Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.) 2017, ‘Anonymous Lausavísur, Stanzas from the Fourth Grammatical Treatise 2’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 574.
Fingr vann eigi eingan
eins með vatni hreinu
guðs á virðum víða
vinning að því sinni.
Fingr eins guðs vann víða að því sinni eigi eingan vinning á virðum með hreinu vatni.
‘The finger of the one God gained widely at that time not no [= great] advantage for men with pure water.’
This helmingr exemplifies another case of litotes and is introduced with the words: Svmstaðar merker æigi eingi nǫkkvrn ęðr mikinn, sem her ‘In some places “not no” denotes “some” or “great,” as here’. After the citation, the author of FoGT comments: her er æigi eingi settr fyrer nokkvrvm ęðr micklvm vinninge ‘Here “not no” is placed instead of “some” or “great” advantage’.
The helmingr refers to the power of the Holy Spirit over men (see following Note). Its likely reference is to the feast of Pentecost or Whitsunday (OIcel. hvítasunnudagr), when the Holy Spirit descended from heaven upon the Apostles (Acts II), after which they were able to begin their mission of baptising people into the Christian faith. This seems to be the point of the helmingr’s statement that ‘at that time’ (i.e. Pentecost) the Holy Spirit gained a great advantage for men (the possibility of salvation) with pure water, i.e. the water of baptism. It was customary in the medieval Church for many catechumens to be baptised at Pentecost in imitation of the events described in Acts, and that is why in a number of Western European languages (West Scandinavian and English in particular; cf. AEW: hvítadagr, hvítasunnudagr) the feast of Pentecost is called ‘White Sunday’, because those about to be baptised wore white garments. SnE 1848-87, III, 154, FoGT 1884, 241 and FoGT 2004, 88 all quote a passage from Isidore of Seville (Isidore, Etym. 7.9.16) which refers to the Holy Spirit as digitus dei ‘the finger of God’, but is otherwise not close to the text of this helmingr.
Text is based on reconstruction from the base text and variant apparatus and may contain alternative spellings and other normalisations not visible in the manuscript text. Transcriptions may not have been checked and should not be cited.
Fingr vann æigi engan æins með vatni hreinv guðz a virðvm viða vinning at þvi sinni.
(MCR)
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