And what is sharper than a thorn?
What is broader than the way?
And what is deeper than the sea?”
The answers are:—
“Thunder is louder than a horn,
And hunger is sharper than a thorn,
Love is broader than the way,
And hell is deeper than the sea.”
Now these ballads and a crowd of folk tales that bear on the same point show plainly enough that there was a time when quite as certainly as there were contests of arms, so contests of wit were gone through for great ends, sometimes with life at stake. That was a period when there was a struggle between man and man, and the fittest survived; but this fittest was not always the strongest animal, but the man of keenest wit. I do not know how else to explain the universality of these legends. The riddle is an amusement at the present day. It was an amusement at a Greek banquet, as we learn from Plutarch. But in a pre-historic period—in a mythic epoch—it was something very grave. He or she who could not solve a riddle, or a succession of riddles, forfeited life or honour.