Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.2005, Page 426
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Michael Chesnutt
identified as a rima. But changes of metre are connected in the Ice-
landic tradition with the subdivision of a cycle into cantos, of which
there is no trace in any of the versions of Koraids kvædi. The samhent
stanzas in the latter are something like twice as many as the stafhent
stanzas, suggesting that the whole poem was originally in the more
challenging samhent form, and that the stafhent stanzas are due to
change brought about during transmission. On the other hånd, while FK
112 Bevusar tættir is, as the title implies, divided into cantos with a shift
from ferskeytt to stafhent, the stafhent of the second canto is much bet-
ter preserved than the ferskeytt of the first. There the ordinary ballad
stanza pattern (abcb) prevails over cross-rhymed ferskeytt (abab) in no
less than two thirds of the extant stanzas, though the majority of these,
surprisingly enough, still show alliteration to a greater or lesser extent.
It is probably not fortuitous that the intact ferskeytt stanzas cluster to-
gether at the beginning and end of the canto, which would be best re-
membered by oral tradition-bearers.
The Icelandic background of Bevusar tættir has been treated previ-
ously by Mortan Nolsøe and Christopher Sanders.51 The most valuable
aspect of Nolsøe’s contribution is his presentation of a Sandoy version
of the text, supplementing the version from Suøuroy that was noted
down by Hammershaimb and printed by N. Djurhuus in FK. I have pro-
vided a new edition of the poem in an appendix to this article, basing my
text on Hammershaimb’s autograph in AM Accessoria 4c I [2] and re-
producing his orthography, which is normalised in FK. Substantive vari-
ants from Mortan Nolsøe’s text are cited in a second column. The
SuSuroy text is designated A, the Sandoy text B; details about the infor-
mants and about the circumstances of transmission and preservation are
summarised at the head of the appendix and will be more fully analysed
below (pp. 424-26). The A text is emended to the extent justified by com-
parison of the extant versions with each other and with Bevers saga. The
procedure is dissimilar to that inherited by FK from CCF (and Danmarks
51 Mortan Nolsøe, “Ein ‘rimnaflokkur’ i føroyskari tungulist?” Frodskaparrit 24 (1976),
46-70; Christopher Sanders (ed.), Bevers saga, Rit Stofnunar Arna Magnussonar a Islandi
51 (Reykjavlk 2001), introduction cxxxv-cxl. When quoting from the saga below I usual-
ly follow MS y (derivative of C), which would seem best to represent the text from which
the rtmur cycle of Bevus was versified. Cf. Sanders’s introduction, cxxxvii-cxxxviii and
reference there to Gustaf Cederschiold; it may or may not be significant that the C/y
branch of the textual tradition is not witnessed before the third quarter of the fifteenth
century.