Anon (FoGT) 10^III

Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.) 2017, ‘Anonymous Lausavísur, Stanzas from the Fourth Grammatical Treatise 10’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 583.

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

Stanza 10 follows immediately upon st. 9, and is introduced with the words ok iǫðrvm stað segiz sva ‘and in another place it is said thus’. After the couplet the prose text reads as follows: her er pipan kǫllvt blaasa, sv sem i var blaasít, ok þikker hon iafnan liót figvra, þo at hon finniz iskꜳ̋lldskap sett fyrer skrvðs ęðr navzynía ‘here the flute, which was blown into, is said to blow, and this always seems an unattractive figure, even though it is found in poetry for the sake of ornament or necessity’.

The vocabulary in this couplet is very similar to that of Máni Lv 2^II and 3^II, which also describe the musical performances of minstrels. In both cases the performers and their music-making are represented as grotesque. — Like st. 9, st. 10 was probably invented by the author of FoGT, or someone working for him, to provide another case of hypallage similar to what was in his Latin models. In this case the closest similarity is provided by the example perflavit fistula buccas ‘the pipe blew through the cheeks’ in Alexander of Villa Dei’s Doctrinale (Reichling 1893, 174, l. 2581).