Anon (FoGT) 16^III

Þýddiz karl inn klædda
kona mín og þörf sína;
eg sá karl og klæði
koma inn í því sinni.

Kona mín þýddiz inn klædda karl og þörf sína; eg sá karl og klæði koma inn í því sinni.

My wife gave in to the clothed man and his desire; I saw man and clothes come in at the [same] time.

Mss: W(113) (FoGT)

Editions: Skj AII, 216, Skj BII, 233, Skald II, 121; SnE 1848-87, II, 206-7, FoGT 1884, 128, 258, FoGT 2004, 38, 65, 106-7, FoGT 2014, 14-15, 74-5.

Context: As for st. 15. After st. 16 the prose text offers the following gloss: her er klæddr maðr settr fyrer sialfvm ser ok þeim klæðum er hann gaf konvnni at fꜳ̋ sinn vilia, ok iannat sinn er sagt at sier huart kom inn karl ok klæði, þar sem klæddr maðr kom inn ‘here a clothed man is mentioned instead of himself and the clothes which he gave to the woman in order to obtain his desire, and the second time it is said that each of the two, man and clothes, came in, when [in fact] a clothed man came in’.

Notes: [All]: Both this dróttkvætt stanza and st. 15 read like examples specially invented to illustrate a textbook. As Longo (FoGT 2004, 184) has pointed out, FoGT’s example is likely to have been influenced by the example of hendiadys given in Alexander of Villa Dei’s Doctrinale (Reichling 1893, 174, ll. 2586-8), where armatum virum ‘armed man’ is split into two nouns arma virumque ‘arms and the man’ (the first two words of Virgil’s Aeneid), and conversely arma virumque is transformed into armatoque viro ‘by the armed man’. — [2] og þörf sína ‘and his desire’: The prose gloss appears to understand this phrase to refer to the man’s desire for the woman, whom he hopes to attract with a present of clothing, although sína, being reflexive, should properly refer back to the grammatical subject of the sentence, kona mín ‘my wife’ and denote her desire, not the man’s. — [2] þörf ‘desire’: Another long-stemmed nomen in metrical position 4, this time in an even line of Type D4 (see Note to st. 15/1). — [3] karl ‘man’: Björn Magnússon Ólsen (FoGT 1884, 258) emends to kauða ‘wretch’ to obtain skothending, but such an emendation in an obviously invented stanza seems unwarranted. The repetition of karl in ll. 1 and 3 is also sanctioned by the prose text (see Context above).

References

1. Bibliography
2. SnE 1848-87 = Snorri Sturluson. 1848-87. Edda Snorra Sturlusonar: Edda Snorronis Sturlaei. Ed. Jón Sigurðsson et al. 3 vols. Copenhagen: Legatum Arnamagnaeanum. Rpt. Osnabrück: Zeller, 1966.
3. Skald = Kock, Ernst Albin, ed. 1946-50. Den norsk-isländska skaldediktningen. 2 vols. Lund: Gleerup.
4. FoGT 1884 = Björn Magnússon Ólsen, ed. 1884. Den tredje og fjærde grammatiske afhandling i Snorres Edda tilligemed de grammatiske afhandlingers prolog og to andre tillæg. SUGNL 12. Copenhagen: Knudtzon.
5. FoGT 2004 = Longo, Michele, ed. [2004]. ‘Il Quarto Trattato Grammaticale Islandese: Testo, Traduzione e Commento’. Dottorato di Ricerca in ‘Linguistica Sincronica e Diacronica’ (XV Ciclo). Palermo: Università degli Studi di Palermo, Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia.
6. Reichling, Dietrich, ed. 1893. Das Doctrinale des Alexander de Villa-Dei. Monumenta Germaniae paedagogica 12. Berlin: A. Hofmann & Comp. Rpt. 1974. Burt Franklin Research and Source Works Series, Studies in the History of Education 11. New York: Burt Franklin.
7. FoGT 2014 = Clunies Ross, Margaret and Jonas Wellendorf, eds. 2014. The Fourth Grammatical Treatise. University College London: Viking Society for Northern Research.
8. Internal references
9. (forthcoming), ‘ Unattributed, The Fourth Grammatical Treatise’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. . <https://skaldic.org/m.php?p=text&i=34> (accessed 8 May 2024)