The Old Norse Poetic Translations of Thomas Percy: A New Edition and Commentary by Margaret Clunies Ross (review)

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MLRy 99.1, 2004 267 As always with multi-authored volumes, it is intriguing to note the similarities and differences among the contributors. For instance, in the case of Hegel, both Saul and Walker concentrate on the lectures on aesthetics; whereas, in the case of Nietzsche (al? ways much harder forcritics to place), Walker concludes that Die Geburtder Tragodie 'propounds an idea of aesthetic autonomy far more radical than the German idealist tradition envisaged' (p. 136), only for Robertson to describe the text as 'this powerful but fanciful work' (p. 159). Overall, however, a coherent account of the importance of philosophy for German-speaking countries emerges from these six chronologically arranged chapters. Although the story this book tells of the relationship between philosophy and literature is hardly new, it tells it clearly. So for anyone embarking on a course of study of modern German thought or who is looking for a point of orientation, it can be recommended, not least because it has few competitors. University of Glasgow Paul Bishop The Old Norse Poetic Translations of Thomas Percy: A New Edition and Commentary. By Margaret Clunies Ross. (Making the Middle Ages, 4) Turnhout: Brepols. 2001. xiii + 290pp. ?55. ISBN 2-503-51077-9 (hbk). Margaret Clunies Ross pursues her recent interest in Medidvismus in this highly accessible version ofthe translations made from Old Norse by Bishop Thomas Percy. These include the Five Pieces ofRunic Poetry published in 1763 and Percy's previously unpublished draft translations of certain fragments of skaldic verse, including verses from Vellekla, one of the most difficultof all skaldic poems, and his version of parts of the Battle of Brunanburh. Clunies Ross offers an admirably lucid introduction to the characteristics of skaldic verse, including the nature of the kenning system. This is strictly an edition rather than an account of the intellectual background to Percy's translations, for which the reader is referred to the editor's The Norse Muse in Britain (Trieste: Edizioni Parnaso, 1998). Here she gives an account of Percy as translator, undertaking his translations from the Norse in response to Macpherson's success with Ossian. Publishing the original texts ofthe fivetranslations at the end of the volume was intended as 'a riposte and counterweight' (p. 9) to Macpherson, the fraudulent nature of whose work Percy suspected. Percy's sources were the most important seventeenth-century collections of Norse poetry, a corpus of reasonably accurate Old Norse usually provided with facing Latin translations. Clunies Ross shows a strong sympathy with Percy as a translator working for a reading public not necessarily ready for the material he puts before them. Thus he uses circumlocutions for Valhalla, 'palace of the gods', and valkyries, 'beautiful nymphs of war', both of which he would employ confidently in his 1770 Northern A ntiquities?clearly these concepts were not yet widely under stood. Percy was blessed with a near neighbour in Northamptonshire, Edward Lye, who was the most able scholar of his day in comparative Germanic languages, on whose comments he relies greatly, though by no means slavishly. Clunies Ross suggests that although Percy's original publisher, Shenstone, was dead by the time Five Pieces was published, he had been successful in dissuading the bishop from publishing furtherwork. Skaldic (as opposed to eddic) verse was simply too difficultfor late eighteenth-century tastes, offeringacute problems of syntax as well as the complexities ofthe kenning system. The facsimile text includes some often splendidly misleading notes which Clunies Ross both corrects and tries to account for. The failure to recognize the negative particle -at, forexample, means the poet is made to assert that fightingis, rather than is not, like kissing a young widow. Percy is responsible forthe widespread eighteenthcentury belief that Vikings drank from the skulls of their enemies, taken froma note in 268 Reviews his source which failed to understand that 'curved trees of skulls' referredto drinking horns. The published pieces mostly have some connection with England; the action of the 'Dying Ode of Regner Lodbrog' and 'Ransome of Egill the Scald' takes place in England, while 'The Complaint of Harold' is that of Haraldr Sigurdarson, who died at Stamford Bridge. Hakon (commemorated in the 'Funeral Song of Hacon') was brought up...