of riddles, mostly apparently inspired by folk-riddles. Other Hebrew-writing exponents included Moses ibn Ezra , Yehuda Alharizi , Judah Halevi , Immanuel the Roman and Israel Onceneyra . In both Arabic and Persian, riddles seem to have become increasingly scholarly in style over time, increasingly emphasising riddles and puzzles in which the interpreter has to resolve clues to letters and numbers to put together
301-515: A point of playing with conceptual boundaries and crossing them for the intellectual pleasure of showing that things are not quite as stable as they seem" — though the point of doing so may still ultimately be to "play with boundaries, but ultimately to affirm them". The modern English word riddle shares its origin with the word read , both stemming from the Common Germanic verb * rēdaną , which meant 'to interpret, guess'. From this verb came
344-509: A schoolbook. It is thought that the world's earliest surviving poetic riddles survive in the Sanskrit Rigveda . Hymn 164 of the first book of the Rigveda can be understood to comprise a series of riddles or enigmas which are now obscure but may have been an enigmatic exposition of the pravargya ritual . These riddles overlap in significant part with a collection of forty-seven in
387-508: A series of riddles posed by a nature-spirit ( yaksha ) to Yudhishthira . The first riddle collection in a medieval Indic language is traditionally thought to be the riddles of Amir Khusrow (1253–1325), which are written in Hindawi , in verse, in the mātrika metre . As of the 1970s, folklorists had not undertaken extensive collecting of riddles in India, but riddling was known to be thriving as
430-631: A strict sense. About 150 survive in Middle High German , mostly quoted in other literary contexts. Likewise, riddles are rare in Old Norse : almost all occur in one section of Hervarar saga ok Heiðreks , in which the god Óðinn propounds around 37 riddles (depending on the manuscript). These riddles do, however, provide insights into Norse mythology , medieval Scandinavian social norms, and rarely attested poetic forms. By contrast, verse riddles were prominent in early medieval England , following
473-599: A walking stick. This type includes riddles along the lines of this German example: Zweibein sass auf Dreibein und ass Einbein. Da kam Vierbein und nahm Zweibein das Einbein. Da nahm Zweibein Dreibein und schlug damit Vierbein, dass Vierbein Einbein fallen liess. Two-legs sat on Three-legs and ate One-leg. Then Four-legs came and took One-leg from Two-legs. Then Two-legs took Three-legs and with it struck Four-legs, so that Four-legs let One-leg go. The conceit here
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#1732852866481516-496: Is a collection of 100 hexametrical riddles by Symphosius which were influential on later medieval Latin writers. The Bern Riddles , a collection of Latin riddles clearly modelled on Symphosius, were composed in the early seventh century by an unknown author, perhaps in northern Italy. Symphosius's collection also inspired a number of Anglo-Saxon riddlers who wrote in Latin. They remained influential in medieval Castilian tradition, being
559-639: Is a natural overlap in style and approach between poetry generally and riddles specifically; literary riddles are therefore often a subset of the descriptive poetic form known in both traditions as wasf . Riddles are attested in anthologies of poetry and in prosimetrical portrayals of riddle-contests in Arabic maqāmāt and in Persian epics such as the Shahnameh . Meanwhile, in Hebrew, Dunash ben Labrat (920–990), credited with transposing Arabic metres into Hebrew, composed
602-519: Is that Two-legs is a person, Three-legs is a three-legged stool, Four-legs is a dog, and One-leg is a ham hock. An example of Four Hang; Two Point the Way , to which the pre-eminent solution is 'cow' is given here in thirteenth-century Icelandic form: Fjórir hanga, fjórir ganga, tveir veg vísa, tveir hundum varða, einn eptir drallar ok jafnan heldr saurugr. Heiðrekr konungr, hyggðu at gátu! Four are hanging, Four are walking, Two point
645-420: Is told to warn against pride. Another common tale is that of the blind girl who returns from death . Riddles (Tyangoi) are mostly used as a way of sharpening children's wits and capturing their attention during story-telling time. The Pokot have various, descriptive terms for different classes of speech that man engages in. These are as follows; Lökoi: News of other places Chiran: News of going on's in
