Svart Skauf 27^VIII

‘Mier kom á síðu         mikill stafs endi;
mátta eg hvergi         undan hlaupa.
Þá brotnuðu         þrjóts fyrir skafti
um þvert þungliga         þrjú rifin í mier.

‘Mikill endi stafs kom á síðu mier; eg mátta hvergi hlaupa undan. Þá brotnuðu um þvert þrjú rifin í mier þungliga fyrir skafti þrjóts.

‘The large end of the stick hit my side; I couldn’t escape anywhere. Then three ribs broke right across inside me, painfully, because of the shaft of the stubborn one.

Mss: 603(82), Rask87ˣ(114v)

Readings: [2] endi: so Rask87ˣ, endir 603    [4] hlaupa: so Rask87ˣ, ‘hlida’ 603    [6] þrjóts: so Rask87ˣ, þegns 603    [8] þrjú: om. Rask87ˣ

Editions: Kölbing 1876, 244, Jón Þorkelsson 1888, 233, CPB II, 383, Jón Þorkelsson 1922-7, 157, Páll Eggert Ólason 1947, 65,

Notes: [2] endi (m. nom. sg.) ‘end’: So Rask87ˣ and Páll Eggert Ólason (1947), Jón Þorkelsson (1922-7). The other eds retain the 603 reading, endir, which can only be construed as m. nom. sg. ‘end, finish, conclusion’ and makes little sense in the context (see also st. 28/4). — [4] hlaupa undan ‘escape’: Lit. ‘run away’. So Rask87ˣ and adopted by Jón Þorkelsson (1888; 1922-7), Páll Eggert Ólason (1947) and in the present edn. Ms. 603 has ‘hlida’ (rendered as hlíða by Kölbing and hliða in CPB), which must be the weak verb hliða ‘turn aside, back’, and requires suspended resolution on the second lift. Jón Þorkelsson (1888; 1922-7 followed by Páll Eggert Ólason 1947) changes the word order in this line from undan hlaupa to hlaupa undan to achieve alliteration on h- (alliterating with hvergi ‘anywhere’, l. 3), but that emendation is unnecessary if we assume that l. 3 is a Type C with vowel alliteration on eg ‘I’. — [6] þrjóts ‘of the stubborn one’: So Rask87ˣ. Þegns ‘of the man’ (603) is also possible but looks like a lectio facilior. — [8] þrjú ‘three’: Rask87ˣ omits this numeral, which leaves the line without alliteration.

References

1. Bibliography
2. CPB = Gudbrand Vigfusson [Guðbrandur Vigfússon] and F. York Powell, eds. 1883. Corpus poeticum boreale: The Poetry of the Old Northern Tongue from the Earliest Times to the Thirteenth Century. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon. Rpt. 1965, New York: Russell & Russell.
3. Jón Þorkelsson [J. Thorkelsson]. 1888. Om digtningen på Island i det 15. og 16. århundrede. Copenhagen: Høst & søns forlag.
4. Kölbing, Eugen. 1876. Beiträge zur vergleichenden Geschichte der romantischen Poesie und Prosa des Mittelalters unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der englishen und nordischen litteratur. Breslau: Koebner.
5. Páll Eggert Ólason, ed. 1947. Kvæðasafn 1300-1600. Vol. 2 of Einar Ólafur Sveinsson et al., eds. Íslands þúsund ár. 4 vols. Reykjavík: Helgafell.