‘Ríkir enn at þat ormar tvennir;
missir annarr þar aldrs fyr skeyti,
en annarr mun aptr of hverfa
und skugga nafns at skǫpum vinna.
‘Ríkir enn at þat ormar tvennir; annarr missir þar aldrs fyr skeyti, en annarr mun of hverfa aptr und skugga nafns at vinna skǫpum.
‘After that two more snakes will rule; one will lose his life there to an arrow, but the other will return under the cover of a name to contend against the fates.
[4] skeyti ‘an arrow’: Taken literally in Merl; the notion of invidia ‘envy’ is absent. This indeed fits well with the manner of death of William Rufus and may point to Gunnlaugr’s familiarity with the accounts of either Henry of Huntingdon (HA 1996, 446-7: Ubi Walterus Tirel cum sagitta ceruo intendens regem percussit inscius ‘There Walter Tirel, aiming at a stag, accidentally hit the king with an arrow’) or William of Malmesbury (Mynors et al. 1998-9, I, 504-5: sagitta pectus … traiectus ‘pierced … by an arrow in the breast’ and cf. Mynors et al. 1998-9, I, 574-5).