SAGA-BOOK - Viking Society Web Publications

Two Renderings of " Waking of A ngantyr" 81
Professorship of Anglo-Saxon in Cambridge, which came
into being in 1878 when W. W. Skeat was elected. The
best account of Stevens, with a reproduction of his
portrait, is in Alec Macdonald's A Short History of Repton
(1929), pp. 127-137.
Stevens's version of "The Waking of Angantyr" is at
pp. 87-99 of his first book ;' Poems, consisting of Indian
Odes and Miscellaneous Pieces. Printed for the Author,
and sold by J. and J. Fletcher, and S. Parker. Sold also
by J. Bew, No. 28, in Paternoster Row. London.
M.DCC.LXXV. 4to, pp. viii-roy. "Hervor and Angantyr,
An Ode imitated from an antient scald" is, it
is claimed, taken from Olaus Verelius's Hervarer Saga,
which is of course Hervarar Saga pd Gammal Gotska, med
Olai Verelii uttolkning och Notis (Upsalee 1672), pp. 91-95.
Verelius's rendering was into early modern Swedish, and
it is far more probable that Stevens was in fact dependent
on the English prose translation provided by George
Hickes (who had used Verelius) in Linguarum Vett.
Septentrionalium Thesaurus, Pars Prima (Oxford 1705),
pp. 193-5, from which the passage corresponding to the
stanzas quoted is printed below. Verelius knew well
enough that the correct nominatives, in his spelling, were
Swafa and Swafurlame, whereas Hickes, followed by
Stevens, was under the impression that the oblique cases
Suafu and Suafurlama were the nominatives of the
personal names we write Svdfa and Svafrlami.
It will be sufficient to quote Stevens's first two stanzas:
HERVOR
AWAKE ! my Father, from the Dead,
From thy dark and dreary Bed
Awake! - It is thy Child that cries,
SVAFU'S Daughter bids thee rise;
Bids thee from thy Tomb of Hell,
1 Stevens's second book, listed in the printed catalogue of the British Museum
Library a" though it were another edition, is a different book altogether.
G