Gripla - 20.12.2013, Blaðsíða 23

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the poem featured a refrain with the following words: hlaut innan svá
minnum (‘it [the hall] was allotted memorable stories in this way’).102 from
ermoldus we can compare:
His est aula dei picturis arte referta,
Pleniter artifici rite polita manu.103
‘the hall of God is crammed with these skilfully executed pictures,
fully embellished by dextrous hand in ceremonial fashion.’
skaldic ekphrasis appears to have enjoyed only an attenuated existence
after úlfr’s time.104 By contrast, skaldic tmesis was much longer-lived, with
attestations all the way from the late ninth century to the twelfth. Amory
has shown that of the various figures of language traditionally designated
by the term tmesis, only those attested in Mediaeval Latin (and, secondar-
ily, old french) work on the same pattern as those in old norse/Icelandic.
In both corpora it is typically parts of the noun that are separated by inter-
vening linguistic material and only rarely other parts of speech. the noun
concerned is either a compound or at the least a combination of syllables
that could be interpreted as a compound. other traditions of tmesis, for
instance that of old Irish, which typically operates on the verb, work on
quite different principles.105
the following is a list of characteristic examples of tmesis in Carolingian
verse (arranged in approximate order of dating); it is designed to be repre-
sentative but not exhaustive:
102 turville-Petre, Scaldic Poetry, 69.
103 ermold le noir, Poème sur Louis le Pieux et Épîtres au Roi Pépin, ed. and trans. edmond
faral (Paris: société d’Édition “Les Belles Lettres”, 1964), 162–3, ll. 2124–5.
104 Clunies Ross, ‘stylistic and Generic definers’, 166–7.
105 daniel Melia, ‘A Poetic klein Bottle’, in Celtic Language, Celtic Culture: A Festschrift for
Eric Hamp, ed. A.t.e. Matonis and daniel f. Melia (Van nuys, CA: ford & Bailie,
1990), 187–98; daniel Melia, ‘on the form and function of the “old Irish” Verse in
the thesaurus Palaeohibernicus’, in Heroic Poets and Poetic Heroes in Celtic Tradition,
ed. joseph falaky nagy and Leslie ellen jones (dublin: four Courts Press, 2005), 285;
Amory, ‘tmesis’, 44.
sCHoLARs And skALds