Gripla - 20.12.2011, Síða 111

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responding spiritual and emotional implications (great mildness, great
bitterness, and great radiance).
This triadic presentation is also apparent at the word level: one can
notice, for example, precisely the effective alliterating triad blíðleikr / beisk-
leikr / bjartleikr (‘mildness’ / ‘bitterness’ / ‘radiance’), where the shifting of
sense relies only upon the first elements of the -leikr compound-words,
and where alliteration serves the rhetorical purpose of stressing the central
idea of the threefold topic of allegorical interest.
The Old Icelandic preacher’s insistence on triads, both in for-
mal arrangement and in subject-matter elaboration, on the other hand,
strengthens the hypothesis of a possibly Irish-influenced mode, which
we have already suggested on purely conceptual grounds; but of course,
if Irish love for triads has long been underlined by scholars,121 we do not
necessarily have to turn to Ireland to find threefold cultural patterns.
As to the relationship among the various recensions of the Old Icelandic
sermon fragment – namely in AM 673 a II, 4to, Hauksbók, and Rímbegla
– no conclusive evidence regarding the preacher’s use of specific exegeti-
cal sources has emerged in my investigation, so no new suggestion can be
formulated about the original version(s) from which the Hauksbók and
Rímbegla copies – and possibly our text in the ‘Physiologus manuscript’ –
may have been drawn. This results in an impression of clarity, refinement
and well-designed synthesis concerning especially the shorter, older text
edited and discussed in the present article.
On the Nordic side, one more word can be spent in closing about the
tri chromatic description of the rainbow having a well-known parallel in
Old Icelandic mythology. The old belief in the existence of a ‘sky-bridge’
linking heaven and earth probably made the Christian, namely biblical,
rainbow a recognizable and accepted symbol to be easily employed in
preaching. I think this is very true precisely with regards to the general and
cosmographic topic of the bridge Bilrǫst, as it is hinted in Eddic poetry of
possible pre-Christian origin.122 But things are probably less simple and
121 I mention here only the classic study by Kuno Meyer, The Triads of Ireland, Royal Irish
Academy. Todd Lecture Series 13 (Dublin: Hodges, Figgis & co., 1906).
122 Namely, Grímnismál 44, Fáfnismál 15, and presumably Helgakviða Hundingsbana ǫnnor
49. Cf. Edda. Die Lieder des Codex Regius nebst verwandten Denkmalern, I. Text, ed. Gustav
Neckel, 5th ed. rev. Hans Kuhn (Heidelberg: Winter Verlag, 1983), respectively 66, 183,
and 160.
THE RAINBOW ALLEGORY