GunnLeif Merl II 39^VIII

‘En í fjalli felsk         fádyggt hǫfuð;
hyggr færtǫpuðr         flærð at œxla.
En villigǫltr         vargi ok birni
segir sárliga         sorg ok missu.

‘En fádyggt hǫfuð felsk í fjalli; {færtǫpuðr} hyggr at œxla flærð. En villigǫltr segir vargi ok birni sárliga sorg ok missu.

‘But the untrustworthy person will hide in the mountain; {the sheep-destroyer} [FOX] will intend to add to his deception. And the wild boar will tell the wolf and the bear of his grievous sorrow and loss.

Mss: Hb(50r) (Bret)

Readings: [1] felsk: næst Hb

Editions: Skj AII, 17, Skj BII, 18, Skald II, 11, NN §2163G; Bret 1848-9, II, 29-30 (Bret st. 39); Hb 1892-6, 275; Merl 2012, 103-5.

Notes: [All]: Cf. DGB 116 (Reeve and Wright 2007, 155.196-8; cf. Wright 1988, 109-10, prophecies 42 and 43): et infra cauernas montium delitebit. Aper ergo illusus requiret lupum et ursum ut ei amissa membra restituant ‘and hide in the mountain-caves. The tricked boar will demand that the wolf and bear restore its lost limbs’ (Reeve and Wright 2007, 154). — [1] felsk ‘will hide’: Emended by Scheving (and adopted in Bret 1848-9 and Skj B) from ms. næst (refreshed). Cf. Note to II 36/9. The spelling of reflexive -sk as -st in Hb is exemplified by hleðst (= hlezk) in II 21/2 (Hb 1892-6, 273); thus change of ms. final <t> to <k> represents normalisation rather than emendation. Kock (NN §2163G; Skald), followed by Merl 2012, would emend the line to es í fjalli næst, with næst meaning ‘then’ (thus ‘is then in the mountain’), but this does not take DGB into account. — [2] hǫfuð ‘the person’: Lit. ‘head’ (CVC: hǫfuð III). I.e. the fox. — [3] færtǫpuðr ‘the sheep-destroyer [FOX]’: This is the hitherto unrecognised reading of Hb. With this kenning cf. II 28/8 týnir sauða ‘that destroyer of sheep [FOX]’ and Note there. For the agentive tǫpuðr see LP: tǫpuðr; Gunnlaugr uses its formative verb, tapa ‘kill’, in reference to the fox in II 28/7. Earlier eds read the ms. at this point as þær (or þar) jǫfuðr. Bret 1848-9 adopts þar jǫfuðr, translating the line as der tænker han ‘there he thinks’, which indicates that jǫfuðr is regarded as a heiti for ‘king’, like jǫfurr. Skj B and NN §2163G (cf. Skald) emend to þar fóa ‘there the vixen’ and þar jǫfurr (‘there the ruler’) respectively. Additionally NN §2163G (cf. Skald) transposes the word order in l. 4 in order to maintain correct alliteration. Merl 2012 proposes lofuðr ‘praised’, i.e. ‘the leader’, but without any supporting attestations for such a usage. — [4] flærð ‘deception’: Here Bret 1848-9 inexplicably reads kun, translated as sin Slægt ‘his family’, an error implicitly corrected in Hb 1892-6.

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. NN = Kock, Ernst Albin. 1923-44. Notationes Norrœnæ: Anteckningar till Edda och skaldediktning. Lunds Universitets årsskrift new ser. 1. 28 vols. Lund: Gleerup.
5. 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.
6. CVC = Cleasby, Richard, Gudbrand Vigfusson [Guðbrandur Vigfússon] and W. A. Craigie. 1957. An Icelandic-English Dictionary. 2nd edn. Oxford: Clarendon.
7. 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.
8. Bret 1848-9 = Jón Sigurðsson. 1848-9. ‘Trójumanna saga ok Breta sögur, efter Hauksbók, med dansk Oversættelse’. ÅNOH 1848, 3-215; 1849, 3-145.
9. 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.
10. Wright, Neil, ed. 1988. The Historia Regum Britannie of Geoffrey of Monmouth. II. The First Variant Version: A Critical Edition. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer.
11. Merl 2012 = Horst, Simone, ed. 2012. Merlínússpá. Merlins Prophezeiung. Munich: Herbert Utz Verlag.
12. Internal references
13. 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 6 May 2024)