Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1959, Side 141
127
De cels de France oez suner les graisles!
Se Caries vient, de nus i avrat perte.
Se Rollant vit, nostre guerre novelet,
are translated:
ok heyrum ver nu luSra Jjeirra,
ok flyjum undan sem skjotast.
Nu ef Rollant lifir--(p. 52118-20).
The second line is probably meant to be a translation of v. 2117, and there
is notbing in any of the French versions to suggest a line of this kind.
Another example of a more emphatic expression in the saga is the ren-
dering of vv. 1925-27:
Ferez, seignurs, des espees furbies,
Si calengez e voz mors e voz vies,
Que dulce France par nus ne seit hunie!
Kms:
ok låtum Jtat segja blémenn, på er be‘r koma til Spanialands, at peir mættu Rollant
ok hans liSi (p. 5205"®).
The two verses 1950-51,
Tort nos ad fait, nen est dreiz qu’il s’en lot,
Kar de vos sul ai ben venget les noz”,
are rendered in the saga:
ok aldri siSan hefir hann af pér hjålp (p. 52011),
which is rather commonplace in comparison with the original verse. On
the whole, in most of these changed verses the Norse version misses some
of the beauty of the French poem. In some cases the translator has ob-
viously been at a loss to find an adequate Norse equivalent, and in others
he has extricated himself from the difficulty by giving a fairly correct
general translation without committing himself to details. This is probably
the case with v. 491,
Dunt pris les chefs as puis de Haltoi'e,
Kms: er ek lét drepa (afhofSa, Bb) fyrir håSungar sakir honum (p. 49531"32).
wegian, “the field” in Icelandic. Cp. 6lafs saga Tryggvasonar, by Oddr munkr, ed.
P. Groth (Chria. 1895), p. 1625'27: Ero nocquorar pær borgir eSa herud. eSa tun
er undan haf i hor vit ySru riki---> and PiSreks saga, ed. Bertelsen, p. 6026: brytr
kastala ok brenner tun. In all these cases, the meaning appears to be “village”,
“hamlet”. Real villages did not exist in Norway or Iceland, but the farms of West-
ern Norway were often divided into many small holdings round a common tun.