GunnLeif Merl I 54^VIII

‘Þá munu gumnar         gráta á nóttum
ok þjóð gera         þægjar bœnir.
Þá munu hǫlðar         til himins kosta;
fá it langa líf         lǫfðar nýtir.

‘Þá gumnar munu gráta á nóttum ok þjóð gera þægjar bœnir. Þá munu hǫlðar kosta til himins; nýtir lǫfðar fá it langa líf.

‘Then men will weep at night and people will say acceptable prayers. Then men will strive after heaven; worthy men will obtain the long life.

Mss: Hb(52r) (Bret)

Editions: Skj AII, 29, Skj BII, 35, Skald II, 22; Bret 1848-9, II, 57-8 (Bret st. 122); Hb 1892-6, 280; Merl 2012, 169.

Notes: [All]: Cf. DGB 113 (Reeve and Wright 2007, 149.87-9; cf. Wright 1988, 104, prophecies 12 and 13): Nocturnis lacrimis madebit insula, unde omnes ad omnia prouocabuntur. Nitentur posteri transuolare superna, sed fauor nouorum sublimabitur ‘The island shall be soaked in nightly tears, and so all men will be provoked to all things. Their progeny will try to fly beyond the heavens, but the favour of new men will be raised up’ (Reeve and Wright 2007, 148). The prophecy describes the reaction of the British people to the atrocities described in the previous stanza. Following this, two paragraphs of prophecy in Geoffrey’s text (13, except for its first sentence, and 14) have no counterpart in Merl (cf. Bret 1848-9), possibly because of loss of stanzas in the transmission of Merl. There is likewise no counterpart in Merl to the added sentence Vae tibi Neustria, quia cerebrum leonis in te … a patrio solo eliminabitur ‘Woe to thee, Neustria [Normandy], … for the brain of the lion in thee … will be banished from its native soil’ found in mss Y and G, whose claims to authenticity remain unresolved (Reeve and Wright 2007, 149 n. to l. 88). — [4] þægjar bœnir ‘acceptable prayers’: The adj. þægr is characteristic of homiletic prose texts, used (sometimes in collocation with bœnir) to mean ‘acceptable to God’ (ONP:  þǽgr) and this also appears to be the sense in which it is used in poetry (contrast LP: þægr); cf. I 59/8. — [4] bœnir ‘prayers’: This reading in Merl deviates markedly from omnia ‘all things’, the reading of all mss of DGB so far collated. Various possible explanations can be suggested. It may represent an innovation on Gunnlaugr’s part, either made freely in order to improve the sense or because he read omnia as some form of oratio ‘prayer’. Possibly too, however, the reading occurred in his source ms., whether through scribal emendation or even as a superior reading originating in the archetype. Universal prayer on the part of the nation was not unknown in English history. In 1009, a state of national emergency was declared by Archbishop Wulfstan, requiring that everyone go to church barefoot and make their confession, fast for three days and distribute the surplus food as alms – an initative with precedents in earlier Carolingian and Anglo-Saxon practice (Keynes 2008, 184-8; Cubitt 2013, 69). Gunnlaugr (or Geoffrey, if the reading was his) could have extrapolated from such an event. By contrast, the commentaries interpret omnia ‘all things’ as ‘all kinds of expedients to combat evil’ (cf. Hammer 1935, 16; Blacker 1996, 39-40, 2005, 61; Wille 2015, 160-1). — [7-8]: If nýtir ‘worthy’ is correct, Gunnlaugr appears to sidestep Geoffrey’s politically charged comment about ‘new men’ (see Note to I 51 [All]) in favour of a pious sentiment that ‘worthy men’ go on to the eternal (lit. ‘long’) life in heaven.

References

1. Bibliography
2. Skald = Kock, Ernst Albin, ed. 1946-50. Den norsk-isländska skaldediktningen. 2 vols. Lund: Gleerup.
3. LP = Finnur Jónsson, ed. 1931. Lexicon poeticum antiquæ linguæ septentrionalis: Ordbog over det norsk-islandske skjaldesprog oprindelig forfattet af Sveinbjörn Egilsson. 2nd edn. Copenhagen: Møller.
4. ONP = Degnbol, Helle et al., eds. 1989-. A Dictionary of Old Norse Prose / Ordbog over det norrøne prosasprog. 1-. Copenhagen: The Arnamagnæan Commission.
5. 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.
6. Bret 1848-9 = Jón Sigurðsson. 1848-9. ‘Trójumanna saga ok Breta sögur, efter Hauksbók, med dansk Oversættelse’. ÅNOH 1848, 3-215; 1849, 3-145.
7. 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.
8. Wright, Neil, ed. 1988. The Historia Regum Britannie of Geoffrey of Monmouth. II. The First Variant Version: A Critical Edition. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer.
9. Blacker, Jean. 1996. ‘Where Wace Feared to Tread: Latin Commentaries on Merlin’s Prophecies in the Reign of Henry II’. Arthuriana 6, 36-52.
10. Cubitt, Catherine. 2013. ‘Individual and Collective Sinning in Tenth- and Eleventh-Century England: Penance, Piety and the Law’. In Körntgen et al. 2013, 51-70.
11. Keynes, Simon. 2008. ‘An Abbot, an Archbishop and the Viking Raids of 1006-7 and 1009-12’. ASE 36, 151-220.
12. Merl 2012 = Horst, Simone, ed. 2012. Merlínússpá. Merlins Prophezeiung. Munich: Herbert Utz Verlag.
13. Wille, Clara, ed. and trans. 2015. Alain de Flandres, Prophetie und Politik: die Explanatio in Prophetia Merlini Ambrosii des Alanus Flandrensis. Lateinische Sprache und Literatur des Mittelalters 49. Bern: Lang.
14. Hammer, Jacob. 1935. ‘A Commentary on the Prophetia Merlini (Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae, Book VII)’. Speculum 10, 3-30.
15. Internal references
16. 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 19 April 2024)