Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1959, Blaðsíða 181
167
2559: ok roeddi hverr Jieirra viS annan = S
2560: ok sogSu svå: Karlamagnus konungr er yfirkominn, cp. S3: Jwer æstw
komen K magnus ath rike thino = the other MSS, cp. D
2561?: ok er aldri siSan verSr at bera koronu å Frakklandi = S and D (Kms p.
52714-20, s p. 28619-24 and ed. Kornhall p. 1052-8; d p. 16610-14).
This corresponds roughly to the following verses in O:
2555: Aprés icel li vien un’altre avisiun,
Qu’il ert en France, ad Ais, a un perrun,
En dous chaeines si teneit un brohun.
Devers Ardene veeit venir .XXX. urs,
Cascun parolet altresi curae hum.
2560: Diseient li: Sire, rendez le nus!
Il nen est dreiz que il seit mais od vos.
The other French versions follow O closely, and the scribes do not
seem to have had any difficulty with the passage: the allusions are, of
course, obvious enough to anyone who knows vv. 3780—3933 of the poem.
The translator apparently did not understand the word brohun in v. 2557,
and having read li for s’i, he has concluded that someone (i.e. the unknown
term brohun) held him, i.e. the emperor, in fetters. In the following line
he translated devers Ardene “towards Ardena”, and not knowing what
Ardena was, he took it to be the name of a city {borg). Then, in the
same verse, the .XXX. urs of O have become “thirty men” in aBb and
D26, while SI, S2, and S4 have “many wolves”. The reading of S3 looks
like a corruption of the reading of SI, but it is rather peculiar that this
could lead to any corruption at all. It is possible that the reading of the
three Swedish MSS is a conjecture, based on an unintelligible word in
the archetype, while the S3 reading is another and less successful conjec-
ture. It is less likely that the “wolves” of SI etc. is the original reading,
taken over from the Norwegian source, in spite of the faet that the word
urs is translated vargar in the saga version of v. 2542.
It is difficult to understand how the words of the 30 “men” (or
“wolves”) could become so thoroughly changed and corrupted. Practically
every word in vv. 2560-62 has been correctly translated elsewhere in Kms,
as is only natural, since none of them is rare or even used in any special
28 The word men is omitted in the old printed version of the Danish Chronicle,
which was edited from a MS that differed slightly from the main MS, vide Brandt’s
ed. p. 348. The printed version is quoted in the notes of Brandt’s edition as B, vide
for the variant kommee lebendis xxx for----xxx men, p. 166.