Note to GunnLeif Merl I 54^VIII

[All]: Cf. DGB 113 (Reeve and Wright 2007, 149.87-9; cf. Wright 1988, 104, prophecies 12 and 13): Nocturnis lacrimis madebit insula, unde omnes ad omnia prouocabuntur. Nitentur posteri transuolare superna, sed fauor nouorum sublimabitur ‘The island shall be soaked in nightly tears, and so all men will be provoked to all things. Their progeny will try to fly beyond the heavens, but the favour of new men will be raised up’ (Reeve and Wright 2007, 148). The prophecy describes the reaction of the British people to the atrocities described in the previous stanza. Following this, two paragraphs of prophecy in Geoffrey’s text (13, except for its first sentence, and 14) have no counterpart in Merl (cf. Bret 1848-9), possibly because of loss of stanzas in the transmission of Merl. There is likewise no counterpart in Merl to the added sentence Vae tibi Neustria, quia cerebrum leonis in te … a patrio solo eliminabitur ‘Woe to thee, Neustria [Normandy], … for the brain of the lion in thee … will be banished from its native soil’ found in mss Y and G, whose claims to authenticity remain unresolved (Reeve and Wright 2007, 149 n. to l. 88).

References

1. Bibliography
2. Bret 1848-9 = Jón Sigurðsson. 1848-9. ‘Trójumanna saga ok Breta sögur, efter Hauksbók, med dansk Oversættelse’. ÅNOH 1848, 3-215; 1849, 3-145.
3. 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.
4. Wright, Neil, ed. 1988. The Historia Regum Britannie of Geoffrey of Monmouth. II. The First Variant Version: A Critical Edition. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer.