Note to GunnLeif Merl I 37^VIII

[10] í tolfta ‘in the twelfth’: This apparently nonsensical expression must ultimately be due to an incorrect reading .xii. (expanded to duodecimi ‘of the twelfth’) in Geoffrey’s text, supplanting original *xri or *xti, i.e. Christi ‘of Christ’, in reference to the caelestis regni aula ‘palace of the heavenly kingdom’ mentioned in DGB XI (206.586: Reeve and Wright 2007, 281). The commentaries attempt to explain in ad hoc fashion, e.g. (Hammer 1940, 416): in aula duodecimi, id est in ecclesia beati Petri apostoli ‘in the hall of the twelfth, i.e. in the church of St Peter the apostle’ and ‘King Cadwaladre … was buried in the chirche of xij. Apostolles. and is a seint’ (Eckhardt 1982, 73). Emended to tólpti í and construed as ‘twelfth in [the hall]’ in Skj B, followed by Skald, on the basis of an incorrect interpretation of .xii. as duodecimus ‘twelfth’ in Bret 1848‑9. In a hybrid approach, Merl 2012 reads í tólpta hǫll but translates, in combination with hann skjótla verðr taliðr, as der Edle wird bald als zwölfter gerechnet in der Halle ‘the noble one will soon be reckoned as twelfth in the hall’, but this is ruled out by considerations of syntax and word order.

References

1. Bibliography
2. Skj B = Finnur Jónsson, ed. 1912-15b. Den norsk-islandske skjaldedigtning. B: Rettet tekst. 2 vols. Copenhagen: Villadsen & Christensen. Rpt. 1973. Copenhagen: Rosenkilde & Bagger.
3. Skald = Kock, Ernst Albin, ed. 1946-50. Den norsk-isländska skaldediktningen. 2 vols. Lund: Gleerup.
4. Reeve, Michael D., and Neil Wright. 2007. Geoffrey of Monmouth. The History of the Kings of Britain. An Edition and Translation of De gestis Britonum [Historia regum Britanniae]. Woodbridge: Boydell.
5. Eckhardt, Caroline D. 1982. The Prophetia Merlini of Geoffrey of Monmouth: A Fifteenth-Century English Commentary. Cambridge, MA: Medieval Academy of America.
6. Merl 2012 = Horst, Simone, ed. 2012. Merlínússpá. Merlins Prophezeiung. Munich: Herbert Utz Verlag.
7. Hammer, Jacob. 1940. ‘A Commentary on the Prophetia Merlini (Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae, Book VII)’. Speculum 15, 409-31.
8. Internal references
9. Russell Poole (ed.) 2017, ‘Breta saga 18 (Gunnlaugr Leifsson, Merlínusspá II 18)’ in Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.), Poetry in fornaldarsögur. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 8. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 152.