Update on riddle project

I am on riddle number 60. Not all of the riddles are worth keeping, but it feels good to have a strong foundation to work with. Number sixty is a riddle about charms. So I've returned to The Word Exchange, an anthology of Anglo-Saxon poems in translation to get re-acquainted with Old English charms. I am considering Northrop Frye's ideas about charms as hypnotic and rooted in music. His notions about the riddle, rooted in image and picture. How this emphasis on image might explain my recent interest in writing ekphrastic riddles.  I am reading Old English poems aloud, feeling the thorn and edh on my tongue, the words spoken hundreds of years ago. For want of þ, for want of ð, as Szumigalski phrases it. The charms designed to ward off evil, to scald dwarves and thwart rivals. I am meditating on the importance of naming: of speaking the charm aloud or naming the concealed answer to the riddle. Of Rumpelstiltskin. I am reflecting on the game of the riddle I have created: the half-lines wherein sound and sense create a puzzle, a constant push and pull that I must balance. A pulling away from form or pushing towards it, as Eliot might have conceived a similar game. The tension between alliterative verse and metre and rhyme. My use of rhyme in recent riddles, to create an additional component to this puzzle.  Choosing between the meaning I want to convey, and the alliterative sound I want to keep. Choosing sound over sense, the charm over the riddle. And when I find both, the joy in the line.