[Rarebooks] fa: BISHOP PERCY - Five Pieces of RUNIC POETRY - 1763

[Ardwight Chamberlain]

Listed on eBay now, ending Sunday, Feb. 24, with no reserve and a low 
opening bid. It can be found at the URL below, or by searching under 
the seller name arch_in_la.

http://search.ebay.com/_W0QQsassZarch_in_la

[Thomas Percy, Bishop of Dromore:] FIVE PIECES OF RUNIC POETRY 
Translated from the Islandic Language. London: Printed for R. and J. 
Dodsley, in Pall-Mall, 1763. FIRST EDITION. Hardcover 8vo (18.5 x 12cm) 
in modern paper-covered boards with printed spine label; [16] + 99 + 
[1] pp.; engraved title-page vignette of runic characters. NCBEL II, 
242; ESTC T55180.

The first edition of the first significant translation of any 
Icelandic-Eddic literature into English. Included are: The Incantation 
of Hervor, The Dying Ode of Regner Lodbrog, The Ransome of Egill the 
Scald, The Funeral Song of Hacon, and The Complaint of Harold [king of 
Norway]. Also includes a preface and the original Icelandic poems on 
which the translations are based. Thomas Percy (1729-1811), Bishop of 
Dromore, editor, antiquarian, and friend of Samuel Johnson, Thomas 
Warton, and James Boswell, was the first serious English translator of 
Old Norse-Icelandic poetry. "Five Pieces of Runic Poetry was a seminal 
work in the history of reception and understanding of Old Norse poetry 
in Britain and it also has more general significance in our 
understanding of the development of the discipline of Old 
Norse-Icelandic studies" (Margaret Clunies Ross: The Old Norse Poetic 
Translations of Thomas Percy: A New Edition and Commentary, 2001). As 
is often true of pioneering work, Percy's translations and notes were 
not without their faults. He was responsible, for example, for the 
widespread eighteenth-century misconception that Vikings drank from the 
skulls of their enemies, arising from a failure to understand that the 
phrase "curved trees of skulls" referred in fact to drinking horns.

Some mild toning to the leaves, scattered light foxing, otherwise quite 
clean and fresh, no other marks; firmly bound in a clean, sharp modern 
binding with some light wear and sunning to the edges, one bottom 
fore-corner a bit bumped. A handsome copy.

Many thanks,
Ardwight Chamberlain
arch_in_la
L.A., CA, USA