GunnLeif Merl II 21^VIII

‘En it horska dýr         hlezk aldini
harðla góðu,         þvís hilmir velr.
Koma foglar þar         fljúgandi til
af viðum víða         vitja epla.

‘En it horska dýr hlezk harðla góðu aldini, þvís hilmir velr. Foglar koma þar fljúgandi til, víða af viðum, vitja epla.

‘And the wise beast will load himself with very good fruit, which the king selects. There birds will come flying up, far and wide from the woods, to visit the apples.

Mss: Hb(49v) (Bret)

Readings: [7] viðum: ‘vogvm’ Hb

Editions: Skj AII, 14, Skj BII, 14, Skald II, 9; Bret 1848-9, II, 22 (Bret st. 21); Hb 1892-6, 273; Merl 2012, 86-7.

Notes: [All]: Cf. DGB 116 (Reeve and Wright 2007, 153.172-3; cf. Wright 1988, 108, prophecy 36): oneratus pomis, ad quorum odorem diuersorum nemorum conuolabunt uolucres ‘laden with apples, to whose fragrance the birds will flock from various forests’ (cf. Reeve and Wright 2007, 152). — [1-4]: The ‘wise beast’ and the ‘king’ are one and the same, both nouns referring back to the hedgehog-king of II 19/1 (also II 22/1); cf. his designation as landreki ‘ruler’ in 19/4. — [2] hlezk ... aldini ‘will load himself … with fruit’: Merl 2012 seeks a source for this motif in the Physiologus (Curley 2009, 24), which describes the hedgehog as collecting food for his young by rolling in fallen grapes so that they are skewered by his quills; to be noted, though, is that the fruit collected by the hedgehog-king is identified in DGB and, following him, Merl, as apples. — [7] viðum ‘woods’: Emended in this edn from ms. ‘vogvm’ (refreshed), in view of DGB’s ‘forests’. Bret 1848-9 seems to interpret ‘vogvm’ as vágum, normally ‘bays’ (dat. pl.) but here understood as ‘depths’, with viða construed as ‘forests’ (gen. pl.): thus ‘depths of forests’, but that is scarcely possible. Skj B, followed by Skald and Merl 2012, has vegum ‘ways’, deviating from the sense of DGB.

References

1. Bibliography
2. Skj B = Finnur Jónsson, ed. 1912-15b. Den norsk-islandske skjaldedigtning. B: Rettet tekst. 2 vols. Copenhagen: Villadsen & Christensen. Rpt. 1973. Copenhagen: Rosenkilde & Bagger.
3. Skald = Kock, Ernst Albin, ed. 1946-50. Den norsk-isländska skaldediktningen. 2 vols. Lund: Gleerup.
4. Hb 1892-6 = Finnur Jónsson, ed. 1892-6. Hauksbók udgiven efter de Arnamagnæanske håndskrifter no. 371, 544 og 675, 4° samt forskellige papirshåndskrifter. Copenhagen: Det kongelige nordiske oldskrift-selskab.
5. Bret 1848-9 = Jón Sigurðsson. 1848-9. ‘Trójumanna saga ok Breta sögur, efter Hauksbók, med dansk Oversættelse’. ÅNOH 1848, 3-215; 1849, 3-145.
6. 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.
7. Wright, Neil, ed. 1988. The Historia Regum Britannie of Geoffrey of Monmouth. II. The First Variant Version: A Critical Edition. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer.
8. Curley, Michael J., trans. 2009. Physiologus: A Medieval Book of Nature Lore. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
9. Merl 2012 = Horst, Simone, ed. 2012. Merlínússpá. Merlins Prophezeiung. Munich: Herbert Utz Verlag.
10. Internal references
11. 2017, ‘ Unattributed, Breta saga’ in Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.), Poetry in fornaldarsögur. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 8. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 38. <https://skaldic.org/m.php?p=text&i=125> (accessed 19 April 2024)