Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1959, Blaðsíða 257
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it a very difficult matter, but at last Naimes made a speech, in which he counselled
that he should receive the most cruel punishment. The emperor and his men agreed,
and Ganeion was taken from prison and tied between two wild horses, and they
pulled him apart. Thereafter the emperor strengthened his power, assigned men to
govern in the various parts of his kingdom, and drove out his enemies (end of a).
It is said that Karlamagnus fought many batties Iater, but won few of them, but
he retained his power until his last day (add. Bb; p. 53018-5318).
The fight between Pinabel and Tierri is omitted in the saga, and there
are few verbal parallels between Kms and the French versions.
In O the emperor summons his men to a meeting:
3698: Cume il est en sun paleis hal?ur,
Par ses messages mandet ses jugeors,
3700: Baivers e Saisnes, Loherencs e Frisuns;
Alemans mandet, si mandet Borguignuns
3703: De cels de France des plus saives qui sunt.
Des ore cumencet le plait de Guenelun.
Cp. Kms:
---bå lét hann skera upp beror um 611 sin lond ok riki, ok lét saman stefna ollum
hofSingjum i sinu riki, ok hverjum manni be>m er vigr var ok våpn måtti bera, \>å
skyldi til hans koma til heilla råSa hvat er gera skyldi (p. 53014-17).
Here the saga may have a free rendering of the O laisse; the heror and the
hverjum manni-------er vigr var ok våpn måtti bera-------sound suspiciously
Norse. But the translator does not usually take such liberties with his
French text. In any case he is not influenced by the Norwegian procedure
in such matters: Ganeion is a handgenginn maår, and a charge of high
treason against such a person would have been tried at a hirSstefna, i.e.
by his equals, not by a general assembly of all men capable of carrying
arms, as in Kms78, and a heror was used to call up men when the country
had been invaded, not to summon the people to an assembly79. Conse-
quently the Norse text cannot have been changed to make it intelligible
to a Norse audience, except in a rather general way.
The following laisses in O, vv. 3705—33, deal with the death of Aude,
an episode which is placed after the punishment of Ganeion in Kms. Then,
78 Cp. HirSskrd §§ 20 and 40, in Norges gamle Love II, pp. 407-08, 435-36.
” Cp. the Law of Gulabing § 312. At all other times when an arrow is sent
round to summon people, it is referred to simply as an gr, vide the references under
the article or in Hertzberg’s Glossarium, in Norges gamle Love V.
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