Rloð Lv 7VIII (Ragn 23)/5 — baugum ‘rings’
Spari manngi röf Rínar,
ef röskr vili hermenn;
verr samir hoskum hilmi
hringa fjölð en drengja.
Ilt er í borghlið baugum
brandrauðum fram standa;
allmarga veit ek jöfra,
þá er auðr lifir, dauða.
Spari manngi röf Rínar, ef röskr vili hermenn; fjölð hringa samir hoskum hilmi verr en drengja. Ilt er standa fram í borghlið brandrauðum baugum; ek veit allmarga jöfra dauða, þá er auðr lifir.
Let no person be sparing of the amber of the Rhine [GOLD], if a brave man should want soldiers; a multitude of rings befits a wise ruler worse than one of men. It is no good entering the gate of a stronghold with fire-red rings; I know of very many kings who are dead, while their wealth lives on.
readings
[5] í borghlið baugum: ‘íborg lið bavga’ 1824b, ‘[…]’ 147
notes
[5] baugum ‘with rings’: CPB and Rafn (FSN) retain (m. acc. pl. or gen. pl.) bauga, giving little sense in the context; Valdimar Ásmundarson (Ragn 1891), Finnur Jónsson (Skj B) and Guðni Jónsson (FSGJ) emend to baugi (dat. sg.) ‘ring’; all other eds, including the present, emend to dat. pl. baugum ‘rings’; and all eds (other than those of CPB and FSN) take baugi/baugum as qualified by the adj. brandrauðum ‘fire-red’ in l. 6, which formally could be either m. dat. sg. or dat. pl. Kock (NN §3181) defends the pl. reading here on the grounds, first, that <u> is more likely than <i> to have given rise to the <a> found in 1824b’s reading bauga; second, that the conventional attribution in poetry of the adj. rauðr ‘red’ to the noun hringr ‘ring’ occurs more often in the pl. than in the sg.; and third, that the pl. reading is consistent with the hermenn pl. ‘soldiers’ and the fjölð hringa ‘multitude of rings’ mentioned in ll. 2 and 4 respectively.