688-616: The Adevineaux amoureux (printed in Bruges by Colard Mansion around 1479); and Demandes joyeuses en maniere de quolibets , the basis for Wynkyn de Worde 's 1511 Demaundes Joyous . Riddles survive only fragmentarily in Old High German : three, very short, possible examples exist in manuscripts from the Monastery of St Gallen , but, while certainly cryptic, they are not necessarily riddles in
731-470: The Greek Anthology , which contains about 50 verse riddles, probably put into its present form by Constantine Cephalas , working in the tenth century CE. Most surviving ancient Greek riddles are in verse. In the second chapter of Book III of Aristotle's Rhetoric , the philosopher stated that "good riddles do, in general, provide us with satisfactory metaphors: for metaphors imply riddles, and therefore
774-504: The Atharvaveda ; riddles also appear elsewhere in Vedic texts . Taylor cited the following example: '"Who moves in the air? Who makes a noise on seeing a thief? Who is the enemy of lotuses? Who is the climax of fury?" The answers to the first three questions, when combined in the manner of a charade, yield the answer to the fourth question. The first answer is bird ( vi ), the second dog ( śvā ),
817-461: The West Germanic noun * rādislī , literally meaning 'thing to be guessed, thing to be interpreted'. From this comes Dutch raadsel , German Rätsel , and Old English * rǣdels , the latter of which became modern English riddle . Defining riddles precisely is hard and has attracted a fair amount of scholarly debate. The first major modern attempt to define the riddle in modern Western scholarship
860-563: The King's white hall. Here, a snowflake falls from the sky, and is blown off by the wind. The riddle was at times a prominent literary form in the ancient and medieval world, and so riddles are extensively, if patchily, attested in our written records from these periods. More recently, riddles have been collected from oral tradition by scholars in many parts of the world. According to Archer Taylor, "the oldest recorded riddles are Babylonian school texts which show no literary polish". The answers to
903-668: The Pokot District of the eastern Karamoja region in Uganda . They form a section of the Kalenjin ethnic group and speak the Pökoot language , which is broadly similar to the related Marakwet, Nandi, Tuken and other members of the Kalenjin language group . Pokot identity formed in the Kerio Valley perhaps as early as the late 18th and certainly not later than the mid 19th century. It emerged from
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#1732852866481946-462: The Russian phrase "Nothing hurts it, but it groans all the time" can be deployed as a proverb (when its referent is a hypochondriac) or as a riddle (when its referent is a pig). Much academic research on riddles has focused on collecting, cataloguing, defining, and typologising riddles. Key work on cataloguing and typologising riddles was published by Antti Aarne in 1918–20, and by Archer Taylor . In
989-575: The West, despite Kenya's legal ban on the practice. Key personalities of recent times from the community include: Riddles A riddle is a statement , question or phrase having a double or veiled meaning, put forth as a puzzle to be solved. Riddles are of two types: enigmas , which are problems generally expressed in metaphorical or allegorical language that require ingenuity and careful thinking for their solution, and conundra , which are questions relying for their effects on punning in either
1032-881: The assimilation of the Sirkwa era Chok by the Pokotozek section of the Maliri . Early 20th century accounts of the Pokot identify two distinct branches of the community with the caveat that much as two ways of life are detailed, they were one people. Beech (1911) identified significant differences between agricultural and pastoral sections of the Pokot in; oaths, punishment for murder and homicide, punishment for assault, punishment for witchcraft, punishment for theft and robbery, marriage & divorce, recourse in case of unpaid debt and land tenure. He however notes that "it must be therefore borne in mind that, although written of here as two distinct sections,
1075-479: The basis for the second set of riddles in the thirteenth-century Libro de Apolonio , posed by Apolonio's daughter Tarsiana to her father. The perhaps eighth- or ninth-century Veronese Riddle is a key witness to the linguistic transition from Latin to Romance, but riddles are otherwise rare in medieval romance languages. However, in the early modern period, printed riddle collections were published in French, including
