Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1960, Page 74

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and C 11-12, D 25-6; the verb ‘sercSa’ has been replaced by more
innocent words.
1. 21: ‘streSr hann kyr ok kålfa / ok k......... (?) sjålfa’ = A 15-16,
B 13-14, D 27—8. The obscene verb has again been eliminated.
1. 22: ‘J)at Jjikkir honum somi / at serSa påfann at Romi’ = two lines
which are known only from 0 lafur DaviSsson; ‘serSa’ has been
replaced by ‘svæfa’.
These resemblances are so unmistakable that tbere is no doubt
that the pula preserves relics of Grettisfærsla. But the beginning of
Grettisfærsla, on page 52 recto, about a quarter of the whole poem,
is now completely illegible except for the first few words: ‘Karl
nam at bua’. The question now arises whether this ‘karl’ in Grettis-
færsla may not be the same as the ‘karl’ referred to in texts A and
C of the pula (= ‘bondi’ D), and whether this beginning of the
pula may not preserve something of that part of Grettisfærsla which
is illegible in the vellum.
III
As we have said, Grettisfærsla is preserved only in AM 556 a,
4to. It is impossible to say whether the poem was ever written down
anywhere else, as there are copies of it neither from this nor from
any other manuscript. Nor is it possible to say for certain whether
the writer of the poem in AM 556 a, 4to followed a written or an
oral source. If our guess about festum (52 v, 1. 9; see p. 58 above)
is correct, then his source was probably a written one: an original
Y gestum’ may have been partly effaced, in such a way that the g
and the sign over the / were overlooked. But this is of little im-
portance. We must take the date of AM 556 a, 4to as the terminus
ante guem. In the Katalog over den Arnamagnæanske håndskrift-
samling (Copenhagen, 1889) the manuscript is said to be from the
15th century. Grettisfærsla is thus not later than the 15th century.
It seems safe to assume that the Grettisfærsla mentioned in chap-
ter fifty-two of Grettis saga is the poem with which we are now
dealing. Admittedly, there is nothing in the poem which recalls the
detailed conversation of the farmers as it is described in the saga,
a point to which I will return presently. But when the saga speaks
of ‘joking words for the amusement of men’, this agrees so well
with what it has been possible to read that we can hardly doubt