Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1959, Blaðsíða 81
67
funeral in his source. He decided to omit it altogether, preferring the
account of a trusted authority like Vincent of Beauvais.
A difficult question in connection with Bb is the disappearance of the
additional episodes between branches VIII and IX. The Rollantsrimur af
Runsivalsbardaga are based on the Bb version (i.e. Turpin has been eli-
minated from the tale)96, but they nevertheless have the episode of La belle
Aude. This may mean that the absence of this and subsequent episodes
in our MSS B and b is accidental, due to the loss of a leaf or more in a
MS from which both B and b are derived. It is rather strange that both
manuscript families {Aa and Bb) should be derived from two different
MSS where the same episodes had been accidentally lost. lt would seem
more likely that Aa and Bb are derived from one MS which had accident-
ally lost a leaf in this place. But then what about the rimur ? The common
ancestor of Aa and Bb must obviously have been a MS of the Aa class,
and if the editor of the Bb version used an incomplete MS of the original
saga, without the episodes in question, how could the MS known to f*or3ur
a Strjugi contain one of these episodes? As far as I can see, we must
either accept the faet that, by a curious accident, a to-day (but not at a
time when it was still complete) breaks off practically in the same place
as that at which the MS from which B and b are derived (but not the
MS of the author of the Bb version) had a lacuna, or think that I’orSur å
Strjugi got his Aude episode from a MS of the Aa version. If torSur
knew more than one MS of the saga, these episodes may have been missing
in the Bb version from the very beginning, and they may possibly have
been omitted purposely, as M. Aebischer appears to think97.
The Landres fsåttr has a preface of its own, and this shows that the
tale once existed as an independent saga. It was added as a supplement,
not as a part of the Kms, and there is no particular reason for connecting
the supplements with the editor of the Bb version.
M. Aebischer regards branch I as a “primitive Kms”, the first transla-
tion of Kms matter to be made98. As I have already said, it is quite
possible that some, or all, of the branches of the saga existed as independent
fiÆttir before the Kms was compiled by the editor of the original version
of the saga. But I see no particular reason why branch I should be the
first branch to have been translated. On the contrary, it seems to me that
88 Bjorn K. t>årolfsson: Rimur fyrir 1600, p. 486.
87 Rol. Bor. p. 66.
88 Les différents etats de la Kms, pp. 304-06, 319-20.
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