GunnLeif Merl II 5VIII/1 — Vella ‘will well up’
‘Vella í víðri Vintónía
— þats borgar nafn — brunnar þrennir.
Þeir munu láði lœkjum skipta
þrír óglíkir í þrjá staði.
‘Þrennir brunnar vella í víðri Vintónía; þats nafn borgar. Þeir þrír óglíkir munu skipta láði lœkjum í þrjá staði.
‘Triple springs will well up in broad Winchester; that is the name of the city. Those three, [each] unlike [the others], will divide the land with their streams into three parts.
readings
[1] Vella: ‘Sar er’ apparently corrected from ‘Varu’ Hb
notes
[1] vella ‘will well up’: In Hb the text is refreshed as ‘Sar er’ but the traces of initial majuscule <V> are visible; Finnur Jónsson (Hb 1892-6, 272) interprets these indications as Váru. This reading seems unlikely to originate with Gunnlaugr, however, since pres. (for future), not pret., is called for by the remainder of the stanza; in transmission the pret. could have encroached from the preceding stanza. Additionally, váru would denote a steady state rather than a development that divides the lands within which the city is built into three, as required by the remainder of the stanza. In the present edn emendation to vella ‘well up’ is proposed to solve these difficulties and as the obvious vernacular rendition of Geoffrey’s erumpent; cf. its use in I 89/8. Bret 1848-9, followed by Skj B and Skald, emends to vaxa ‘grow, increase’, but this verb is not attested in relation to springs. Merl 2012 proposes Þar eru ‘There are’ but this, besides being vague and unidiomatic in itself, does not fit with the idea of a sudden break-out required by DGB.