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na Louis-Jensen as contradictory of her proposed stemma.54 In the first
of these passages, Spec. Pen. 36, in the phrase ‘<sa> svndurjjycki’, ren-
dering CTVIll.xxxi. 120B, 34: seminatio discordiæ, the infinitive form
så is omitted in AB, and must be supplied by D. As Louis-Jensen point-
ed out, however, this sort of omission could easily have occurred inde-
pendently in each of the manuscripts in question.55 In the third passage
cited by Louis-Jensen, Spec. Pen. 281, where the text of BC reads
‘mannspelF, A and D have ‘malspeH’. As Louis-Jensen noted, the read-
ing in BC is certainly to be preferred to the otherwise unattested Old
Icelandic term målspell ‘corruption of speech’,56 which sits rather ill in
the context, where it can hardly be classified as a deadly consequence
of the sin of drunkenness. In any case, the reading in BC, in the phrase
‘mein eda mannspell’, appears to be closest to the original, since it pro-
vides an appropriate tautological rendering of nocumentum ‘harm’ in
C7Y IILxxvii. 118B, 29. Louis-Jensen is doubtless correct in assuming
that here the reading in AD represents a scribal error, and that at this
point Gottskålk Jonsson corrected his exemplar, as he was sometimes in
the habit of doing.57
The second example of such contrary evidence cited by Louis-Jensen
was regarded as more problematic, and identified as, in faet, the only
basis for assuming that readings in BD might be secondary.58 At Spec.
Pen. 142-144, in the inventory of acts which might be regarded as small
sins, where A reads: ‘sa sem likamanum giorir krasa fullar fæzlur. eda
veizlvr [kos]tnadarmyklar’, B and D read: ‘sa sem fatækum monnum
giorer krasafullar veizlur [og kostnadarsamar (-f D)’. Louis-Jensen
identified BD’s ‘fatækum monnum’ as a common error which could not
have occurred independently, and regarded the A reading ‘likamanum’
as contextually better, since ‘det kan næppe regnes for en synd at
beværte fattigfolk med lækre retter’.59 The doublet ‘fæzlvr eda veizlvr’
in A suggested that the scribe had combined two different readings and
led Louis-Jensen to see in the A reading ‘fæzlvr’ the source of a corrup-
541 bid., p. 202.
55 Ibid.
56 Ibid. Louis-Jensen points out, however, that with this term one might compare Modem
Icelandic mdlspjoll.
57 Ibid, p. 203 and n. 4.
58 Ibid., p. 203.
59 Ibid., p. 202.