SAGA-BOOK - Viking Society Web Publications

Trohetsvisan and Chaucer's Lak ofStedfastnesse 291
I. See Uprightness is sluggish,
Worth is buried,
Now liberality becomes niggardly,
Parsimony is lavish.
Falsehood speaks the truth,
Truth lies.
2. Avarice reigns,
The avaricious rule also;
Everyone struggles with worried mind
to become rich, since the height
of glory is to be proud in wealth.
3. All people hurt the law; the lawless proceed to lawless deeds.
and a poem from the twelfth century-" which has the same
subject as Trohetsvisan and which illustrates the rhetorical
play on words found, at times, in such verses:
Once the fact of faith, now its semblance is honoured,
Once faith alone, now fraud also is deceived.
And guile is repelled with a trick of guile,
Guile is in guile and guile is exalted.
Exactly this kind of poetry appeared in Latin within the
Pice Cantiones, a Scandinavian collection printed in 1582
but composed of poems written earlier, as the title
indicates: 'Ecclesiastical and scholastic songs of ancient
bishops used everywhere in the illustrious kingdom of
Swederi'P! The sources of some of these songs can be
traced outside Sweden, often to Bohemia, and we recall
the importance of Prague University to Swedish culture
before the Reformation. Again a few verses are
1. Ecce torpet probitas, 2. Regnat avaritia,
virtus sepelitur; regnant et avari;
fit iam parca largitas, mente quivis anxia
parcitas largitur, nititur ditari,
verum dicit falsitas, cum sit summa gloria
veritas mentitur. censu gloriari.
3. Omnes iura ledunt
et ad res illicitas
licite recedunt.
sa Quoted by Hildeman, op, cit., 131, from Analecta Hymnica, XXI 124:
Olim res fidei, nunc umbra colitur,
Olim sola fides, nunc et fraus fallitur,
Et doli machina dolus repellitur,
In dolo dolus est et dolus tollitur.
a. Quoted by Hildeman, op. cit., 142, "cantiones ecclesiastice et scholasticre
veterum episcoporum, in Inclyto Regno Sueciai passim usurpatse".