Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1959, Blaðsíða 219

205
The first two verses may have been omitted bécause they appeared to
sum up what had already been told in the additional laisses. The last two
lines of the Kms text are obviously based on vv. 1688-9044. But the rest
of the laisse is very badly rendered: nothing in the French texts might
suggest that any of the peers spoke these verses. More surprising still is
the faet that the expressions lor est avenut ben, lor est pesant e gref have
led to a translation in which the future tense is used: fundit d fornum
bokum--------at ver skulum falla undir veldi-------. Clearly the translator
has thought that the archbishop was referring to a prophecy written in the
“old books”, and having got this idea, he did not take into account thé
faet that the tense used in the poem indicated that this was something
that had happened in the past. Thus it looks as if the translator must have
had the O verses 1682-90 in mueh the same form as the other MSS.
After having translated vv. 1688-90, Kms has no trace of the next
laisse, vv. 1691-1701, but immediately translates the first laisse of the
second “trumpet scene”, vv. 1702-12. The omitted laisse is, in O, the first
indication that Roland is beginning to despair of the outeome of the battie.
In the later French versions this is different; there Roland’s doubts have
already been voiced in the last of the additional laisses {V4 laisse 136),
cp. V4 w. 1768-76 (quoted above). Thus, in V4 and the version rirrtée,
O w. 1691-1701 come as a repetition, but there is no such repetition in
the saga, and with the results we have reached concerning the additional
laisses in the Margariz episode in mind, I believe that the omission of
vv. 1691-1701 in Kms is due not to the translator, but to his French
source:
In O, the original poem, we have a short conversation between Roland
and Oliver, vv. 1671-79, followed by a short description of the fighting,
1680-82, a reference to the Geste, vv. 1683-85, and a summing up of the
battie, vv. 1686-90. Then with only 60 Frenchmen left alive, Roland
voices his doubts about the outeome of the battie, but Oliver is now un-
willing to advocate the biowing of l’olifant, vv. 1691—1701, and Roland
himself has to make the suggestion.
In the saga the scene is introduced in the same way (O vv. 1671-79),
but then follows a somewhat longer description: there are still 400 armed
Christians left, and they attack the pagans so fiercely that they are on the
44 Hdlft hundrad manna is a corfect translation of seisante in v. 1689, since a
Norse hundrad is = 120.