Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1959, Page 279
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had been added there the V4 remanieeur would have had a clue to the
explanation of O v. 1563. The innovation here seems to belong to the
version rimée, and if the source of Kms had the addition-----------ok binda
gullspora etc. this must be an independent attempt, by a French scribe, to
explain the peculiar v. 1563. The Kms translation is scarcely quite correct
at this point; k, like T and L, probably had an allusion to the adoubement
(a fairly obvious inference, if celoi levat was understood to mean il avait
armé chevalier le roi Marsile, Bédier’s tentative translation), but the
translator was not familiar with this ceremony, and consequently he
thought the fastening of the spurs was one of Valdebrun’s official duties.
5. The last example leads to the next group, verses in which Kms
agrees with the version rimée against O and V4. If the stemma proposed
in chapter 5 is correct, any similarities of this kind must be accidental: it
is inconceivable that one MS of the later French version should agree
with O, another with Kms. Theoretically one of the MSS may have been
influenced by one of the older versions at a later date, but to prove a
theory of this kind we should need a number of convincing readings in
parts of the poem where the saga agreed with V4 and the other MSS of
the version rimée. If we find variants in the saga and the version rimée
which must go back to a common source, and the corresponding readings
in O and V4 must also have come from an older version of the poem, then
the theory of a composite version becomes untenable.
There are only four cases where the saga appears to agree with the
version rimée against OV4. The first is in the translation of v. 342, where
O and V4 (v. 266) say that Ganeion goes to his ostel, while C 512 = V7
has the word tref instead. Kms translates:
Nv er at segia fra Guinelun jarli at hann fér til landtiallda sina (p. 55736).
The change from ostel to tref is due to the rhyming of the verse, and it
would be dangerous to press the text of the saga here: the correct render-
ing of ostel would be herbergi, but the lodgings of an army in a foreign
country would obviously in most cases be tents, and the translator may
easily have substituted one technical term for another.
O v. 536:
Meilz voelt murir que guerpir sun barnet,
cp. V4 445: Meio vol morir chel gerpisca so berner,
but C 823: Meus voi morir q’estre de lui sevrez.
is thus translated in the saga: