Note to Anon Lil 80^VII

[8] blómi Máríu ‘fruit of Mary’: An allusion to Elizabeth’s greeting to Mary in Luke I.42: benedicta tu inter mulieres et benedictus fructus ventris tui ‘Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb’. The epithet for Jesus is pervasive in the Lat. tradition, but this is the only instance cited by LP. ONP cites an analogous use of the word in Mar in a translation of Isa. XI.1-2: Upp mun renna vöndr af rót Jesse ok blómgaz, ok yfir þeim blóma mun hvílaz andi dróttins ‘there shall come forth a rod out of the root of Jesse, and blossom. And the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon that flower’ (Mar 1871, 15). In ON poetry, blóm is more commonly used in reference to Mary: cf. mektarblóm ‘flower of might’ 25/2 and LP: blóm. The Marian prayer in HómÍsl calls Mary blóme hréinlifes ‘flower of chastity’ (HómÍsl 1993, 90v). In Lil 16/3 and 18/2 the word is used of the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden. Its appearance in the present context may be an attempt to draw attention to the typological relationship of the two events.

References

1. Bibliography
2. LP = Finnur Jónsson, ed. 1931. Lexicon poeticum antiquæ linguæ septentrionalis: Ordbog over det norsk-islandske skjaldesprog oprindelig forfattet af Sveinbjörn Egilsson. 2nd edn. Copenhagen: Møller.
3. ONP = Degnbol, Helle et al., eds. 1989-. A Dictionary of Old Norse Prose / Ordbog over det norrøne prosasprog. 1-. Copenhagen: The Arnamagnæan Commission.
4. HómÍsl 1993 = de Leeuw van Weenen, Andrea, ed. 1993. The Icelandic Homily Book: Perg. 15 4° in the Royal Library, Stockholm. Íslensk handrit/Icelandic Manuscripts Series in quarto 3. Reykjavík: Stofnun Árna Magnússonar á Íslandi.
5. HómÍsl = Íslensk hómilíubók (The Icelandic Homily Book).
6. Internal references
7. Martin Chase (ed.) 2007, ‘Anonymous Poems, Lilja 16’ in Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.), Poetry on Christian Subjects. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 7. Turnhout: Brepols, pp. 581-2.