GunnLeif Merl I 48^VIII

‘Þá mun hann gjalda         grimmra ráða;
es hans tíundat         tálaukit kyn.
Verðr hann grœna         grund at vinna,
ok hann upp frá því         aldri ríkir.
Tekr hann svá fyr svik         sárar hefnðir.

‘Þá mun hann gjalda grimmra ráða; tálaukit kyn hans es tíundat. Hann verðr at vinna grœna grund, ok hann ríkir aldri upp frá því. Svá tekr hann sárar hefnðir fyr svik.

‘Then he will pay for his savage actions; his treacherous kindred will be decimated. He will have to work the green earth and from that time onwards he will reign no more. Thus he will incur grievous retributions for his treachery.

Mss: Hb(51v) (Bret)

Readings: [6] grund at vinna: grund at vinna HbJS, ‘[…]nna’ Hb

Editions: Skj AII, 28, Skj BII, 33-4, Skald II, 21; Bret 1848-9, II, 55 (Bret st. 116); Hb 1892-6, 280; Merl 2012, 164. 

Notes: [All]: Cf. DGB 113 (Reeve and Wright 2007, 147.75-6; cf. Wright 1988, 103, prophecy 9): et reliquiae generationis eius decimabuntur. Iugum perpetuae seruitutis ferent matremque suam ligonibus et aratris uulnerabunt ‘And the remnants of its generation will be decimated. They will bear the yoke of unending slavery and wound their mother with hoes and ploughs’ (Reeve and Wright 2007, 146). Under the Conqueror’s rule the leading English landowners, both secular and ecclesiastical, were supplanted by Normans (Stenton 1971, 680-1). This subjugation of the English was a key element in what Curley (1982, 219) terms ‘the supposed progressive unfolding of the spes Britannorum’ (‘hope of the Britons’). Gunnlaugr tones down the maternal imagery and the notion of slavery but plays up the treachery of the white snake, i.e. the Saxon occupiers of Britain. — [6]: See Introduction for readings no longer visible in Hb that could be read by earlier eds. — [7] hann ‘he’: Omitted in Skald.

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. Curley, Michael J. 1982. ‘A New Edition of John of Cornwall’s Prophetia Merlini’. Speculum, 217-49.
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 2 May 2024)