Anon (FoGT) 33^III

Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.) 2017, ‘Anonymous Lausavísur, Stanzas from the Fourth Grammatical Treatise 33’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 610.

Interactive view: tap on words in the text for notes and glosses

Stanza 33 exemplifies the rhetorical figure that FoGT calls sineptesis (Lat. synepthesis), which is described as an inappropriate exchange (vskaplikt vmskiptí) of either grammatical number or person.

Stanza 33 is in hrynhent metre. The stanza is obscure in sense until one realises that it follows the Doctrinale’s examples of the figure (Reichling 1893, 177, ll. 2618-23). The first helmingr follows the Doctrinale’s example of a change of grammatical number, between sg. subject and pl. verb, unica facta fuit mulier, quae sunt modo plures ‘woman was made singular, who soon afterwards are many’. Öl-Gefn, sú er nú eru margar, hafði orðið víngarðr ‘The ale-Gefn < = Freyja> [WOMAN], she who now are many, had become a vineyard’ produces a similar example, using a woman-kenning as sg. subject, a f. sg. rel. pron. (sú er) and a pl. verb (eru) plus pl. adj. (margar). In the second helmingr there is an abrupt shift from a 2nd to a 3rd pers. verb, as in the Doctrinale’s nobis parce, deus; nobis lavet ille reatus ‘God, spare us! May he wash [away] guilt from us’. The Icelandic example moves from 2nd pers. vægðu oss ‘spare us’ (l. 6) to 3rd pers. hann þó ‘he washed’ (l. 7). Even the disapproval of the figure expressed very strongly in both the prose and the verse of the Icelandic text finds a more muted parallel in the Lat. ista sed in nostrum mutatio non venit usum ‘but that change does not come into our usage’. However, the disapproval of obscure language in ll. 5-6 of the stanza is not paralleled in the Latin, but may be compared with Anon Lil 98^VII and other C14th poetry rejecting elaborate skaldic diction. — [1-4]: Not only does the first helmingr illustrate a change from sg. subject to pl. verb, as described in the previous Note; it also provides an instance of obscure language, in this case a woman-kenning öl-Gefn ‘the ale-Gefn’ (l. 1) combined with a metaphorical equation between a woman who has lost her virginity and a vineyard that bears fruit. This is the krókr ‘obscurity’ (cf. LP: krókr 3) referred to in l. 3, and this kind of language is deplored in the second helmingr as ósiðr orða ‘a bad habit of words’ (l. 5).