Note to Anon (FoGT) 18III
[All]: Stanza 18, which is arranged as four discrete, somewhat aphoristic couplets, very artfully provides several examples of words containing the ligature [æ:] and corresponding cognates with stem vowel [a:]. These are all found in the uneven ll. 1, 3, 5 and 7. In l. 1 we have ár ‘year’s abundance’ and ærir, 3rd pers. sg. pres. tense used impersonally, from æra ‘give a good crop’; in l. 3 æra ‘row with oars’ matches árum ‘with oars’, while in l. 5 ræða ‘on heat’ yields to ráða (from ráði ‘hog, boar’), both phonetically and in terms of sense. In l. 7 órar ‘fits of madness’ balances ærum (from ærr, earlier œrr ‘mad, crazy’ adj.). In the last case the correspondence is between [o:] and original [ø:]; cf. AEW: órar 1 and œrr.