1118-417: The case of ancient riddles recorded without solutions, considerable scholarly energy also goes into proposing and debating solutions. Whereas previously researchers had tended to take riddles out of their social performance contexts, the rise of anthropology in the post-War period encouraged more researchers to study the social role of riddles and riddling, highlighting their role of re-orienting reality in
1161-584: The conventions of Old English heroic and religious poetry. While medieval records of Germanic-language riddles are patchy, with the advent of print in the West, collections of riddles and similar kinds of questions began to be published. A large number of riddle collections were printed in the German-speaking world and, partly under German influence, in Scandinavia. Riddles were evidently hugely popular in Germany:
1204-660: The face of fear and anxiety. However, wide-ranging studies of riddles have tended to be limited to Western countries, with Asian and African riddles being relatively neglected. Riddles have also attracted linguists, often studying riddles from the point of view of semiotics ; meanwhile, the twenty-first century has seen the rise of extensive work on medieval European riddles from the point of view of eco-criticism , exploring how riddles can inform us about people's conceptualisation and exploration of their environment. Many riddles appear in similar form across many countries, and often continents. Borrowing of riddles happens both on
1247-719: The hill and pastoral Suk are essentially the same". Even in the early stages of assimilation, there were no notable differences in matters of social organisation, initiation or governance between the two Pokot groupings. Socially, Pokot men were divided into three groupings; Karachna or boys, Muren or circumcised men and Poi or old men. Boys once circumcised would join an age-set. The Turkana , samburu and Pokot ethnic groups have organized cattle raids against each other. The two groups have been through numerous periods of war and peace. The number of Pokot speakers in Kenya has been estimated at 783,000 (last Kenyan census carried out in 2009) while
1290-552: The last two centuries. Key examples of internationally widespread riddles follow, based on the classic (European-focused) study by Antti Aarne . The basic form of the writing-riddle is 'White field, black seeds', where the field is a page and the seeds are letters. An example is the eighth- or ninth-century Veronese Riddle : Se pareba boves alba pratalia araba albo versorio teneba negro semen seminaba In front of him (he) led oxen White fields (he) ploughed A white plough (he) held A black seed (he) sowed. Here,
1333-671: The link to point directly to the intended article. Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pokot&oldid=933059659 " Category : Disambiguation pages Hidden categories: Short description is different from Wikidata All article disambiguation pages All disambiguation pages Pokot people Diaspora Performing arts Government agencies Television Radio Newspapers The Pokot people (also spelled Pökoot ) live in West Pokot County and Baringo County in Kenya and in
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1376-433: The neighborhood Kokwö: Serious conversations of a business-like nature Kiruok: Conversations of legal nature (from this stems, kiruokot, a legal specialist) Ng'öliontoköny: Talk of olden times Even with the introduction of Western education, the Pokot still use folklore as a means of teaching. In November 2014 there was public outrage abroad when pictures of circumcision of young Pokot girls were published in
1419-511: The number of Pokot speakers in Uganda is estimated at 130,000. Verbal art is very important among the Pokot. Proverbs are used with versatility both to teach and to make a point. At a gathering of elders, a person may use proverbs to show what a good speaker he is. They are also used to teach younger people the consequences of straying from the moral path. A popular tale, that of the Louwialan clan ,
1462-663: The only Old English riddle to be attested in another manuscript besides the Exeter Book). Unlike the pithy three-line riddles of Symphosius, the Old English riddles tend to be discursive, often musing on complex processes of manufacture when describing artefacts such as mead ( Exeter Book Riddle 27 ) or a reed-pen or -pipe ( Exeter Book Riddle 60 ). They are noted for providing perspectives on the world which give voice to actors which tend not to appear in Old English poetry, ranging from female slaves to animals and plants, and they often subvert
