Anon (FoGT) 33III/8 — píslarmerki ‘the sign of his passion’
Víngarðr hafði öl-Gefn orðið
(unda vargs), sú er nú eru margar,
(neytir skili þann krók) með k*æti,
kvensku heft og látið eftir.
Fyrðum dugir, að ósiðr orða
— oss vægðu, guð, jafnan — lægðiz;
vára þó hann í vatni skíru
verka sekt og píslarmerki.
Öl-Gefn, sú er nú eru margar, hafði orðið víngarðr með k*æti og látið eftir kvensku heft; neytir vargs unda skili þann krók. Dugir fyrðum, að ósiðr orða lægðiz; guð, vægðu oss jafnan; hann þó sekt verka vára í skíru vatni og píslarmerki.
The ale-Gefn <= Freyja> [WOMAN], she who now are many, had become a vineyard with cheerfulness and abandoned her preserved chastity; let the user of the wolf of wounds [AXE > WARRIOR] understand that obscurity. It helps men that a bad habit of words should be diminished; God, spare us always; he washed the guilt of our sins in pure water and in the sign of his passion.
notes
[8] píslarmerki ‘in the sign of his passion’: Here understood as a cpd of píslar ‘of suffering, torment’ + dat. sg. of merki ‘mark, sign, banner’, referring to Christ’s Cross as the symbol of his passion (so FoGT 1884, 285 n. 7 and FoGT 2004, 145), and taken with í skíru vatni ‘in pure water’ (l. 7) as representing the two main guarantees of human salvation, the water of baptism and the symbol of Christ’s crucifixion. Cf. the more common noun píslarmark, which always refers to Christ’s Cross. Kock (NN §3163) understands píslar merki to refer to Christ’s blood. Both FoGT 1884, 284 and Skj B construe ok píslarmerki with sekt verka vára (ll. 7-8) to give the sense ‘[he washed] the guilt of our deeds and signs of torment [in pure water]’. This is possible grammatically but less plausible from a doctrinal point of view.