Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1959, Blaðsíða 101

87
point of vievv of the later remanieurs of the saga, the phrase is very appro-
priate in this place, and may easily have been added by them. This is not
to say that it is impossible that the phrase existed in the original transla-
tion, in which case we should have to regard the omission of it in Fri as
a proof that this MS has, occasionally, shortened the text. But in cases of
this kind, it is not enough to consider the textual variant in isolation; we
must consider the State of the text in general, and when, as here, we have
a Norwegian fragment of the 13th century which is, on practically every
point, superior, not only to the 15th century text a, but also to the text of
the source of the three Icelandic MSS, which must date from around 1300,
we cannot accept any reading of the other MSS if it can easily be ex-
plained as an obvious addition, or change, made by a scribe. This, to my
mind, is how we must judge the aBb reading quoted above: it is an addi-
tion suggested by the context.
The same remarks are valid in the case of another passage, O vv. 258-
60: Oliver has offered to go to King Marsilie as a messenger:
258: Se li reis voelt, jo i puis aler ben.”
259: Respunt li reis: “Ambdui vos en taisez!
260: Ne vos ne il n’i porterez les piez.
Fri: En æf konungr vill ba em ek buinn at fara J>a sendefor.
Huargi yckar scal coma a ba stigu. (p. 5576-7)
a: En ef konungr vill, ba era buinn at fara Jtessa for”.
pd mcelti Karlamagnus konungr:
“Hvårgi ykkar skal etc. (p. 4904-5). Omitted in Bb.
The words på mcelti etc. are necessary in the context, and this might
perhaps be regarded as proof that a is not, ultimately, based on Fri. But
this conclusion is by no means obvious: even if a had been copied directly
from Fri the scribe might have added these words as a matter of course.
Furthermore there is no reason theoretically why this omission should not
have occurred in the archetype. It is commonly assumed that there were
never any mistakes in the author’s MS, but this assumption cannot be
proved and is not very likely.
On the whole, there can be no doubt about the superiority of Fri over
all the later MSS of the Kms23.
There are numerous additions and omissions in the text of the MS a,
but the changes do not amount to a real revision of the påttr. There
23 Cp. M. Aebischer’s discussion of the text of the fragment, Rol. Bor. pp. 47-51.