GunnLeif Merl I 33^VIII

‘Hníga fyr brezkum         bragninga kon
siklingar sjau,         sigri numnir.
Ok heilagr verðr         herja deilir
einn af enskum         ǫðlingum sjau.

‘Sjau siklingar, numnir sigri, hníga fyr {brezkum kon bragninga}. Ok {deilir herja}, einn af sjau enskum ǫðlingum, verðr heilagr.

‘Seven kings, deprived of victory, will fall before {the British scion of kings} [KING = Caduallo]. And {the commander of armies} [LEADER = S. Oswald], one of the seven English lords, will become a saint.

Mss: Hb(51v) (Bret)

Editions: Skj AII, 26, Skj BII, 30, Skald II, 19; Bret 1848-9, II, 50 (Bret st. 101); Hb 1892-6, 279; Merl 2012, 152.

Notes: [All]: Cf. DGB 112 (Reeve and Wright 2007, 147.52-3; cf. Wright 1988, 102, prophecy 4): Septem sceptrigeri perimentur, et unus eorum sanctificabitur ‘Seven sceptre-bearers will be killed, and one of them will become a saint’ (cf. Reeve and Wright 2007, 146). Gunnlaugr treats this sentence separately from its neighbours, which are covered in I 32. His translation is evidently based on the reading septem ‘seven’, not the variant octo ‘eight’ that occurs in the Π group of mss (Reeve and Wright 2007, 147); see Introduction. The prophecy refers to the death of S. Oswald, narrated in DGB XI (Reeve and Wright 2007, 272-3). Caduallo (variant spelling Cadwallon), king of Gwynedd in North Wales (rendered by Geoffrey as Venedotia) in the first third of the C7th, formed an alliance with Penda of Mercia to overthrow the Anglo-Saxon royal dynasty of Northumbria, but was defeated and killed by Oswald of Northumbria in 633. Oswald met his death at Penda’s hands in 641 (Stenton 1971, 80‑2).

References

1. Bibliography
2. Skald = Kock, Ernst Albin, ed. 1946-50. Den norsk-isländska skaldediktningen. 2 vols. Lund: Gleerup.
3. 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.
4. Bret 1848-9 = Jón Sigurðsson. 1848-9. ‘Trójumanna saga ok Breta sögur, efter Hauksbók, med dansk Oversættelse’. ÅNOH 1848, 3-215; 1849, 3-145.
5. 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.
6. Wright, Neil, ed. 1988. The Historia Regum Britannie of Geoffrey of Monmouth. II. The First Variant Version: A Critical Edition. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer.
7. Stenton, F. M. 1971. Anglo-Saxon England. 3rd edn. Oxford: Clarendon.
8. Merl 2012 = Horst, Simone, ed. 2012. Merlínússpá. Merlins Prophezeiung. Munich: Herbert Utz Verlag.
9. Internal references
10. 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 20 April 2024)