Gripla - 20.12.2014, Page 198

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historical songs.11 this variety is equally borne out by the provenance of
some of the material; indeed, whereas most of the hymns presumably
originated in Finland, some of the songs can be traced to France, england
and Germany, particularly to Bavaria.
We now turn to the textual differences between the version of the
Latin hymn in Piae cantiones and ÍB 525 8vo. the Latin text of the latter
differs from the printed text only in a few minor details. these variant
readings mostly concern small lexical differences that do not change the
overall meaning of the stanzas. for example, the first stanza in ÍB 525 8vo
reads “qvi nobis est natus, | summo Christe [sic] datus” [who is born for
us, given by the highest Christ”]12 as compared to “qui nobis est natus |
summo Deo datus” [who is born for us, given by the highest god] in the
Piae cantiones. Similarly, in the second stanza, ÍB 525 8vo has “præsepi
imponitur, | stabulo porcorum” [he was put in a manger, in a pigsty],
whereas Piae cantiones reads “praesaepi ponitur | stabulo brutorum” [he
was put in a manger, in an animals’ stable]. other differences concern the
use of tense: in the third stanza ÍB 525 8vo has “veniunt” [they are coming]
as compared to “venerunt” [they came] in Piae cantiones; or the use of an
attributive genitive instead of an adjective: the first stanza ÍB 525 8vo has
“de vir virginis, | ventre procreatus” [brought forth from a virgin’s womb],
whereas the text in Piae cantiones reads “de virgeneo ventre procreatus”
[brought forth from a maidenly womb]. these examples should suffice to
show how little the two versions differ.
As noted before, the final stanza of the hymn is absent in ÍB 525 8vo
and it is therefore also lacking in the Icelandic translation. It follows that
the exemplar from which the Latin text in ÍB 525 8vo was derived – that
is, if we assume that there was a written exemplar – also contained only
the first three stanzas of the hymn. However, in order to show that the
11 See timo Mäkinen, Die aus frühen böhmischen Quellen überlieferten Piae Cantiones-Melodien,
trans. Helmut Henning, studia Historica jyväskylensia, vol. 2 (Jyväskylä: Jybäskylän
Yliopistoyhdistys, 1964), 10–23; gudrun Viergutz, “Der rostocker Kantor Daniel friderici
und sein Anteil an der zweiten lateinischsprachigen Ausgabe des schwedisch-finnischen
Liederbuches ʻPiae Cantiones,’” in Musica Baltica. Interregionale musikkulturelle Beziehungen
im Ostseeraum. Konferenzbericht Greifswald-Gdansk 28. November bis 3. Dezember 1993, ed.
Ekkehard ochs et al. (St Augustin: Academia, 1996), 191.
12 Note the erroneous use of the vocative form Christe instead of the expected ablative case
Christo.