I will begin with my riddle, then proceed to spoilers and discussion!
Confront me, and you will be as Frithuswithe's bane,
Disarmed and defeated like that unwise thane.
But I'm your daily guest, jolly and round.
Under my gaze, warmth and light abound.
Yet, in a girl's life came one strange hour,
My blessings dimmed though I was not lower.
The shadow's eye revealed a wonder
And a fool's glance confirmed - I was grown slender,
My body curved like a farmer's sickle,
Twin to my sister so pale and fickle.
A prayer restored me, full and ample,
And soon my sister spread her starry mantle.
So riddle me this, by Saint Peter's shoon:
When did the sun become the moon?
This riddle has two possible answers:
- 29th October 878 CE
- 17th June 912 CE
So what happened on those days, and why did I compose this riddle? You may know that there was a total eclipse of the sun on the 12th of August 2026, with totality visible in Iceland and parts of Europe. Here in Rumwoldstow (just south of Banbury, UK), we saw around 92% occlusion of the sun’s disc, which prompted me to wonder what people in Early Medieval England would have known about eclipses.
At the time of maximum occlusion, it was very obvious to us that the sun was dimmed but not why. We could see crescent shapes in shadows – e.g. from a colander, or by making a tiny “eye” with your fingers. A friend of mine said she glanced at the sun and had a crescent afterimage for some minutes (do NOT try this for yourself). A welding mask showed a clear crescent.
But would our nuns have noticed, or known what was happening? The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records the dates of various total solar eclipses and at least one that was total in Continental Europe but not England. However I’ve found no evidence that anyone in the UK would have been able to predict an eclipse. And when we experienced a 45% eclipse in 2025, we wouldn’t have known it was happening if we hadn’t been prepared with viewing equipment at the right time.
Our methods for viewing the 2026 eclipse:
- Camera obscura – made in a cardboard box. Worked, but underwhelming.
- Welding mask – gave the best view, but didn’t get a good photo
- Phone camera – didn’t work. Sun still too bright.
- Colander – most fun! Clear projection of solar crescent instead of disc.
- “Shadow puppet” – use your fingers to make a tiny hole in your shadow and look at the shadow on a wall or sheet of paper. Also very good fun! Clear projection of solar crescent.
- Looking at the sun – accidental glance, no really don’t do this, but a person in the past might well have done this, wondering why the sun was shedding so little light. Did not try it myself, but apparently you get a crescent afterimage.
- Reflection in a bowl of water – tried this last year, didn’t get much out of it.
Did Anglo-Saxon women have colanders?
This was the prettiest image we got!
The colander and shadow methods use the principle of the pinhole camera, where light passing through a small hole projects an inverted image of a scene.
What might an early medieval woman have used to see the eclipse? Curiously, the Kentish spoons with holes in would likely have been perfect eclipse viewers!
The answers to the riddle explaned
Let us imagine an old woman in the Rumwoldstow monastery, born in perhaps 867 CE. She could have witnessed a total solar eclipse which was visible in central England in October of 878 (noting that the Anglo Saxon year started in September so the eclipse they recorded against 879 must be that of October 878 CE). This eclipse was total at Worcester, Abingdon, Peterborough and Canterbury, and almost total at Winchester, the attribution of the report:
A.D. 879. This year went the army from Chippenham to Cirencester, and sat there a year. The same year assembled a band of pirates, and sat at Fulham by the Thames. The same year also the sun was eclipsed one hour of the day.
There was a later partial eclipse visible from Coventry, so presumably also visible at Rumwoldstow, on 17th June, 912 CE, magnitude 0.813, peaking at 19:06 (just after 7pm). So I’ve based my riddle on this event, assuming that the abbess, Cyneswithe, had seen an eclipse before, and happened to be outdoors on a sunny evening in June (near midsummer, so sunset after 8pm) when this took place. She perhaps glanced at the dimmed sun, and maybe played with shadows to see the crescent of the partially obscured sun! Yes, this is a bit of a stretch. It was a long drive, I had to do something with my brain, so I composed my riddle based on what she could possibly have seen.
The sun becomes the moon when the moon’s disc hides enough of the sun that you see only a crescent. And it passes in a few minutes – the time taken to speak a prayer or two.
Frithuswithe’s bane is Alfgar, prince of Leicester, who made a nuisance of himself to her in Oxford and was struck blind for his trouble.
I took the reference to St Peter’s Shoes from the old song “Martin Said to his Man”:
I saw the man in the moon
Sliding down Saint Peter's shoon
This last is likely anachronistic, I haven’t researched it in detail the age of the song or references to Peter’s shoes, but the reference was too apt for me to miss (and I was struggling for rhymes). Forgive me – it’s a long way to Devon!
References
Pinhole camera page on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinhole_camera
Anglo-Saxon sieve spoon at British Museum: https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/H_1995-0102-347_1
https://ia803103.us.archive.org/0/items/TheAngloSaxonChronicle/TheAngloSaxonChronicle.pdf
Morrison, L. V., Stephenson, F. R., & Hohenkerk, C. Y. (2022). Accuracy of eclipse records in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Journal for the History of Astronomy, 53(2), 209-216.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00218286221097111?icid=int.sj-full-text.similar-articles.9
Nasa calculator to find dates of past eclipses: https://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/JSEX/JSEX-EU.html
Saint Frithuswith: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frithuswith