GunnLeif Merl I 38VIII
Russell Poole (ed.) 2017, ‘Breta saga 106 (Gunnlaugr Leifsson, Merlínusspá I 38)’ in Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.), Poetry in fornaldarsögur. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 8. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 75.
text and translation
‘Svá tœmir láð lýða bǫrnum,
— drífr hryggr heðan herr ór landi —
at skógar þar skjótla vaxa,
es ársamir akrar vôru
fyrr með fyrðum á fold Breta.
‘Svá tœmir láð {bǫrnum lýða} — hryggr herr drífr heðan ór landi —, at skógar vaxa skjótla þar, es fyrr vôru ársamir akrar með fyrðum á fold Breta.
‘‘Thus the land will be emptied of the children of men [MANKIND] — the grieving people will stream from here out of the land — so that the forests will quickly grow there where previously among men there were fertile fields in the land of the Britons. ’
notes and context
Cf. DGB 112 (Reeve and Wright 2007, 147.61-2; cf. Wright 1988, 103, prophecy 5): Erit miseranda regni desolatio, et areae messium in fruticosos saltus redibunt ‘There will be grievous desolation in the kingdom and the threshing-floors for harvest will revert to fruitful glades’ (Reeve and Wright 2007, 146). This passage would make better sense if in infructuosos ‘in unfruitful’, the reading of ms. H of the First Variant Version were adopted (Wright 1988, 103), thus correcting an obvious haplography. This is done by e.g. the Anglo-Norman decasyllabic translation: lande senz fruit ‘fruitless scrub’ (Blacker 2005, 35) and Alain de Flandres (Wille 2015, 128). Implicitly, at least, Gunnlaugr’s skógar ‘forests’ are unfruitful: it is unclear whether he knew such a reading or has rationalised the text on his own initiative. Geoffrey explains in DGB XI that the famine and plague are so severe that the Saxons cannot survive in Britain any better than the Britons (Reeve and Wright 2007, 278-9). Gunnlaugr interweaves motifs from the source passage corresponding to I 36.
readings
sources
Text is based on reconstruction from the base text and variant apparatus and may contain alternative spellings and other normalisations not visible in the manuscript text. Transcriptions may not have been checked and should not be cited.
-
AM 544 4° (Hb) — 51v/15 - 51v/16
images‘Svá tœmir láð
lýða bǫrnum,
— drífr hryggr heðan
herr ór landi —
at skjótla þar
skjótla vaxa,
es ársamir
akrar vôru
fyrr með fyrðum
á fold Breta.Sva tꝍmir lað lyða bornvm drifr hryɢr heðan her ór landi at skiot | la þar skiotla vaxa er arsamir ackrar vorv fyʀ með fyrðvm a folld breta ·
(VEÞ)
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