Hǫrðr Lv 4VIII (HjǪ 43)/6 — vakta ‘to look after’
Eyðaz mun sæmd þín, ef líkr skal ek vera
aumum illþræli, er ekki prýðir,
ragr í hverja taug, nema vakta mat svínum,
halr inn hrafnsvarti í hrævar skrúði.
Sæmd þín mun eyðaz, ef ek skal vera líkr aumum illþræli, er ekki prýðir, ragr í hverja taug, nema vakta svínum mat, inn hrafnsvarti halr í skrúði hrævar.
Your honour will be destroyed, if I must be like a poor wretched slave, whom sobbing adorns, craven in every fibre, only good to look after food for swine, the raven-black fellow in the clothing of a corpse.
readings
[6] vakta: reiða corrected from vakta above the line in another hand papp6ˣ
notes
[6] vakta ‘look after’: All mss have vakta ‘look after, watch over’ here, but it does not alliterate and is a late adoption into Old Norse from Middle Low German (see AEW, ONP: vakta). The additional hand of papp6ˣ crosses out vakta and adds reiða ‘spread, toss’ above the line, and this reading has been adopted by most eds and may well have been the original one.