Russell Poole (ed.) 2017, ‘Breta saga 11 (Gunnlaugr Leifsson, Merlínusspá II 11)’ in Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.), Poetry in fornaldarsögur. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 8. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 144.
‘Hon þá drekkr it dýra vatn,
ok máttr við þat magnask brúðar.
Berr hon í hœgri hendi sinni,
kynstór kona, Kolídónis skóg,
en í lófa man Lundúna borg.
‘Hon drekkr þá it dýra vatn, ok máttr brúðar magnask við þat. Hon, kynstór kona, berr skóg Kolídónis í hœgri hendi sinni, en man Lundúna borg í lófa.
‘She will then drink the precious water and the woman’s strength will increase with that. She, the woman of high lineage, will bear the forest of Colidon in her right hand and the maiden [will bear] the city of London in her palm.
Mss: Hb(49r-v) (Bret)
Editions: Skj AII, 12, Skj BII, 12, Skald II, 8, NN §§94, 1281; Bret 1848-9, II, 18 (Bret st. 11); Hb 1892-6, 272; Merl 2012, 76-7.
Notes: [All]: Cf. DGB 116 (Reeve and Wright 2007, 151.157-153.159; cf. Wright 1988, 108, prophecy 33): Exin, ut sese salubri liquore refecerit, gestabit in dextera sua nemus Colidonis, in sinistra uero murorum Lundoniae propugnacula ‘Next, refreshing herself with healing water, she will bear in her right hand the forest of Colidon and in her left the battlements of London’s walls’ (Reeve and Wright 2007, 150-2). — [5] hon … berr ‘she … will bear’: Skj B deletes hon, but Kock (NN §94) defends the parallelism of noun and pronominal, pointing out internal inconsistencies in the treatment of pron. subjects in Skj B. Cf. Note to II 10/7. — [8] Kolídónis ‘of Colidon’: Gunnlaugr retains the Latin gen. sg. Cf. I 63/2. The identity of the forest is unknown (cf. Tatlock 1950, 16-17). — [9] man ‘the maiden’: The difficulties raised by this reading have not so far been satisfactorily resolved. This edn follows Kock (NN §1281; Skald) in retaining ms. man (not refreshed), construed as a noun, ‘maiden’, in parallel structure with kona ‘woman’ in l. 7; so too Merl 2012. For the syntax cf. Note to II 10/7. The reading man is also retained in Bret 1848-9, which translates l. 9 as i den hule Haand ‘in the cupped hand’, with a note explaining that this interpretation is prompted by the Latin. No such sense of man is attested (unless an otherwise unknown heiti for ‘hand’ from Lat. manus, Fr. main is to be posited), but a mention of the maiden’s left hand would indeed be expected, so as to complement that of her right hand, as presupposed by both the Latin and l. 5 of the present stanza. Skj B emends to mun, presumably understood as an auxiliary verb with assumed bera.
Use the buttons at the top of the page to navigate between stanzas in a poem.
The text and translation are given here, with buttons to toggle whether the text is shown in the verse order or prose word order. Clicking on indiviudal words gives dictionary links, variant readings, kennings and notes, where relevant.
This is the text of the edition in a similar format to how the edition appears in the printed volumes.
This view is also used for chapters and other text segments. Not all the headings shown are relevant to such sections.