- ↑ 2217. Zupitza: “fah originally fac, but h written over c.” Heyne 5 ‘fācne’; Wülcker ‘fāhne.’
- ↑ 2218. Zupitza: “The traces left between þ and slæpende I think justify us in reading þeah ðe he.”" The letters within square brackets here and in ll. 2225, 2227, 2228, 2230, he omits, however, in his transliteration, although suggesting them in foot-notes. “syre—I do not see any trace of the first letter having ever been f.”—Z.
- ↑ 2219. Zupitza puts nine colons between ðiod and folc, but it is impossible to say how they are to be divided between this and the next line.
- ↑ 2220. “n in bolgen faded.”—Z.
Grein’s reconstruction of ll. 2214 ff. is as follows:
Þær on innan giong
2215niða nat-hwylc, se neodu gefeng
hæðnum horde: hond-bollan hwylcne
since fahne he þær syððan genam
readan goldes, þæt bereafod wearð
slæpende be fyre sinces hyrde
(2220)þeofes cræfte þæt siððan þeoden onfand,
2220bealu-leas folc-biorn, þæt he gebolgen wæs.This may be compared with the text. In some respects it is preferable to Bugge’s more recent reconstruction, which I append:
peated in two following lines, Zupitza puts forty dots between sceapen and sceapen, and this is certainly below rather than above the number of missing letters, for the first sceapen comes at the beginning (all but a space for four letters) of the last line of fol. 179a in the MS., and the second sceapen closes the first line of fol. 179b (cf. ll. 2295–7, where sāre and ūtan- stand in exactly the same relative positions in two following folios). Hence the arrangement of ll. 2228—30 in the text, which makes my line-numbers again correspond with those of Grein. In this rearrangement I have been anticipated by Bugge (see below), although I arrived at the same conclusion quite independently.
Innumerable emendations of this passage have been suggested (see Wülcker), of which I give only a very few. I have punctuated only where the connected sense is tolerably certain.
