Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.2005, Side 431
Bevussrfmur and Bevusar tættir
421
The examples of individual readings in A’s favour could easily be mul-
tiplied.59 As to B, that there was more structural (as opposed to verbal)
tenacity in its tradition than in that of A can be seen from the order of
certain half and whole stanzas:
(14) When Bevus begins in st. 44 to recount his experiences at the ban-
quet, A makes him mention first the swordplay incident, see (10) above,
and then his exchange of words with the emperor, while B in accor-
dance with sts. 32-42 has the opposite order.
(15) In A the mother of Bevus demands that Såbus should surrender her
son (st. 47 in that version); only afterwards does Såbus display the
boy’s clothes soaked in pig’s biood, thus pretending to have killed him
(st. 48). B has the opposite and more logical order of the two stanzas,
which I have therefore adopted in the edition, and continues in st. 49 by
narrating how the boy rushes out of hiding in order to save his foster-
father from punishment.
(16) Whereas B, sts. 48-49 thus provide an exact parallel to the prose of
Bevers saga (MS 7, ch. 4,77-80), version A has a quite different st. 49:
Såbus ger sum *fer5ar [MS: forbil] fus,
hann let hann f sitt rfka hus:
tå nu var liSin ein lftil stund,
hann letur hann filgja å menjargrund.
The second line is an imprecise reflection of some earlier words in the
saga: Nu tok herra Sab(aoth) sveinnin ok lett hann j eitt herbergi leyniliga
(MS B, ch. 4,55-56; 7 has almost the same text but writes leidde for lett).
The first half of the stanza therefore belongs where it stands in A, in
continuation of the pretended killing in st. 47 (A 48). However, the
transposition of sts. 47-48 has misled Hammershaimb’s SuSuroy infor-
mant (or some predecessor) into thinking that Såbus only hid the boy
indoors after being threatened, and the second half of the stanza has
been tacked on to produce a much lamer outcome than that of the saga
narrative as indirectly recalled in B, st. 49. The hyparchetype of A and
B had this order of events:
59 See st. 24,3, 34,3, 38,2, 38,4,41,1 (alliteration and rhyme), 50,2 (rhyme).