Anon Mdr 3VII/4 — stjarna ‘star’
Þú ert, Máría, meira
metin allri þjóð betri;
þier sýnir guð greinir
gjarna, sjóvar stjarna.
Lofar, þá er öllum er efri
ein riett í veg hreinum,
— Kristr skipar hjá sier hæsta
heims drottning — lið* beima.
Þú, Máría, ert meira metin betri allri þjóð; guð sýnir þier gjarna greinir, stjarna sjóvar. Lið* beima lofar, þá er ein er riett efri öllum í hreinum veg; Kristr skipar hæsta drottning heims hjá sier.
You, Mary, are more valued [and you are] better than all people; God eagerly shows you discernment [lit. discernments], star of the sea. The company of men praises the one who alone, rightly, is higher than all in pure honour; Christ establishes the highest queen of the world [= Mary] beside himself.
notes
[4] stjarna sjóvar ‘star of the sea’: That is, stella maris ‘star of the sea’, a common Lat. epithet for Mary, which was popularised in the Christian West in the antiphon Ave maris stella for the Feast of the Assumption and became a commonplace in Marian poetry, though it was the result of a serendipitous scribal error. It originates in Jerome’s Liber Interpretationis Hebraicorum Nominum (or Onomasticon), an etymological dictionary of biblical names (Antin 1959). Jerome glosses Miriam, one of several Hebrew renditions of the Virgin’s name, more or less correctly as stilla maris ‘a drop of the ocean’ (cf. Antin 1959, 137). An early copyist mistook the i in stilla for an e, and the image of the ‘star of the sea’ was born (Warner 2000, 262-3). On the relationship between the Antiphon Ave maris stella and Mdr, see Notes to sts 30-6 below.