GunnLeif Merl I 51^VIII

Russell Poole (ed.) 2017, ‘Breta saga 119 (Gunnlaugr Leifsson, Merlínusspá I 51)’ in Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.), Poetry in fornaldarsögur. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 8. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 86.

Interactive view: tap on words in the text for notes and glosses

Cf. DGB 113 (Reeve and Wright 2007, 147.79-81; cf. Wright 1988, 104, prophecy 11): In diebus eius aurum ex lilio et urtica extorquebitur et argentum ex ungulis mugientium manabit. Calamistrati uaria uellera uestibunt, et exterior habitus interiora signabit ‘In his time gold will be wrung from the lily and the nettle, and silver shall drip from the hooves of lowing cattle. Men with curled hair will wear fleeces of varied hue, and their outer apparel will betray their inner selves’ (Reeve and Wright 2007, 146). The allegory here seems to reflect various aspects of Henry I’s reign, including his zeal for taxation, which raised much money from wealthy owners of rural land (Hollister 2003, 356-7), and his creation of novi homines ‘new men’ to serve as officials (Green 2009, 242-3). Gunnlaugr subsumes the lily and the nettle under gras ‘herb’. In the second helmingr Gunnlaugr diverges markedly from Geoffrey, attributing the irregularities of attire and appearance and by implication the vanity they betoken not to the new men but to women and adding information to the effect that there was no reform of women’s morals. This material he could have derived from Henry of Huntingdon (HA 1996, 484-5), who links the king to sexual licence on two fronts. He sharply criticises the king’s licensing clerics to keep concubines: Verum rex decepit eos simplicitate Willielmi archiepiscopi. Concesserunt namque regi justiciam de uxoribus sacerdotum … Accepit enim rex pecuniam infinitam de presbiteris, et redemit eos ‘But the king deceived them through Archbishop William’s simplicity. For they granted the king jurisdiction on the matter of priests’ wives … For the king took vast sums of money from the priests, and released them’ (for commentary on Henry’s policy here see Poole 1955, 183). Henry of Huntingdon also inveighs against the king’s personal promiscuity (HA 1996, 700-1): Luxuria quoque, quia mulierum dicioni regis more Salomonis continue subiacebat ‘And debauchery, since he was at all times subject to the power of women, after the manner of King Solomon’. William of Malmesbury, by contrast, exonerates Henry from sexual misconduct (Mynors et al. 1998-9, I, 744-5). Missing from the text of Merl is any counterpart to the three sentences relating to Henry’s harsh hunting laws that follow in Geoffrey, to the effect that the paws of barking dogs will be cut off, wild beasts will enjoy peace and men will suffer punishment (Reeve and Wright 2007, 146-7). Given that Gunnlaugr is in other respects following Geoffrey closely here and there are no known lacunae at this point in the ms. tradition of DGB, it is possible that stanzas have been lost from Merl.