Editiones Arnamagnæanæ. Series B - 01.10.1965, Blaðsíða 49

XLVII
sagas including the Arthurian ívents saga, Parcevals saga,
Valvers þáttr, Erex saga, and Mqttuls saga. There is a
notice about the contents on the title page which con-
cludes with the following. “Kostgiæfelega saman hendtur
yfersenn og endurbættur af ehrurijkum og ættgðfugum
hðfdings manne Magnuse Joonssyne ad Wigur, þeim til
frödleiks og skiemmtunar, er þessháttar fornar frasaugur
heira vilia. Enn af hanz forlage skrifadur af Joone
Þördarsyne Anno MDCXCVI”. The Erex appears on
leaves 66r—77v (a consecutive numbering of pages, 129-
146, has been crossed out). See also Jón Þorkelsson,
“Islandske hándskrifter i England og Skotland”, ANF,
VIII :199-237, esp. pp. 202-03.
4859 is a copy of A, and, as such, a comparatively
careful one. It is probably the best of the copies. It is
also the original for 3127 and to demonstrate this I shall
give a somewhat fuller account of it than of the others.
The one major omission in 4859 is of interest because
it shows that the copyist must have been using A itself
with the line divisions as they are. 4859 omits entirely
geingur—kurteisliga (19:4-6), where in A kurteisliga1 ends
a line and kurteisliga2 begins one. In spite of the omission,
no break in either grammatical construction or sense
results, so that theie was nothing to warn the copyist
of his oversight. There are, however, ten places where
potential errors were noticed and corrected by the copyist,
e.g. 4859 has þola amæle fyrer (þm mst, er þu hefur æ
mier, Erex) mitt hoflyfe—the wrong words are enclosed
in parenthesis in the MS and also have dotted lines above
and below. In ^4 (31:11) amæli fyrer begins the line, and
in Evida’s speech a few lines earlier these same words
begin a line (31:6-7). In this case the copyist slipped
backward and began to repeat part of the text. Another
example of interest occurs where inA a column begins with
hertuge (50:1), but the preceding catchword is riddari;
4859 has riddare crossed out and followed by hertogi.