Note to GunnLeif Merl I 50VIII
[All]: Cf. DGB 113 (Reeve and Wright 2007, 147.78-9; cf. Wright 1988, 104, prophecy 11): Succedet leo iusticiae, ad cuius rugitum Gallicanae turres et insulani dracones tremebunt ‘They will be succeeded by the lion of justice, at whose roar the towers of France and the island dragons will tremble’ (cf. Reeve and Wright 2007, 146). The reference is to Henry I (c. 1068/1069 ‑ 1 December 1135), the fourth son of William the Conqueror, who succeeded to the throne in 1100 and campaigned extensively in France and Normandy. The soubriquet ‘Lion of Justice’ refers to his judicial and financial reforms (cf. the account of William of Malmesbury: Mynors et al. 1998-9, I, 742-3, and 798-9). The expression ‘island dragons’, translated literally by Gunnlaugr, refers to ‘all British rulers of the islands belonging to Wales, Scotland and Ireland’ (Curley 1982, 241). For Henry’s Welsh campaign of 1114 see Poole (1955, 287).
References
- Bibliography
- 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.
- Wright, Neil, ed. 1988. The Historia Regum Britannie of Geoffrey of Monmouth. II. The First Variant Version: A Critical Edition. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer.
- Poole, Austin Lane. 1955. From Domesday Book to Magna Carta, 1087-1216. 2nd edn. Oxford: Clarendon.
- Curley, Michael J. 1982. ‘A New Edition of John of Cornwall’s Prophetia Merlini’. Speculum, 217-49.