SAGA-BOOK - Viking Society Web Publications

288 Saga-Book of the Viking Society
There is, perhaps, little need to comment on such opinion
when a reader of the whole poem sees that Fidelity was
also hidden in a rock, locked within a thick wall, sent to
a foreign country and even creeps into hiding and gets as
foul as steaming dung.>? All of these, of course, must be
metaphorical pictures to express the rejection of Fidelity
and it is unreasonable to ascribe precise reference to one
statement and not to the others. There have been other
candidates for the murder," and this too emphasises the
imprecision of the poetic comments.
But lest literary historians feel superior we may recall
that similar comments have been made on Chaucer's Lak
of Stedfastnesse. A. W. Pollard took the line "Pite exiled
no man is merciable" to refer to the Merciless Parliament
of 1388, and G. H. Cowling thought it was a reference to
Richard's banishment of Mowbray.P
We return however to Trohetsoisan and Hildeman's
argument that the Swedish poem may not have been
written by Bishop Thomas. In writing his book of 195823
he had checked Sjodin's remarks on the scribal hand of
B 42 and as a result of comparison of this hand with that
of a book in Strangnas Diocesan Library which in places
was written by Birger Hammar, he suggested that the
two manuscripts were written by different men. This
now would mean that the attribution of Frihetsoisan and
Trohetsoisan to Bishop Thomas rests on an anonymous
manuscript tradition of some thirty years-" after the
bishop's death. As Hildeman says,25 the manuscript
20 Hildeman, loco cit., points out that this verse should be taken with the
preceding one where Fidelity "has set sail on the wild sea", a phrase which does
not suggest an association with Lake Hjalmaren.
21 Erik Puke and Archbishop Olof have also been named. See Hildeman,
op, cit., 124-25.
"As noted by H. Braddy, 'The Date of Chaucer's Lak of Siedfastnesse',
JEGP XXXVI (1937),488 note 23. There appears to be some inconsistency
between Braddy's correct comment on "conventional personifications" to
oppose Pollard and Cowling and his reliance on indistinct echoes of various
poems of Deschamps to prove his main thesis that Chaucer was influenced by
the French poet.
23 Hildernan, op, cit" 12I.
,. :\[S. B 42 Royal Library Stockholm is dated to the 147os; Hildeman,
op, cit., 121, 122.
"ibid., 122.