> The only other piece of Old Gutnish verse that I know about is the

lines of conventional fornyrðislag in the Guta lagh, as quoted in
Gordon's notes to the reading selection from Guta saga:

> Blót iru man(n)um
> miec firibuþin
> oc fyrnsca all
> þann sum haiþnu fylgir.
> Engin má haita á
> huatki á
> hult eþa hauga
> eþa haiþin guþ.

> "Sacrificial feasts are strongly forbidden to men, and all the old
> ways that go with heathendom. None may pray to holts or howes or
> heathen gods."

Fornyrðislag, showing that Goths, like ON, would have inherited the
meter. Old laws, being originally oral, often employ alliteration,
etc., quoting verse on occasion. There is a musical quality to old
laws, while not always technically poetry. I have looked into the
verse above, and the echoing comments about belief in 'hult ok hauga
ok haiþin guþ, ví ok stafgarþa' in Guta Saga, coming eventually to
the conclusion that the first 4 lines are a Christian rewrite of an
older heathen half-verse about the importance of blót for men. It
may, or may not, have been quoted in the legal section decribing
when the principal Gutlandic blót's were to be held. 'engin má haita
á huátki á' is likely newer, reflecting a ban by Christians on the
traditional Gutlandic religion. A modern Gutlander, disagreeing with
the law and wishing to ban all imported religion in favour of the
traditional one, might use 'engin má haita á huatki á' and follow
with an alliterative list in the accusative containing 'mikiál máríu
moyse muhammet' or just '(h)ebrisk guþ', etc. The old alliterative
formula mentioned here goes, I think, back to:

wîr skulum haita
â hult ok â hauga
ok â haiþin guþ

â wî ok stafgarþa...

Compare the verse form to the earlier 3-line verses you quoted from
Guta Saga. Guta Lagh also opens with a Christian rewrite of an old
heathen law, echoed throughout in other old Scandinavian laws:

vér skulum goþ blóta
ok þess biþia
at þau unni oss
árs ok friþar
sigrs ok heilsu
ok at vér haldim
landi óru byggþu
ok lánardróttni órum heilum

This is my reconstruction of a single line of ON/OG/etc. law from
the heathen religion, of what I think that its most conservative
form looked like. Readers can see the opening of Guta Lagh for them
selves. What I have done here is replace 'ok at vîr magim halda (a
possible variant) kristindômi ôrum ok trô várri réttri ok landi ôru
byggþu' with 'landi óru byggþu ok lánardróttni órum heilum', which I
took from the Christian rewrite of Gulaþingslög (as I think it more
original on this point, compare alliteration also) together with the
form 'haldim' instead of 'magim halda' (WN megim halda), which is
just a minor stylistic point. Lánardróttin is an archaic, frozen
compound, unformable in ON due to change in the declension of the
word 'lán'. In modern terms, the phrase reflects the heathen concept
of fidelity to owns employer, firm support for the leader of the
organization putting food on the table. Another permissable variant
from West Norse sources is 'gefi' instead of 'unni', in which case
the following phrase is steered by accusative instead of genitive.
But in Gutlandic the verb 'unna' steers accusative, in ON genitive -
about this, see the opening of the Guta Lagh (Christianized form).
Anyway, I hope someone enjoys seeing a more original version of the
law than the later, modified versions now extant. I spent a lot of
time examining the sources and making detailed comparisons, studies
etc. to be able to write the single line above as I do. I consider
that this law is aboriginal and very ancient, certainly translatable
in some form into Gothic as well, especially as it is primarily
based of the later Gutlandic form. Of course, more legal material
would have followed this short section, describing the times of
blót, etc., which is where phrases like 'hult ok haugar' or 'vî ok
stafgarþar' would likely have occured in aboriginal Gutlandic law.

> Finally, I wonder if it's a coincidence that the one piece of

Gothic poetry from the Crimea to have been recorded, as far we know,
also consists of three lines (though again, who knows whether this
is a complete stanza?), but it's even harder to work out the metre
here, due to lack of information about the language and the probably
to some extent garbled nature of the text. There may be end-rhyme
linking the first two lines. There may be alliteration, but whether
structural or fortuitous is probably impossible to say, unless more
examples come to
light.

> Wara wara ingdolou
> Seu (=scu?) te gira Galtzou
> Hoemisclep dorbiza ea.

About the 3-liners, see my above rendering (vîr skulum haita). I do
not think that any other examples are attested in Gutlandic than the
ones you quote, but I can continue 'vî ok stafgarþr' above with long
lists of alliterative inherited pairs/triplets, etc. from the Norse
heathen religion, relating to things/places considered sacred, which
is how this section would have looked, I think. But the Gutlandic
sources stop with the above. There must have been some variation,
as 'vé ok vangar' is more standard in West Norse, for instance. But
I suspect that such a 3-line verse form would have had variants with
an extra line here and there, or a 2-liner here and there, etc., as
is the case with fornyrðislag, etc. The reason would seem to lie in
the nature of oral tradition. Anyway, I'll stop here. Your questions
require more detailed answers. Perhps others will respond to some of
the points which I have not.

-K