Anon 732b 2^III/2 — svartra ‘of black’

notes

[2] percussor svartra pússa ‘a percussor (“smiter”) of black [skin] pouches’: An obscure phrase, but in parallel to rex ljóssa lifra ‘king of shining livers’ (l. 3) it most likely refers to a person who cuts the offal from animal carcasses: specifically, ‘one who smites the testicles of sheep’. The Lat. percussor m. nom. sg. ‘one who strikes, deals a blow’ (the nomen agentis of percutio ‘strike, smite, pierce through, kill’) is an emendation of the ms. reading ‘percvssus’. None of the homonyms of Lat. percussus (nom. or gen. sg. of the fourth-declension m. noun ‘beating, striking’, and the m. nom. sg. noun formed from the p. p. of percutio) make sense here, and no past ed. has let the ms. reading stand. Finnur Jónsson (1886a, 194) retains the ms. form unaltered in his presentation of the text, but treats percussus as percussor in the Danish translation, banker ‘beater’. Acceptance of the emendation to percussor supplies a plausible minimal correction. It differs from the other Latinisms in the stanza in that it is neither a lordly title nor a conventional honorific, but it is consistent with the conventional vernacular language of martial epithet (cf. the use of analogous terms such as bauti ‘beater, striker’, hneitir ‘striker’ in skaldic poetry). The sense of the whole expression percussor svartra pússa is not self-evident. Finnur Jónsson (1886a, 194) interprets the phrase as a reference to a man whose responsibility it was to waterproof the protective leather clothing (skinnfǫt) worn by Icelandic sailors and fishermen. These overalls were known as púss (Mörður Árnason 2010: púss 4; ÍO: 4 púss), but the usage has only been recorded since the C19th. In their exchange on the stanza in 1844, Konráð Gíslason and Jónas Hallgrímsson connected the expression svartir pússar to different varieties of offal: Jónas proposed that it might refer to mör, the suet made from the loins and kidneys of sheep and cows and wrapped in intestinal membrane to make black pudding (Haukur Hannesson, Páll Valsson and Sveinn Yngvi Egilsson 1989, II, 197); Konráð thought it more likely to designate another delicacy: svartir hrútspungar ‘black ram’s testicles’ (Aðalgeir Kristjánsson 1984, 66), which is the interpretation preferred here. Cf. Fritzner: púss, noting the probable connection of ON púss ‘(skin) pouch, purse’, with MLat. bursa/byrsa, which has the primary meaning ‘(animal) skin, leather’, and by extension ‘pouch’ (Niermeyer and van de Kieft 2002: byrsa; Prinz et al. 1967-: bursa). In Modern Icelandic the contrasting secondary meanings ‘scrotum’ and ‘vagina (of a mare)’ are also recorded (Mörður Árnason 2010: púss 3; ÍO: 1 púss). It is unlikely that the scurrility of a term referring to a man as one who beats the sexual organs of farm animals would have been overlooked; any oblique insult might have been reinforced by the secondary sense of MLat. percussor as ‘masturbator, fellator’ (Howlett et al. 1975-: percussor d). All commentaries apart from Finnur Jónsson (1886a) have recommended more obtrusive emendation. Konráð Gíslason misinterpreted ms. ‘percvssus’ as procossus, incorrectly expanding the conventional abbreviation of the Latin prefix per- as pro- (Aðalgeir Kristjánsson 1984, 56, 66-7; cf. Haukur Hannesson, Páll Valsson and Sveinn Yngvi Egilsson 1989, II, 197). He emended this invented form to procussul, a theoretically conceivable but unattested Medieval Latin variant of Classical Lat. proconsul m. nom. sg. ‘governor’. His emendation is reproduced by Finnur Jónsson in Skj B and Kock in Skald. Jón Helgason (1968, 58) introduces the more radical emendation to proconsul, which has the advantage of providing an extant Latin word; but he is thereby forced into the supporting alteration of ms. ‘pussa’ to sponsa (gen. pl. of spons ‘bung, bung-hole’), in order to maintain aðalhending. This produces the unverifiable editorial reading proconsul svartra sponsa ‘governor of black bung-holes’. Spons is only recorded in Icelandic since the C17th. Jón fails to explain the meaning of the postulated term here, but it might reasonably refer to the anal area cut out during the evisceration of an animal carcass (in slaughterer’s parlance in Modern English the rectum – edible offal valued for casing tripe – is known as the ‘bung’). The reading would introduce an inevitable sexual double-entendre (for the use of spons and the related verb sponsa ‘to bung, plug’ in sexual innuendo, see Bósa saga ch. 13, Jiriczek 1893, 51).

grammar

Strong form: in -r

note the u-mutation in certain forms