Anon (FoGT) 15^III

Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.) 2017, ‘Anonymous Lausavísur, Stanzas from the Fourth Grammatical Treatise 15’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 588.

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

See Introduction to sts 15 and 16. FoGT introduces hendiadys thus: Endiadís er sv figura, er .ij. svndr lauser lvter erv merkter fyrer einn vskiptíligan lvt, ęðr einn vskiptíligr lutr er settr fyrer .ij. skiptiligvm lutvm, ok er hon vnder dregín samfesting lavssa luta okleysing fastra lvta, sem her ‘Hendiadys is that figure where two separate entities are mentioned instead of a single indivisible entity, or one indivisible entity is used for two divisible entities, and it is governed by the fastening together of free entities and the separation of entities that are held fast, as here’. Stanza 15 then follows.

This dróttkvætt couplet provides a good example in support of the surmise that the scribe of W was not the author or redactor of FoGT. If he had been, he would surely have realised that his ‘skamm’ and ‘ef’ in l. 1 were incorrect, as the correct forms, skálm ‘point’ [of a sword]’ and og ‘and’ are given in the prose text immediately following the stanza viz.: her er v skiptiligr lvtr sverðit merkt fyrer skalm okhiallt, svndr lavsa lvtí ‘here an indivisible entity, the sword, is signified by point and hilt, separate entities’.