Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1959, Blaðsíða 135
121
To this group belong the following verses: 90, 137, 154, 263, 272 (cp.
add.), 316, 287, 297 (cp. add.), 331 (cp. add.), 340, 360 (cp. add.), 354
(cp. add.)16, 385, 407-08, 410, 501-02 (cp. add.), 576 and 586, 583, 589-
90, 594-95, 618, 649-50, 663, 688, 707, 714, 739, 741, 777-79, 830, 861,
869-70, 1095, 1098, 1105 (cp. add.), 1221, 1323, 1358, 1388-89 (the
verses are illegible in O), 1527, 1556—57, 1565, 1630—31, 1642, 1502—0316,
1738, 1781, 1792-94, 1896, 1911-12, 1964, 1966, 1973-74, 2008, 2011-
12, 2036-37, 2040-43, 2049, 2054-55, 2058, 2064-65, 2155-56, 2159,
2173-75, 2193-94, 2203-05, 2227, 2263-65, 2295-96, 2318, 2321, 2324,
2328, 2330, 2348, 2376, 2390-91, 2417, 2422, 2434-41, 2464, 2467, 2470.
Descriptions, epithets and stock phrases are frequently omitted if they
occur in a context where they seem to break the continuity of the narra-
tive, or if they repeat something which the reader (listener) already knows.
It is difficult to draw a sharp line between this group and the preceding
one. Many of the descriptions are severely technical and may therefore
have baffled the translator. Thus, in vv. 1487-89 it is told that Turpin
began the battie, and he was riding a horse which he had won from a king
he had killed in Denmark (the Kms text is slightly dif ferent); then fol-
lows, in vv. 1490-95, a description of the horse, with many technical
terms, and these verses are omitted in the saga. When the saga describes
the arrival of the pagan messengers, it translates fairly closely up to v. 116,
but leaves out vv. 117—19, in which the emperor himself is described, his
white beard and proud bearing etc., presumably because these details were
considered irrelevant in this connection. Another example is that when
Roland, seeing that Oliver is fighting the pagans with the bastun that is
left of his spearshaft, asks him where his sword is, adding,
1364: D’or est li helz e de cristal li punz,
this verse is omitted in the saga.
The stock phrases are mostly such as are used to describe fighting. The
French MSS, too, add and omit verses at will in such passages, and the
vocabulary is stereotyped. The first battie, vv. 1188-1395, consists of a
series of single combats described in much the same way, but with some
minor variations. Verses containing complaints, or showing the heroes
weeping, or fainting, are frequently left out, e.g. when Turpin foretells
what is going to happen when the French return and find the bodies of
the dead warriors, the verse
16 Order of verses as in V4.