Gripla - 2021, Blaðsíða 31

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scribe Dunstan’s skills in working with his hands, including making things
from gold and silver, as well as playing musical instruments.69 This corre-
sponds well with the beginning of chapter two in Anecdotes. Following this
in Eadmer is the legend where Dunstan’s harp plays untouched by human
hands,70 and a few pages later there follows the legend about the devil and
Dunstan’s red-hot pincers.71 These legends correspond with the first two
Dunstan legends in Anecdotes.
Fell suggested that the reference to idleness shortly before the second
lacuna in Dunstanus saga was a prelude to the legend about the devil and
the pincers, as it was after all “one of the most widely known stories about
Dunstan.”72 Fell did not, however, realise that Eadmer does in fact talk
about idleness shortly before relating this legend. Instead, she points to a
corresponding text in a Middle English rhymed version of St Dunstan’s
life in the South English Legendary and suggests that Árni may have incor-
porated the tale from oral sources.73
As the other chapters that feature Dunstan and Lanfranc are chiefly
drawn from Dunstanus saga, it is reasonable to assume that the same is
true for the first chapter. As I have shown, just before the second lacuna
of Dunstanus saga in AM 180 b fol., Árni begins to follow Eadmer. If we
place the first chapter on Dunstan in Anecdotes into this lacuna, we get an
almost continuous text that corresponds well with chapters six to eleven
in Eadmer’s Vita. This supports the supposition that the second lacuna of
Dunstanus saga included this passage and that the compiler of Anecdotes
draws from it.74 Although there is no need to look to the South English
Legendary for a text that corresponds to Árni Lárentíusson’s iðjuleysi, as it
can be found in Eadmer, Fell’s hypothesis that the legend about Dunstan’s
red-hot pincers was originally included in Dunstanus saga is all but con-
firmed by its inclusion in Anecdotes.
69 Eadmer of Canterbury, Lives and Miracles, 58.
70 Eadmer of Canterbury, Lives and Miracles, 58–60.
71 Eadmer of Canterbury, Lives and Miracles, 66.
72 Fell, “Introduction,” lv–lvi.
73 Fell, “Introduction,” lv–lvi.
74 This claim can be supplemented by the fact that the language of the legends (especially the
first one) is very similar to that employed by Árni Lárentíusson elsewhere in Dunstanus
saga, for example with the use of the words einkanligr, kumpánn, and hljóðagrein. Cf. Peter
Hallberg, “Some Observations on the Language of Dunstanus saga, with an Appendix on
the Bible Compilation Stjórn,” Saga-Book 18 (1970–73): 324–53.
ANECDOTES OF SEVERAL ARCHBISHOPS OF CANTERBURY