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  • The Old Norse Poetic Translations of Thomas Percy
  • Graham Tulloch
Clunies Ross, Margaret , ed., The Old Norse Poetic Translations of Thomas Percy ( Making the Middle Ages 4), Turnhout, Brepols, 2001; hardback; pp. xiii, 290; RRP €55; ISBN 2503510779.

The core of this book is a facsimile reprint of Thomas Percy's Five Pieces of Runic Poetry (1763) with very extensive notes. It also provides editions from the surviving manuscripts of other Percy translations of Old Norse poetry (some never before published, others only previously published in incomplete form) and his two versions of The Battle of Brunanburh, the sole Old English text. What might seem at first glance like a relatively simple task proves, of course, to be one of fascinating complexity. In order to annotate these texts adequately the editor needs to take into account many factors: (1) the editions of the original texts that Percy was using; (2) the glosses (usually in Latin but sometimes in other languages such as Swedish) included in those editions; (3) other translations available to him (such as the French ones of Paul-Henri Mallet); (4) the linguistic choices open to him (for example, words like valkyrie, first tentatively used by Gray in 1768, and berserk, first used by Scott in 1822, had not yet been adopted into English); (5) the differences between the editions (and manuscripts) Percy was using and modern editions; (6) the information that Percy was able to obtain from other British scholars, notably his neighbour Edward Lye (described in the book as 'probably the most able English scholar of his day in the field of comparative Germanic languages' (p. 12)); and (7) the general level of knowledge of Norse mythology and history in eighteenth century Britain. All of this requires a formidable level of scholarship of which Margaret Clunies Ross has full command. She guides the reader expertly through this complex maze so that by the end we can clearly appreciate the strengths and weaknesses of Percy's translations and how they [End Page 206] reflect his and his society's conceptions of Norse values and beliefs and Percy's personal enthusiasm for the material he was translating (which does not seem to have been dampened by the far from enthusiastic response of his friend, the poet Shenstone).

In following his interest in skaldic poetry through to the point of translation Percy faced considerable difficulties. His knowledge and understanding of Old Norse was limited and he relied heavily on Latin glosses provided in editions of the original poems. While, like any scholar of his day, he was fluent in Latin, it was not always a sufficient guide. Kennings were also a problem, as they still often are to modern readers – the editors generally provided a gloss which translated the final referent and not the constituent elements of the kenning. As Clunies Ross notes, this practice on the part of 'those Icelanders who understood the kennings and could translate them fully' is 'likely to have been, at least in part, a response to the distaste of their mainland Scandinavian patrons for over-complex diction, but it effectively robbed the poetry of much of its meaning' (p. 14). Furthermore, while the editions used by Percy were by major scholars, they were not always accurate. In these circumstances the modern editor could easily fall into a carping and querulous tone, merely emphasising the inadequacies of Percy's translations. Clunies Ross avoids this. While pointing out Percy's errors in full and highly interesting detail and attempting wherever possible an explanation of how he fell into them, she adopts a positive tone in her overall assessment, as when she comments that 'Percy's translation of these verses from Haraldskvæði reads well. It has a spirited quality which captures much of the sense of the Old Norse, and it does not waste words' (p. 245). She also demonstrates very clearly how we must understand the context in which Percy worked in order to appreciate his translations and his commentary and, indeed, his reasons for choosing the poems he translated. For instance, his comments on what he calls 'The Complaint of Harold' and probably his decision to translate this particular poem are...

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