Riddles

[mneme]

[edits: credit added where it's due, and typos fixed]
I appear to be in a riddle mindset today, so you all get the "benefit." Two of these are very specific propper nouns, one is the more common sort of riddle:

I killed myself to make myself, and avenged myself shortly after.
He who wields me, built me, yet he is far younger than I.
I serve are those whom I was made to kill, and have done so since my birth.
What am I?
[answered by bigscary]

I drank from a king.
Yet kings have striven to drink from me?
What am I?
[first answered by bigscary]

Hermes's silver snake,
I speed but do not slither,
Burrow but do not dig.
What am I?
[incompletely, but correctly answered by nightface

Comments

[nightface.livejournal.com]

1st one, because LoTR is stuck in my head tonight, Narsil/Anduril?

2nd one says Grail to me

3rd one - train

[mneme]

BSD got 1.
You both got #2. I'd say it's too easy except that it's not, really; you get it or you don't.
3. Any particular kind of train?

4. I take it your answer to this amounted to "this is too obvious for me to bother with the name?" :)

[nightface.livejournal.com]

Might the train be named Mercury, perhaps?

#2 wasn't easy - I looked at it, then looked back at it and it clicked. A couple less Arthur mythos read and I don't know if I would have.

[mneme]

Nah -- that was the "not a proper noun" one.

"a train" was correct, but I was thinking of "a subway train."

dcrpunk was stumped by #2 for a while, then got it immediately after I gave her the easy Gollum one.

[batyatoon]

Shouldn't the subway train be "Hephaistos's silver snake," though?

[mneme]

Hermes scans better; I was thinking speed (and knowledge), rather than construction.