Anon (FoGT) 28^III

Þier giet eg, kall, ef kærir,
kraunk orð búin, — forðum
fat eg várkunnar vinnur —
— verðu kyrr og sit! — fyrri.
Sakir átt á mier miklar;
munu nær vera hæri
þær, sem þína aura
— það er hættiligt! — fætta.

Kall, ef kærir fyrri, giet eg búin þier kraunk orð; eg fat forðum vinnur várkunnar; verðu kyrr og sit! Átt miklar sakir á mier; þær, sem fætta aura þína, munu vera nær hæri; það er hættiligt!

Fellow, if you bring a charge first, I think hurtful words will be ready for you; formerly I followed the practices of compassion; be quiet and stay sitting! You have great offences to charge me with; those, which will diminish your fortune, will become still greater; that’s risky!

Mss: W(116) (FoGT)

Editions: Skj AII, 218, Skj BII, 236, Skald II, 122, NN §3174; SnE 1848-87, II, 226-7, III, 160, FoGT 1884, 139, 278-9, FoGT 2004, 48, 73, 136-7, FoGT 2014, 30-1, 115.

Context: This stanza is presented as the sole example of a rhetorical figure called in FoGT antiposora (Lat. antipophora, from a Greek word meaning ‘reply to a supposed objection’). It is defined in FoGT as ef maðr svarar þeim lvtvm, sem maðr byzt at kiæra á hann ꜳ þingi ok stendr vpp bvinn at segia framm sǫkina, enn seger æigi ‘if a man responds to those things that [another] man prepares himself to charge him with at the assembly, and stands up ready to declare the case, but does not speak’.

Notes: [All]: Stanza 28, in dróttkvætt metre, illustrates FoGT’s definition of antipophora to the extent that both prose explanation and stanza represent men engaged in legal disputes at an assembly. In the first helmingr, the speaker seems to be warning another man against bringing a charge against him, on the ground that he has changed from being compassionate to, presumably, taking a hard line in response. In the second helmingr he issues a barely veiled threat that if the other man proceeds to lay charges against him, that man will face financial ruin. This is not very close to the prose explanation of the figure (but see FoGT 2004, 205), and far from the basic sense of the Latin figure, which involves making an anticipated response to a tacit objection (cf. Reichling 1893, 176, ll. 2607-9; Wrobel 1887, 7, l. 79). — [2] kraunk ‘hurtful’: Krankr is a late loan word from Middle Low German, used only here in poetry to mean ‘hurtful, insulting’; otherwise the sense is ‘weak, sick’ (cf. Anon Mey 36/3^VII krankar kvinnur ‘sick women’).

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. NN = Kock, Ernst Albin. 1923-44. Notationes Norrœnæ: Anteckningar till Edda och skaldediktning. Lunds Universitets årsskrift new ser. 1. 28 vols. Lund: Gleerup.
5. 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.
6. 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.
7. 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.
8. Wrobel, I., ed. 1887. Eberhardi Bethuniensis Graecismus. Corpus grammaticorum medii aeui I. Bratislava: G. Koebner.
9. FoGT 2014 = Clunies Ross, Margaret and Jonas Wellendorf, eds. 2014. The Fourth Grammatical Treatise. University College London: Viking Society for Northern Research.
10. Internal references
11. (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 26 April 2024)
12. Kirsten Wolf (ed.) 2007, ‘Anonymous Poems, Heilagra meyja drápa 36’ in Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.), Poetry on Christian Subjects. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 7. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 914.