Kari Ellen Gade (ed.) 2007, ‘Anonymous Poems, Máríuvísur III 13’ in Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.), Poetry on Christian Subjects. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 7. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 726.
Máría kom til móts þar;
móðurliga hun hjá stóð;
dökkr hafði djöfulsflokkr
dregið hann á kvalaveg.
Hrygðarfull, ‘Höfuðslægð,
hverju valdi taki þier
meinafullir minn þjón?’
mærin talar guði kær.
Máría kom til móts þar; hun stóð móðurliga hjá; dökkr djöfulsflokkr hafði dregið hann á kvalaveg. Hrygðarfull mærin talar, kær guði, ‘Höfuðslægð, hverju valdi taki þier, meinafullir, þjón minn?’
Mary came to meet them [lit. to the meeting] there; she stood motherly by; the dark devil-throng had dragged him onto the road of torments. Mournful, the Virgin speaks, dear to God, ‘Principal slyness, by what authority do you, full of evil, take my servant?’
Mss: 721(16r)
Editions: Skj AII, 498, Skj BII, 541, Skald II, 296; Kahle 1898, 45, 101, Sperber 1911, 18, 66, Wrightson 2001, 72.
Notes: [5] höfuðslægð (f. nom. sg.) ‘principal slyness’: This is taken as a form of address (communal) to the devils. Wrightson construes this a dat. instr. ‘with outstanding cunning’, a very strained interpretation from the point of view of w.o. (one would expect a form of address in this position). Skj B and Skald emend to höfuð slæg ‘sly heads’. — [6, 7] hverju valdi taki þier þjón minn ‘by what authority do you take my servant’: The comparable place in Mar reads as follows (1871, 606): fyrir þui þore þier at uannuirda minn klerk ‘how do you dare to disgrace my cleric’.
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