Íslenzk tunga - 01.01.1965, Side 47

HJARTA DREPR STALL 45
one other source;23 the dative is in accordance with the above cited
variant e-m drepur hjarta í stall.
10) From Modern Icelandic I know one more variant of the
phrase in question, i.e., stál er drepið úr e-m ‘somebody has lost
heart’:
Auk þess var þá allt stál drepið úr Tyrkjum.
og hann hefir í hvorugt skiptið grunað, að stál væri þá þegar
svo drepið úr höfuðkempunum í hans flokki, sem síðar gaf
raun á.24
II
We have already seen the most important instances to be found
in Icelandic literature of the phrase in question. I think it worth
while now to discuss the attempts which have been made to explain
its origin.
The first attempt I know is that of Skúli Þórðarson Thorlacius.25
Thorlacius was an Icelander who was headmaster of the Metropoli-
tanskolen in Copenhagen at the end of the 18th and the beginning of
the 19th century.
Thorlacius wrote inter alia a treatise on Þórsdrápa.26 In the
strophe from Þórsdrápa (cf. I. 2) he alters the akarn of the text to
á korn and thus gets the phrase drepa á slall and with a greater,
23 Norðanfari XVII, 20: “þá drap Vermundi stall úr hjarta, fjell um háls
henni og hað hana vera hjá sjer.” This, however, is a somewhat douhtful ex-
ample, as Vermundi may be a dat. sympathet. with hjarta.
24 Skírnir 1878, 24, and 1887, 135, respectively. The author of hoth passages
is Eiríkur Jónsson, the lexicographer.
25 Jón Ólafsson from Grunnavík (1705—79) mentions the phrase in his Ice-
landic-Latin Dictionary (AM 433, fol., under drepa):
hjartat drepr Stall, ad v. cor ad basin alliditur, pro pavescit, hönum
drepr Stall, expavescit (Þórsdr.).
This can hardly be looked upon as an explanation of the phrase. Most likely
Thorlacius has known this comment.
26 Published in his Antiquitatum borealium observationes miscellaneœ.
Specimen septimum.