Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1959, Blaðsíða 84
70
A has shortened this text:
Svå er sagt at hann var £ Paris at pessu sinni,
ok åtti par stefnu vi5 alt stormenni ok gofugmenni er riki heldu me<5 honum.
Bb has shortened the text too, but has some additions:
Svå er sagt at hann var £ Paris enni riku borg å Frakklandi at pessu sinni,
ok åtti par stefnu vi3 alla riddara sina, er riki heldu af honum, [ok par var alt
gofugmenni hans, om. Bml.
The corresponding verses in the French source are:
1: Un jorn fut li reis Charles al Saint Denis mostier,
4: Dus i out et demeines, barons et chevaliers.
It is clear that a here has a more correct version of verse 4 than any of the
other MSS. This is confirmed by the text of the Swedish version:
Swa år sakt at h(an) war j paris
oc haffde ther stempno (mz) alid iarlla och hertuga i rikeno s(ino) (p. 2495'7).
M. Aebischer says (pp. 31-32) that Fr2 has a better text than A and
B and that although it is generally doser to A than to B it sometimes
agrees with B against A. But this is because he has compared passages
where the Aa text was represented only by A, and in the cases where Fr2
agrees with Bb, the A reading is inferior. Unfortunately in branch VII
there are only a few lines where it is possible to compare Fr2 with both
A and a (pp. 47514"16), but there are passages in branches IV and VI
where a comparison can be made, and in all these cases Fr2 agrees with
either A or a, and the reading supported by the fragment is invariably
superior to that of the other MS. In one case Fr2 appears to have a better
reading than either A or a:
på væri nu Valland i hans valdi, A
på væri nu alt land i hans valdi, a (Kms p. 30712)
pa væri nv allt valland i hans valldi, Fr2 (Kms p. 55 940),
m The b text has been omitted by mistake in this place, but is printed in the
introduction, p. xxxil. M. Aebischer: Les versions norroises du Voyage etc. has not
noticed that the MS a has the first lines of this branch, and only breaks off with
the word uvitrliga p. 46611. His question, p. 24, “Mais alors, d’ou provient la legon
qu’il (i.e. Unger) a adoptée?” is therefore futile. Similarly, Unger expressly States,
p. XXXVII, that the text is based on a from p. 533 (whenever this is possible, of
course).