SAGA-BOOK - Viking Society Web Publications

Saga-Book of the Viking Society
translated, the first from a poem 'On the Iniquity of the
Times' :35
I. True love has breathed its last,
Peace on earth has been exiled,
Children rule their father,
Guile has attacked Law,
All the world has changed itself,
A new law prevails.
2. Fraud imprisons Faith,
Tongue tears Fame to pieces,
King overpowers King,
People pour blame on people,
Novelty, Vanity, Iniquity, War and
Hostility have seized all the ways
of the world.
and a few lines from 'On the Evils of the World' :36
r , Now Lying flourishes,
Fellowship of depravity,
They who speak falsely
are valued in the world.
2. Fraud is crowned with gifts,
Worth is trampled under foot,
Piety and Felicity
are as though brutishness.
Such poems as these are clear illustration of Dr
Hildemans general remarks about the genre, but the
allegorical pictures of Trohetsvisan have not yet been
paralleled. To explain this feature however Dr Hildeman
has, I think, created excessive difficulties for himself.
The noun plus verb personifications of the Latin lists are
rhetorical and controlled and probably scholarly, but it
takes little initiative to extend such limited personifica-
35 A nalecta Hymnica, XLVb 162:
1. Verus amor expiravit,
Pax in terris exsulavit,
Patri proles imperat,
Legem dolus impugnavit,
Totus mundus se mutavit,
:\ova lex oxsuperat.
.. ibid., 160:
1. Nunc floret mendacium,
Pravitatis consortium.
In mundo diliguntur,
Qui falsa obloquuntur,
2. Fidem fraus incarcerat,
Farnam lingua lacerat,
Regem rex exsuperat,
Plebern plebs vituperat.
Omnes mundi semitas
Occupavit novitas,
Vanitas, iniquitas,
Guerra vel hostilitas.
z , Fraus donis coronatur,
Virtus suppeditatur,
Pietas et felicitas
Est tamquam bestialitas,