722. MS. defective at edge . Zupitza's transliteration of the facsimile of the MS. has ' [ gehr ] an . ' There is room for two letters before hrān , but there is no evidence for ge - . On the contrary , whilst hrinān usually governs the dat . , gehrinān more commonly takes the accus . ( pace Grein ) .

723. MS. faded at edge . Kemble , Grein-Wülcker , and Heyne ' [ hē ] ābolgen . ' Zupitza says : " Now bolgen is still distinct , and before it I think I see traces of two letters of which the first seems to have been g ; but what preceded this is entirely faded . "

752. Many editors normalise to ' scēata . ' See Sievers § 230.

762. MS. defective at corner . Ettmüller , Wülcker , Heyne ' þǣr . ' Zupitza's transliteration ' hwǣr , ' as if there were no doubt as to the reading , but his foot-note runs : " hwǣr ( hw with another ink , and crossed out in pencil ) B , ... ǣr A ; now only the lower part of r left . " Cf. l. 797.

765. MS. ' þæt he wæs . ' Grein suggested the accepted emendation — the omission of hē .

780. MS. ' hetlic ' ; Grundtvig ' betlīc . ' Cf. l. 1925.

788. Zupitza and others ' helle-hæfton , ' but nothing is gained by making them a compound . For - an of the weak declension , - on is not uncommon .

Almost all editors insert ' tō ' before ' fæste . '

811. Kemble first inserted ' wæs ' after ' hē . ' Heyne has : ' ( he wæs fāg wið god ) , ' which appears to me a distinct enfeeblement of the MS. reading . Fāg comes at the beginning of a line in the MS. , and Heyne says it cannot be settled whether of not wæs stood before it . This is very misleading . " There was no room for wæs before fag " ( Zupitza ) , as a glance at the facsimile suffices to show .

836. MS. defective at edge . Cf. l. 926

849. MS. ' hat on heolfre , ' and so Wülcker . Grein ' hātan ' = hāton in the text . The reading in the text is much easier than that of the MS. , and l. 1423 turns the probability in its favour .

870-1 . Rieger and Bugge put ' word ... gebunden ' in a parenthesis

875. MS. ' Sigemunde . ' Grein's emendation ' Sigemundes ' is good in itself , and is more probably in that the next word begins with s .

880. Heyne normalises to ' swylces . '

895. Many editors normalise to ' gehlōd . ' Sievers § 392 , N. 3.

897. Earle adopts Scherer's emendation ' hāt [ e ] , ' with heat .

900. Cosijn's emendation ' āron ðāh , ' with honours throve , is adopted by Heyne and by Earle . For āron = ārun cf. scypon l. 1154 , and hēafdon l. 1242 , and for the phrase cf. weorð-myndum þāh l. 8. Nevertheless I cannot bring myself to abandon the clear reading of the MS. , which makes at least as good sense as many another passage .

902. MS. ' earfoð , ' retained by Wülcker ; cf. l. 534. On the other hand , see ll . 602 , 2349.

906. ' æþellingum . '

911. There appears to be no sufficient reason for making a compound , fæder-æþelum , here , as the editors do . Cf. ll . 21 , 1479.

915. Some editors mark the close of this episode by a space between this line and the next . There is nothing more than a dot in the MS. , not a fresh line , nor even a capital to hwīlum .

945. Heyne ' eald-metod . ' See note on l. 1776.

949. MS. ' ǣnigre . '

954. Kemble's emendation . No gap in MS.

963. MS. ' him . '

965. MS. ' hand gripe . ' Kemble's emendation is required for the sake of the alliteration .

976. MS. ' mid gripe ' ; Thorpe ' nið-gripe ' ; Bugge ' nȳd-gripe . '

984-5 . Suggestions too numerous to mention have been made for the emendation of these lines . Heyne adopts a fresh one with each new edition . Sievers considers the second half of l. 984 metrically deficient , and proposes :

fēondes fingras , ⁠ foran ǣghwylc wæs

stiðra nægla stȳle gelīcost .

986. MS. ' hilde hilde rinces , ' the first hilde being the last word on the page , the second the first word overleaf . In such cases italics in the text seem needless . For hand-sporu see Sievers § 279.

1000. MS. ' þe . '

1002-5 . These lines , as given in Holder's edition , show the principal emendations that have been suggested :

Nō þæt ȳðe byð

tō beflēonne ( fremme sē þe wille ! ) ,

ac ges ē can sceal ⁠ sāwl-berendra [ gehwā ] ,

nȳde genȳd ed ⁠ niþða bearna .

1013. Thorkelin A ' blæd agande , ' B ' blædagande . ' The MS. now has only blæd left , and de on the next line .

1014-5 . Bugge proposed to put these two lines in parentheses , because of " the difficulty of finding an antecedent for þāra . " Heyne ( 5th edition ) and Earle adopt the suggestion . This can only be on the principle — of two difficulties choose the greater . What a master of parenthesis-style the " scop " must have been , to keep his hearers waiting for the subject of bugon , past two other finite verbs with a different subject , until four lines lower down ! And what is to hinder the antecedent of þāra being implied in ⁠ blǣd-āgende , in speaking of a court where everyone was doubtless related to everyone else , as in a Scotch clan ?

1020. MS. ' brand . '

1026. MS. ' scotenum ' ; Grein 2 ' scoterum ' ; Wülcker ' scēotendum , ' for which cf. ll . 703 , 1154. Heyne quotes oxenum , nefenum , as examples of weak dat . pls .

1030-1 . The MS. has ' heafod beorge wirum be wunden walan utan heold . ' Ettmüller ' wala , ' adopted by Grein . If we leave the MS. reading unaltered , there is a choice of difficulties . Either we must take walan as subject and hēafod-beorge as object , with a striking violation of grammatical concorn in the verb hēold ; or we must ( with Heyne and Socin ) take hēafod-beorge as a weak fem . noun in the nom . and walan as object , with considerable loss to the sense . The nom . pl. scūr-beorge ( " Ruin " 5 ) also tells against the latter view , which has no support from analogy .

1032. Thorkelin ' laf ' ( now gone in the MS. ) . On account of this reading , Bugge ( " Beiträge " xii . 92 ) supports Thorpe's emendation meahte , confirming it by the form scūr-heard in the next line , and by a reference to Sievers : " der erste halbvers ist nach den untersuchungen Sievers ' ( " Beiträge " x . 455 ) metrisch unrichtig . " It is a curious commentary on this last reason , that Sievers himself quotes the line , with the form lāfe , among the examples of his type A ( " Beit . " x . 273 ) .