Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.2005, Síða 429
Bevussrimur and Bevusar tættir
419
Bevus (ungur svein) har {om.) sum Sabus stod (hat)
Sabus hann (og sveinn) av (frå) jorini reisa lod
Since the character ‘whose name was Såbus’ is certainly not ‘a young
lad’, the verb hat in A must be secondary and the first line have ended as
it does in B. Perhaps the couplet originally went something like this
(with the regular s-alliteration that is lost in B but still present in A):
*Sveinur lå har sum Såbus sto5,
av jørbini Såbus hann reisa lot.
Another secondary reading of A against B is st. 5,2 veit (B: vil). The
Sandoy text preserves the correct sense, ‘she (his wife) wishes the earl
dead’. Again, at st. 43,3 B helps us discem the second question origi-
nally put by Såbus to his foster-son: ‘why do you come running from
your mother?’ The saga says that the boy ran home as fast as he could
from the banqueting hall,55 but this detail has been obscured in the
process of versification: the verb sm'dur (so A, st. 43,1; corrupted to
ridur in B!) has been selected to rhyme with blidur (so A and B, st.
43,2). It seems that unclarity had already arisen in the hyparchetype of
A and B as to who the speaker was in this stanza, for meistari(n) in the
second line is the word with which the saga characterises the hero’s re-
lationship to his foster-father. It must be an error for fostri, perhaps un-
known to some speakers of Faroese in its meaning of ‘foster-son’ as op-
posed to ‘foster-father’. While B has a reminiscence of the original
wording in the variant fostur god at st. 43,4, A in the previous line has
completed the process of distortion by confusing le yp neut. (cf. Ice-
landic hlaup) with leypur mase. ‘basket’.56
The opposite relationship between the versions of the poem - i.e. the
priority of A over the younger B - is also frequently to be seen:
(8) Where A, st. 5,1 has Rotta, loyally reproducing (though misusing)
the Icelandic poetic word hrotti ‘sword’, B has the corruption Rottur.
55 Cf. Bevers saga MS y ch. 4,60-62 Be(uiss) hleypur nu helm til hvsafostra synz. sem
Sab(ot) sa hann spurdi Itann f>ui hann hefde so akafliga hlaupid.
56 For additional examples of the priority of B over Asee the variants to st. 6,2,12,4, 15,3
(16,3), 27,1 (preserving alliteration).