Gripla - 20.12.2011, Síða 67

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treatments of the rainbow allegory in medieval poetic and prose texts from
the wider Germanic speaking area, for instance in the Early Middle High
German biblical epic poetry on Genesis, will also be taken into account
here, to suggest a consolidated exegetical stock or repertoire widely circu-
lating in the vernacular literatures of the medieval West. Moreover, some
penitential implications in our short text suggest a possible connection also
with the Irish monastic background, namely with the old tradition of the
three forms (and colours) of martyrdom we find in some Hiberno-Latin
Continental texts and, above all, in the well-known fragmentary Old Irish
sermon commonly referred to as Cambrai Homily.
II
Although Kölbing’s editio princeps (1879) of the rainbow allegorical frag-
ment in AM 673 a II, 4to, fol. 9v, contains several uncertainties and some
evident mistakes,14 the manuscript was in far better conditions at that
time. It is worth pointing out, for instance, that already in 1889 Dahlerup
decided to publish the lithographic facsimile of the Physiologus sections
of the book, which had been realized some thirty years before, because at
that date the manuscript “utvivlsomt var i en noget bedre stand end nu”.15
We can agree with Kölbing himself, when he expresses his regret that
Guðbrandur Vigfússon could not help him in revising the transcription of
the manuscript leaves which formed the basis for his own edition.16
Some ten years later, Larsson could properly correct Kölbing’s edito-
rial uncertainties, as well as some of his scriptorial misunderstandings and
‘interpretative’ readings in a new and more reliable edition published in
1891; in more recent times, the few occasional extensive quotations of the
ship and rainbow allegories in the Arnamagnæan manuscript – namely the
texts printed by Håkon Hamre, by James W. Marchand and, for the two
ship allegories only, by Wolfgang Lange – are all still based on Larsson’s
edition.17
14 Cf. Larsson, “Nochmals Schiff”: 245.
15 Cf. Dahlerup, “Physiologus”: 252.
16 Cf. Kölbing, “Geistliche Auslegung”: 259.
17 Cf. Hamre,“‘Þá er vér erum á skipum staddir...’”: 187–189; James W. Marchand, “The
Ship Allegory in the Ezzolied and in Old Icelandic,” Neophilologus 60 (1976): 238–250
(text and English translation of the two ship allegories: 245–247); id., “Two Notes”: 504;
THE RAINBOW ALLEGORY