Editiones Arnamagnæanæ. Series B - 01.10.1968, Page 24
XXII
himself added a certain amount of new material.
This version has been called the Latin Leg., a designa-
tion which is not particularly appropriate but which
has been kept here for practical reasons. The develop-
ment of Leg., the form taken by it in the Latin Leg.,
and its further development in the vernaculars have
been described by Wilhelm Meyer in Die Geschichte
des Kreuzholzes vor Christus in AdBA XVI: 2, 1882,
pp. 103-66. He prints a text of the Latin Leg.,
together with variant readings (pp. 131-49), and a
number of Leg. versions at an earlier stage of develop-
ment1. It was Meyer’s aim to show the continuous
development of Leg. down to the Latin Leg. and
a summary of this section of his work supplemented
with references to later investigations is given below.
Here, however, attention will be concentrated first
and foremost on some early Leg. versions which
contain features that are not found in the Latin Leg.
but which reappear in some of the Icelandic versions.
Texts of the Latin Leg. have also been edited by:
1. Hermann Suchier in Denkmáler provenzalischer
Literatur und Sprache I, 1883, pp. 165-200, from a
13th century MS, British Museum Royal 8 E 17,
with selected variants from other MSS. This text
(referred to as L) has been reprinted in the present
edition pp. 59-84 but the variants have been omitted
since they have no significance for the Icelandic
versions.
2. C. Horstmann in Archiv fiir das Studium der
neueren Sprachen und Literaturen LXXIX, 1887,
pp. 465-70, from MS Queen’s Coll. Oxford 213
(15th century).
3. A. Mussafia in Sulla leggenda del legno della
]. Meyer’s account of the stages of development of Leg. is sum-
marised by G. Schirmer: Die Kreuzeslegenden im Leabhar Breac,
1886, pp. 56-57, and by P. Rohde in Denkmáler provenzalischer
Literatur und Sprache I, 1883, p. 621 f.