Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1981, Page 85
Chrétien’s lead and employed pronouns to refer to the agents. The read-
ing in the fragment NKS 1794b that corresponds to v. 2468, but is at
variance with the reading in Stockholm 6, illustrates an Icelander’s confu-
sion. Given the absence of clear stage directions, the discrepancies of text
are here understandable.
Numbers are ever prone to corruption as the readings in both vellums
for v. 2459 make clear. Since the two manuscripts agree on the number
“two” - two thousands, two tens (xx. in NKS 1794b could be a scribal
misreading of xx or xxc in the copyist’s exemplar) - it might seem at first
that the incorrect number vis-å-vis the French should be attributed to the
translator. An earlier reference to this same combination of 400 and 1000
prevents us from ascribing the error to the translator, however. The
numbers Quatre cens chevaliers armez/Et mil serjanz toz acesmez (vv.
2431-32) are incorrectly conflated in Stockholm 6 into xv. pusund folks,
but this reading must be a scribal error; in the fragment NKS 1794b the
sum is correct: fiortan hundrad. The change from fiortan to xv. was
presumably caused - suggests Helen Maclean - by the occurrence of -r-
rotunda in fiortan.21 A copyist could have misread the -02- for an -m-, to
yield the number fimtan. It is not implausible that the translator had
correctly transmitted the number in v. 2432.
The preceding comparison permits us to posit two manuscript branches
of Parcevals saga, one represented only by the fragment NKS 1794b, the
other by a slightly defective text, Stockholm 6, from which all the paper
manuscripts derive, directly or indirectly. Both primary manuscripts ex-
hibit traces of corruption and textual attrition vis-å-vis the translator’s
text. The following stemma obtains for Parcevals saga:
Archetype
(before c. 1350)
NKS 1794b 4to Stockholm 6 4to
(c. 1350) (c. 1400)
AM 181a fol. AM 179 fol.
(c. 1650) (17th cent.)
27 Helen S. Maclean, “A Critical Edition, Complete with Introduction, Notes and Select
Glossary of Parcevals saga from the Stockholm Manuscript Codex Holmiensis Pergament
no. 6, quarto” (Unpubl. thesis, The University of Leeds, 1968), p. 77.
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