1505-462: The oxen are the scribe's finger(s) and thumb, and the plough is the pen. Among literary riddles, riddles on the pen and other writing equipment are particularly widespread. The year-riddle is found across Eurasia. For example, a riddle in the Sanskrit Rig Veda , from around 1500–1000 BCE, describes a 'twelve-spoked wheel, upon which stand 720 sons of one birth' (i.e. the twelve months of
1548-565: The question or the answer. Archer Taylor says that "we can probably say that riddling is a universal art" and cites riddles from hundreds of different cultures including Finnish, Hungarian, American Indian, Chinese, Russian, Dutch and Filipino sources amongst many others. Many riddles and riddle-themes are internationally widespread. In the assessment of Elli Köngäs-Maranda (originally writing about Malaitian riddles, but with an insight that has been taken up more widely), whereas myths serve to encode and establish social norms, "riddles make
1591-420: The riddles are not preserved; the riddles include "my knees hasten, my feet do not rest, a shepherd without pity drives me to pasture" (a river? A rowboat?); "you went and took the enemy's property; the enemy came and took your property" (a weaving shuttle?); "who becomes pregnant without conceiving, who becomes fat without eating?" (a raincloud?). These may be riddles from oral tradition that a teacher has put into
1634-658: The seminal composition of one hundred and one riddles by Aldhelm (c. 639–709), written in Latin and inspired by the fourth- or fifth-century Latin poet Symphosius . Aldhelm was followed by a number of other Anglo-Saxons writing riddles in Latin. This prestigious literary heritage contextualises the survival of nearly one hundred riddles in the tenth-century Exeter Book , one of the main surviving collections of Old English verse. The riddles in this book vary in subject matter from ribald innuendo to theological sophistication. Three, Exeter Book Riddle 35 and Riddles 40/66 , are in origin translations of riddles by Aldhelm (and Riddle 35
1677-524: The third sun ( mitra ), and the whole is Vishvamitra , Rama 's first teacher and counselor and a man noted for his outbursts of rage'. Accordingly, riddles are treated in early studies of Sanskrit poetry such as Daṇḍin 's seventh- or eighth-century Kāvyādarśa . Early narrative literature also sometimes includes riddles, prominently the Mahabharata , which for example contains the Yaksha Prashna ,
1720-501: The way out, Two ward the dogs off, One ever dirty Dangles behind it. This riddle ponder O prince Heidrek! The cow has four teats, four legs, two horns, two back legs, and one tail. The featherless bird-riddle is best known in Central Europe. An English version is: White bird featherless Flew from Paradise, Perched upon the castle wall; Up came Lord John landless, Took it up handless, And rode away horseless to
1763-590: The word which is the riddle's solution. Riddles have been collected by modern scholars throughout the Arabic-speaking world. Riddles are known to have been popular in Greece in Hellenistic times, and possibly before; they were prominent among the entertainments and challenges presented at symposia . Oracles were also represented as speaking in often riddlic language. However, the first significant corpus of Greek riddles survives in an anthology of earlier material known as
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1806-416: The year, which together supposedly have 360 days and 360 nights). The most famous example of this type is the riddle of the Sphinx . This Estonian example shows the pattern: Hommikul käib nelja, lõuna-ajal kahe, õhtul kolme jalaga It goes in the morning on four feet, at lunch-time on two, at evening on three The riddle describes a crawling baby, a standing person, and an old person with
1849-550: Was by Robert Petsch in 1899, with another seminal contribution, inspired by structuralism , by Robert A. Georges and Alan Dundes in 1963. Georges and Dundes suggested that "a riddle is a traditional verbal expression which contains one or more descriptive elements, a pair of which may be in opposition; the referent of the elements is to be guessed". There are many possible sub-sets of the riddle, including charades , droodles , and some jokes . In some traditions and contexts, riddles may overlap with proverbs . For example,
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