Anon (FoGT) 20III
Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.) 2017, ‘Anonymous Lausavísur, Stanzas from the Fourth Grammatical Treatise 20’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 596.
Hætta ‘To take risks’
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2. hætta (verb): risk
notes
[1] hætta verðr á hættu ‘to take risks leads to danger’: This statement may well be semi-proverbial and a variation on such adages as hefir sá er hættir ‘he who risks, has [wins]’. Skj B translates the line as man må vove faren ‘one must risk danger’. Jón Helgason (1970a, 217) proposed an emendation of hættu to háttu ‘[bad] habits’, acc. pl. of háttr ‘habits, conduct’, to produce skothending rather than aðalhending in an odd line.
verðr ‘leads’
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1. verða (verb): become, be
notes
[1] hætta verðr á hættu ‘to take risks leads to danger’: This statement may well be semi-proverbial and a variation on such adages as hefir sá er hættir ‘he who risks, has [wins]’. Skj B translates the line as man må vove faren ‘one must risk danger’. Jón Helgason (1970a, 217) proposed an emendation of hættu to háttu ‘[bad] habits’, acc. pl. of háttr ‘habits, conduct’, to produce skothending rather than aðalhending in an odd line.
á ‘to’
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3. á (prep.): on, at
notes
[1] hætta verðr á hættu ‘to take risks leads to danger’: This statement may well be semi-proverbial and a variation on such adages as hefir sá er hættir ‘he who risks, has [wins]’. Skj B translates the line as man må vove faren ‘one must risk danger’. Jón Helgason (1970a, 217) proposed an emendation of hættu to háttu ‘[bad] habits’, acc. pl. of háttr ‘habits, conduct’, to produce skothending rather than aðalhending in an odd line.
hættu ‘danger’
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1. hætta (noun f.; °-u): [danger]
notes
[1] hætta verðr á hættu ‘to take risks leads to danger’: This statement may well be semi-proverbial and a variation on such adages as hefir sá er hættir ‘he who risks, has [wins]’. Skj B translates the line as man må vove faren ‘one must risk danger’. Jón Helgason (1970a, 217) proposed an emendation of hættu to háttu ‘[bad] habits’, acc. pl. of háttr ‘habits, conduct’, to produce skothending rather than aðalhending in an odd line.
hæting ‘threatening’
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hœting (noun f.; °-ar): threat
notes
[2] hæting ‘threatening’: Jón Helgason (ibid.) suggested this might rather be hætting ‘danger, risk’, an alternative form of hætta ‘danger’ (as in l. 1) with the pret. verb rœtti ‘rooted down’.
ef ‘if’
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3. ef (conj.): if
böl ‘misfortune’
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bǫl (noun n.; °-s, dat. bǫlvi): evil
rætir ‘plants’
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1. rœta (verb): [plants]
notes
[2] rætir ‘plants’: A rather strained metaphorical usage of ræta (earlier rœta) ‘cause to take root’. Finnur Jónsson (Skj B; LP: rœta), followed by Longo (FoGT 2004, 43), offers a slightly different sense of l. 2, reading hœting, ef bǫl rœtir ‘it is threatening, if misfortune takes root’, understanding the verb as impersonal with bǫl ‘misfortune’ in the acc. case.
ást ‘love’
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ást (noun f.; °-ar; -ir): love
er ‘it is’
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2. vera (verb): be, is, was, were, are, am
nær ‘better’
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nærri (adj. comp.; °superl. nǽstr): near, nearer, next
notes
[3] nær ‘better’: Normally, nær means ‘near’, but here the comp. seems to mean ‘better, preferable’; cf. LP: nær 3.
að ‘to’
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5. at (nota): to (with infinitive)
næra ‘nourish’
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nœra (verb): nourish
nú ‘now’
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nú (adv.): now
er ‘are’
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2. vera (verb): be, is, was, were, are, am
notes
[4] er ‘ are’: Lit. ‘is’ (sg.).
vær ‘placid’
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1. værr (adj.): peace-loving, placid
konan ‘women’
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kona (noun f.; °-u; -ur/-r(KlmA1980 116¹¹), gen. pl. kvenna/kvinna): woman
færi ‘fewer’
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3. fár (adj.; °compar. fǽrri/fárri(Mág² 11), superl. fǽstr): few
Skeind ‘The scratched’
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2. skeina (verb): scratch
notes
[5] skeind ‘scratched’: Editors have debated whether W reads skeind ‘scratched’ or skemd ‘hurt, wounded’ here. Although the meaning is not appreciably different, this ed. considers W’s reading to be skeind, as did Sveinbjörn Egilsson, Finnur Jónsson (Skj A), Kock, Jón Helgason (1970, 222) and Longo, though Finnur preferred skemd in Skj B. Björn Magnússon Ólsen read skemd (cf. FoGT 1884, 270 n. 4).
tekr ‘begins’
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2. taka (verb): take
æðrin ‘vein’
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1. æðr (noun f.; °-ar, dat./acc. ǽði; -ar): blood vessel
notes
[5] æðrin ‘the vein’: Ms. W has ‘æðr enn’, where ‘enn’ could be read as a suffixed def. art., as here and by Björn Magnússon Ólsen, or the adv. enn ‘yet, still’ (though, as we do not know the conclusion of l. 6, this is hypothetical). Finnur Jónsson (Skj B) emends to æðr at [œðask] lit. ‘vein to become angry’ and is followed in this by Kock (Skald). The poet is almost certainly using the noun æðr in two senses, ‘vein’ and ‘eider duck’, the first sense in l. 5, the second in l. 6. This homonym appears to have been a popular one among Icelandic poets; cf. Gestumbl Heiðr 35/3VIII (Heiðr 82) and Anon Gát 1/5.
æðaz ‘to become angry’
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œða (verb): infuriate
æðr ‘the eider duck’
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2. æðr (noun f.; °acc. ǽði; -ar): eider
deyr ‘dies’
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1. deyja (verb; °deyr; dó, dó(u); dá(i)nn): die
þá ‘’
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2. þá (adv.): then
er ‘when’
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2. er (conj.): who, which, when
br … ‘…’
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(non-lexical)
Interactive view: tap on words in the text for notes and glosses
Stanza 20 follows immediately after st. 19 with no intervening prose text, nor any following gloss.
As with the second helmingr of st. 19, the poet’s desire to pair umlauted vowels (ligatures) with long non-umlauted vowels in the uneven lines seems to have largely gone by the board, in favour of the maintenance of a particular ligature in both lines of a couplet. In l. 2, even though etymologically hæting (from hót ‘threat’) and rætir (from rót ‘root’) are [ø:] ligatures, they would have become [æ:] after c. 1250. Similarly in ll. 3-4, næra and vær have etymologically [ø:] ligatures, but will have fallen together with original [æ:] ligatures, here nær and færi, by the mid-C13th. Again, the ligatures in ll. 5-6 are either of [ø:] (æðaz l. 5) or [æ:] origin (æðr ll. 5 and 6). — Although st. 20/6 breaks off before it is complete, the final letters obscured by a hole in W, there is no evidence that the scribe was intending to add two further lines to complete the stanza, as it is clear that this stanza completes the chapter of FoGT on euphonia, and the next line on p. 115 begins a new chapter of the treatise with a capital letter.
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