SAGA-BOOK - Viking Society Web Publications

328 Saga-Book of the Viking Society
themselves by a comparatively low frequency of mala and
a correspondingly high one of segja and svara. It should
be remarked that the diverging proportions in Mik have
a special cause: 9 out of 14 instances of mcela appear in a
section copied more or less verbatim from a version of
Duggals leizla, another piece found in Heilagra manna
sogur (HMS).12 Dunst corresponds excellently to the
specific distribution in the "Bergr-texts":
mala segja svara
Dunst 0 (0) 79 (II) 21 (3)
Nik
Mik
T6mas 4'2 (8) 57 (IIO) 38 (74)
Guam 0·8 (2) 47 (121) 51 (132)
Still more significant, though, is the occurrence of the
introductory verb tala, on the whole very rare in saga
literature. We meet it 3 times in Dunst:
[heyrdiJ hann sa-Ian Anndreazt po stoIa ma-la med blidu
anndlite. pessi *gudspiallzt ord. til sin talannde. Tollite iugum
meum super uos (p. 14)
:Paa taladi fyr nefrrt eingla fylki cherubin ok sera(phin) uid
sselan Dun(stanum). at uisu skaltu buinn uera (p. 21)
(Dunstanus) suo talandi uid urn standandi menno Nu siae
pier ener kzerustu bnedr ok syner huert ek em kalladr (p. 23).
These 3 cases make 17'5 per cent of the whole group
mcelafsegjafsvaraftala. A similar frequency of tala is a
striking characteristic of the "Bergr-texts", as the
following figures indicate:
Dunst 17'5 per cent (3 out of 17)
Nik
Mik
T6mas
Guam
15'5 per cent (15 out of 96)
16 per cent (7 out of 44)
23 per cent (58 out of 250)
21 per cent (69 out of 324)
12 Cf. my paper 'Broder Robert, Tristrams saga oeh Duggals leizla', Arkiv
fOr nordiskfilologi LXXXVIII (r973), 55-7r, esp. 66.