Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1959, Side 111
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original translation. But all the French MSS (O, V4, CV7) and the
German poem (v. 2694) have “mules” in this verse, and we must then
assume that the translator has made a mistake, or, possibly that his source
had changed the verse. There is indeed another example of a mistake of
this kind in the Kms. In the Pelerinage Charlemagne (v. 220) the emperor
offers to give the patriarch a gift of gold and silver,
Faites cent muls receivre d’or et d’argent trossez.
and the verse is translated in the Kms:
Bb: ok bauS at gefa honum 100 ulfalda klyfjaSa af gulli.
A: ok bau3 at gefa honum 100 marka gulls ok silfrs. (Kms p. 46929”30 and
note 25. Lacuna in a)
Unfortunately the passage is omitted in S. But the A reading is an
obvious corruption, possibly again because the MS from which A is copied
had the word camelar, which the scribe has not understood, while the author
of Bb understood it, and inserted the more common ulfaldar. The impor-
tant thing, then, is that twice in Kms have we found examples of the
rendering of the word muls (mulez) by “camels”. This cannot be because
the translator did not know what a mule was; in Runzivals j>åttr he trans-
lates the word (tnul, mule, and mulet) correctly no less than 9 times (vv.
32, 130, 185, 480, 652, 757, 847; 89; 158). He may have made a deliberate
change, to emphasize the wealth of the emperor, and the strength of Cher-
nubles, or he may have read cameils for muls. But at any rate the mistake
has been made, and in the example from the Pelerinage, the reading is also
supported by Bb. There seems, therefore, to be no escape from the con-
clusion that the reading ulfaldar in the a and S version of v. 978 is the
original Kms version, while the mular of Bb is a corruption, or possibly
a correction (the author of Bb may have considered “7 camels” an ex-
aggeration; there is, in some cases, a tendency to avoid extravagant details
in the Norse translations).
D is a summary rather than a translation: all the important facts are
there, but descriptions and conversations have been cut down or omitted,
so that the Chronicle contains less than one fourth of the Kms text. Like
the editor of the Bb version, the Dåne has been upset by the reappearance
of Turpin at the end of the saga, and he has solved the problem by making
the archbishop survive the battie of Roncevaux (above, p. 63).
The Rollantsrimur af Runsivalsfxetti have never been published in full,
but they can scarcely be of much importance for the textual criticism of
7 Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana, XIX