Anon Líkn 33VII/5 — hjá ‘past’
Skeið ert fróns und fríðum
farsæl konungs þrælum
fljót ok farmi ítrum
fóstrlands á vit strandar.
Þú snýr böls hjá bárum
— boðar kasta þér lasta —
lýðs und líknar auði
lífs hafnar til stafni.
Ert farsæl, fljót skeið und fríðum þrælum konungs fróns ok ítrum farmi á vit strandar fóstrlands. Þú snýr stafni hjá bárum böls til lífs hafnar und auði líknar lýðs; boðar lasta kasta þér.
You are a voyage-prosperous, swift warship bearing [lit. under] beloved servants of the king of earth [RULER = Christ] and a glorious cargo towards the shore of our native land. You turn your prow past the waves of evil to life’s haven bearing the wealth of grace for mankind; billows of vices toss you.
notes
[5] hjá bárum böls ‘past the waves of evil’: 399a-bˣ (so also Sveinbjörn Egilsson 1844, 45) reads barmi ‘brim’; in a marginal note 444 has bárum (so all other eds). Together with boðar lasta ‘billows of vices’ the phrase, possibly a kenning-like circumlocution for sin, evokes the widespread idea that this world is like a perilous sea, its surging waves and raging storms representing various aspects of evil, by which mankind is easily shipwrecked. For discussion see Rahner 1964, 272-303 and 432-72; cf. the common liturgical phrase mare saeculi ‘sea of the world’ (Manz 1941, 291, no. 586). Fortunatus’ Pange lingua evokes this tradition in the ll.: Sola digna tu fuisti ferre pretium saecli / atque portum praeparare nauta mundo naufrago ‘You alone were worthy to bear the price of the world (Christ) and, like the seaman, to make ready a haven for a shipwrecked world’ (Bulst 1956, 128, st. 10); in later liturgical use nauta was replaced by arca ‘ark’ to strengthen the idea of the Cross as ship (see Connelly 1957, 85).