Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.) 2017, ‘Anonymous Lausavísur, Stanzas from the Fourth Grammatical Treatise 19’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 594.
Æli telz, það er ólu
ósnotran mann gotnar;
ælir vatn, þar er álar
allstrangir fram hallaz.
Heitir †lær† á †læru†,
læringar kienningar;
kallaz mærr á Mæri,
mæring, ef gjöf tæriz.
Telz æli, það er gotnar ólu ósnotran mann; ælir vatn, þar er allstrangir álar hallaz fram. †Lær† heitir á †læru†, kienningar læringar; kallaz mærr á Mæri, mæring, ef gjöf tæriz.
‘He is considered a wretch, whom men brought up as an unwise man; water causes dredging, where very strong channels incline forwards. … is named from … , lessons [are called] instructions; [land] is called mærr in Møre, a prestation if a gift is given.’
This stanza continues the strategy of st. 18, at least in the first helmingr, where ll. 1 and 3 contain pairs of words in one of which the stem vowel is an umlauted ligature and in the other a pure long vowel. In l. 1 we have the pair æli [œli] : ólu and in l. 3 ælir : álar. Although the second helmingr holds some serious difficulties of interpretation, it seems that there the poet’s strategy becomes somewhat different in that there is no change from a ligature to a non-umlauted long vowel, but rather the maintenance of the same ligature in each of the two couplets. Again, as with st. 18, the stanza resolves into four couplets or fjórðungar.
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.
Æli telz, það er ólu
ósnotran mann gotnar;
ælir vatn, þat er álar
allstrangir fram hallaz.
Heitir †lær† á †læru†,
læringar kienningar;
kallaz mærr á Mæri,
mæring, ef gjöf tæriz.
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