GunnLeif Merl I 47VIII
Russell Poole (ed.) 2017, ‘Breta saga 115 (Gunnlaugr Leifsson, Merlínusspá I 47)’ in Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.), Poetry in fornaldarsögur. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 8. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 82.
mun ‘will’
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munu (verb): will, must
lofðungr ‘lord’
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lofðungr (noun m.; °; -ar): king, leader
es ‘who’
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2. er (conj.): who, which, when
liði ‘the army’
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lið (noun n.; °-s; -): retinue, troop
stýrir ‘leads’
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stýra (verb): steer, control
brátt ‘swiftly’
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bráðr (adj.; °compar. -ari, superl. -astr): quick(ly)
brezkum ‘with British’
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brezkr (adj.): British
notes
[3-4] byggva ... brezkum her ‘settle … with British people’: This edn follows the construal implied by Bret 1848-9, with brezkum her in the instr. dat.; similarly Merl 2012. The meaning of byggva here is ‘cause the land to become settled’ (Fritzner: byggja 5; ONP: byggja 8; cf. LP: byggva 2). Gunnlaugr makes frequent use of constructions in which a noun in dat./instr. function appears without a prep. such as með (cf. Í 63/6-7; NS §§104, 105, 108, and 110). Skj B translates less precisely as give landet til det brittiske folk ‘give the land to the British people’. Kock (NN §103) takes brezkum her in apposition to liði, evidently positing a sense ‘The lord who leads the army, the British people, will promptly settle the land’, but this is to ignore not merely the applicable sub-sense of byggva but also Geoffrey’s text, where the idea is that the land is re-settled by the original inhabitants; such a structure of variation, with the intervening adv. brátt, would be hard to parallel in Old West Norse poetry.
her ‘people’
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herr (noun m.; °-s/-jar, dat. -; -jar, gen. -ja/herra): army, host
notes
[3-4] byggva ... brezkum her ‘settle … with British people’: This edn follows the construal implied by Bret 1848-9, with brezkum her in the instr. dat.; similarly Merl 2012. The meaning of byggva here is ‘cause the land to become settled’ (Fritzner: byggja 5; ONP: byggja 8; cf. LP: byggva 2). Gunnlaugr makes frequent use of constructions in which a noun in dat./instr. function appears without a prep. such as með (cf. Í 63/6-7; NS §§104, 105, 108, and 110). Skj B translates less precisely as give landet til det brittiske folk ‘give the land to the British people’. Kock (NN §103) takes brezkum her in apposition to liði, evidently positing a sense ‘The lord who leads the army, the British people, will promptly settle the land’, but this is to ignore not merely the applicable sub-sense of byggva but also Geoffrey’s text, where the idea is that the land is re-settled by the original inhabitants; such a structure of variation, with the intervening adv. brátt, would be hard to parallel in Old West Norse poetry.
byggva ‘settle’
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2. byggja (verb; °byggir/byggvir; byggði; byggðr): inhabit, dwell; build, found
notes
[3-4] byggva ... brezkum her ‘settle … with British people’: This edn follows the construal implied by Bret 1848-9, with brezkum her in the instr. dat.; similarly Merl 2012. The meaning of byggva here is ‘cause the land to become settled’ (Fritzner: byggja 5; ONP: byggja 8; cf. LP: byggva 2). Gunnlaugr makes frequent use of constructions in which a noun in dat./instr. function appears without a prep. such as með (cf. Í 63/6-7; NS §§104, 105, 108, and 110). Skj B translates less precisely as give landet til det brittiske folk ‘give the land to the British people’. Kock (NN §103) takes brezkum her in apposition to liði, evidently positing a sense ‘The lord who leads the army, the British people, will promptly settle the land’, but this is to ignore not merely the applicable sub-sense of byggva but also Geoffrey’s text, where the idea is that the land is re-settled by the original inhabitants; such a structure of variation, with the intervening adv. brátt, would be hard to parallel in Old West Norse poetry.
jarðir ‘the lands’
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jǫrð (noun f.; °jarðar, dat. -u; jarðir/jarðar(DN I (1367) 304)): ground, earth
Mun ‘will’
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munu (verb): will, must
sáð ‘seed’
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2. sáð (noun n.; °-s; -): seed
tekit ‘be taken’
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2. taka (verb): take
snáks ‘snake’s’
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snákr (noun m.): snake
ins ‘The’
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2. inn (art.): the
hvíta ‘white’
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hvítr (adj.; °-an; -ari, -astr): white
endr ‘once more’
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endr (adv.): formerly, once, again
ór ‘out of’
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3. ór (prep.): out of
notes
[7] órum ‘our’: Emended in this edn from ms. ófám ‘not few’ (refreshed). Cf. the Latin; also garða óra (I 40/4), translating ortuli nostri.
aldingǫrðum ‘orchards’
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aldingarðr (noun m.; °dat. -i; -ar): °garden, vegetable garden, orchard
notes
[8] aldingǫrðum ‘orchards’: Elsewhere in poetry found only in Anon Pl 24/7VII.
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Cf. DGB 113 (Reeve and Wright 2007, 147.73-4; cf. Wright 1988, 103, prophecy 9): Restaurabit pristinis incolis mansiones, et ruina alienigenarum patebit. Germen albi draconis ex ortulis nostris abradetur ‘They [the people from Normandy] will restore the original inhabitants to their dwellings, and the ruin of the foreigners will be plain to see. The seed of the white dragon will disappear from our gardens’ (Reeve and Wright 2007, 146). Gunnlaugr appears to have worked from a source ms. that contained the reading albi draconis ‘of the white dragon’, characteristic of the Ω group of mss (Reeve and Wright 2007, 147); see Introduction. With the phrase Sá lofðungr, es stýrir liði ‘The lord who leads the army’ Gunnlaugr makes more explicit reference to William the Conqueror than does Geoffrey. Geoffrey’s notion of a Breton resumption of residency in Britain may be owed in part to an awareness that William brought over a large Breton contingent as part of his army, with the support of the Breton aristocracy (cf. Stenton 1971, 594). Many Breton lords and their followers were given lands in England during the two decades after the Conquest (Stenton 1971, 629).
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