Svart Skauf 3^VIII

Þá voru burtu         börn skaufhala
flestöll farin         ór föðurgarði.
Þó voru eftir         þeim til fylgdar
þrír yrmlingar         og þeira dóttir.

Þá voru flestöll börn skaufhala farin burtu ór föðurgarði. Þó voru þrír yrmlingar og dóttir þeira eftir til fylgdar þeim.

Then almost all of Tassel-tail’s children had gone away from their father’s dwelling. Yet three small vermin and their daughter were left as company for them.

Mss: 603(81), Rask87ˣ(112r)

Readings: [1] voru: voru í Rask87ˣ    [2] skaufhala: so Rask87ˣ, ‘skaufla’ 603    [7] þrír: armastir Rask87ˣ;    yrmlingar: ‘Jrmlingar’ Rask87ˣ    [8] og: og ein Rask87ˣ

Editions: Kölbing 1876, 242, Jón Þorkelsson 1888, 229, CPB II, 383, Jón Þorkelsson 1922-7, 154, Páll Eggert Ólason 1947, 57-8.

Notes: [1] burtu ‘away’: We should have expected the shorter form burt ‘away’ with a verb of motion voru farin ‘had gone’ (ll. 1, 3). The long form (burtu), which is a later form (see Bandle 1956, 435 and Note to st. 17/6), could have been caused by the proximity to the auxiliary voru lit. ‘were’ and the fact that the actual verb of motion, the p. p. farin ‘gone’, does not appear until l. 3 (see also Konráð Gíslason 1895-7, II, 194 and st. 5/3 below). — [7] þrír ‘three’: Armastir ‘most pitiful’ (so Rask87ˣ) makes the line hypermetrical, and causes a subsequent unmetrical addition to l. 8. — [7] yrmlingar ‘small vermin’: Lit. ‘small snakes’, i.e. the fox-cubs (so Kölbing 1876, CPB and Jón Þorkelsson 1888; 1922-7). Páll Eggert Ólason (1947) emends to yrðlingar ‘fox-cubs’ (see also CPB II, 610), which has no support in the mss. — [8] og þeira dóttir ‘and their daughter’: The Rask87ˣ variant og ein þeira dóttur lit. ‘and one daughter of theirs’ is hypermetrical and ein ‘one’ must have been added to furnish the missing alliteration (see Note to l. 7 above). CPB emends to ok þríar dætr ‘and three daughters’. That emendation results in a hypometrical line, and it makes poor sense since it contradicts the statement in st. 1/8 that the foxes had one daughter. Hence four cubs (three males and one female) are left in the lair.

References

1. Bibliography
2. Bandle, Oskar. 1956. Die Sprache der Guðbrandsbiblía. BA 17. Copenhagen: Munksgaard.
3. CPB = Gudbrand Vigfusson [Guðbrandur Vigfússon] and F. York Powell, eds. 1883. Corpus poeticum boreale: The Poetry of the Old Northern Tongue from the Earliest Times to the Thirteenth Century. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon. Rpt. 1965, New York: Russell & Russell.
4. Jón Þorkelsson [J. Thorkelsson]. 1888. Om digtningen på Island i det 15. og 16. århundrede. Copenhagen: Høst & søns forlag.
5. Konráð Gíslason. 1895-7. Efterladte skrifter. 2 vols. I: Forelæsninger over oldnordiske skjaldekvad. II: Forelæsninger og videnskablige afhandlinger. Copenhagen: Gyldendal.
6. Kölbing, Eugen. 1876. Beiträge zur vergleichenden Geschichte der romantischen Poesie und Prosa des Mittelalters unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der englishen und nordischen litteratur. Breslau: Koebner.
7. Páll Eggert Ólason, ed. 1947. Kvæðasafn 1300-1600. Vol. 2 of Einar Ólafur Sveinsson et al., eds. Íslands þúsund ár. 4 vols. Reykjavík: Helgafell.