Hǫrðr Lv 4VIII (HjǪ 43)/8 — í ‘in’
Eyðaz mun sæmd þín, ef líkr skal ek vera
aumum illþræli, er ekki prýðir,
ragr í hverja taug, nema vakta mat svínum,
halr inn hrafnsvarti í hrævar skrúði.
Sæmd þín mun eyðaz, ef ek skal vera líkr aumum illþræli, er ekki prýðir, ragr í hverja taug, nema vakta svínum mat, inn hrafnsvarti halr í skrúði hrævar.
Your honour will be destroyed, if I must be like a poor wretched slave, whom sobbing adorns, craven in every fibre, only good to look after food for swine, the raven-black fellow in the clothing of a corpse.
readings
[8] í hrævar: so with í written above the line in another hand papp6ˣ, ‘hræduar’ 109a IIIˣ, ÍBR5ˣ
notes
[8] í skrúði hrævar ‘in the clothing of a corpse’: Only papp6ˣ has hrævar ‘of a corpse’, but it is almost certainly correct, as it conforms to the saga narrative’s information that Hjálmþér carried the apparently dead Hǫrðr on his back for two days, an act that was necessary to break the spell under which King Hringr had been placed. The í ‘in’ is regarded here as an emendation, as it appears only as an additional reading in papp6ˣ. Skj B and FSGJ present hrævarskrúði as a cpd; Kock (NN §2840 and Skald) adopts the reading í hræðfarskrúði (based on 109a IIIˣ’s and ÍBR5ˣ’s ‘hræduar’) and suggests that this cpd could be derived from hræða ‘frighten’ and fǫr ‘journey’.