I am enjoying this so much I have two out of three books so
far, and I studied the comments of the past lessons over the holiday, no need
to apologise, no one should be expected to work over a holiday, and I heard
you had been unwell of a cold, nasty things that they are, I too, for the
whole holiday so I caN certainly sympathise, hope you are better
now
Blessings
Patricia (Who is only missing the Glossary now and way to
go)
Subject: Re: [norse_course] Auðun part
7/ feedback Patricia
Hi Patricia and a happy new year to you!
Plus loads of apologies for taking sooooo long to get back
to you. I promise I will get back into the swing of things properly
again now.
Anyway, if you can still remember back that far, perhaps I
can help unravel some of the knots in this section...
Auðun kvesk ekki til hafa fyrir at gefa
Auðun (declared) he had nothing in hand to
give
This is correct without the "in hand". Hafa is to
have. Audun says himself not there/existing to have to give
- is a very literal translation. Kveðja+sk. This -sk form can
have either passive, reciprocal or reflexive meaning. You're right,
"declares" is a good English translation.
OK. This next bit is tricky...
at þetta kvæmisk til leiðar
Here Audun is expressing a wish and he is therefore using
the subjunctive (one of the few - maybe only - true form of that which
we still have in English is "if I were you") but Old Norse has the full set
of subjunctives!!! So this kvæmisk is the
past subjunctive of koma+sk (reciprocal/reflexive/passive ending). And
til leiðar is literally the preposition til which
governs the genitive and the noun leið meaning way, road, path,
course. However, that doesn't really help you a whole lot because the
whole thing put together is an expression meaning "to bring about"!!!
Don't you just love languages :-)
at ek mætta dýrit fra
Konungi
This is still using the subjunctive, expressing his (as
yet) unfulfilled desire of bring his bear before the king. So mætta
is another subjunctive, infinitive mega. dýrit the animal. fra to bring, send or present.
Ek mun fá þér vistir. sem it
þurfuð
Your translation of this was correct, except "it"
is the dual form of the 2nd person plural - you.
This next bit was virtually correct...
en þar i móti vil ek eiga hálft
dýrit
but there in return want I to own half
animal-the
You had a query about this bit -
ok máttu á þat lita
and may you at it look
You had the rest of the sentence ok.
This little bit wasn´t quite right, but the rest was
-
en fé sé farit
but money is gone. Here sé is the present
subjunctive of vera, so to give that impression of possibility we have to
use an auxiliary verb - such as "the money may be gone"
You´ve done really well with this. I hope you´ve got
your books now and I´m sure yu will find the next bit easier
:-)
Áki lézk selja mundu honum vistir, ef hann
vildi. Auðun kvezk ekki til hafa fyrir at gefa; "en ek vilda
þó", segir hann "at þetta kvæmisk til leiðar at ek mætta dýrit foera
konungi." "Ek mun fá þér vistir, sem it þurfuð, til konungs
fundar; en þar í móti vil ek eiga hálft dýrit. Ok máttu á þat
líta, at dýrit mun deyja fyrir þér, þars it þurfuð vistir miklar, en
fé sé farit, ok er búit við at þú hafir þá ekki
dýrsins."