CLAUDIUS CLAVUS 



(" There lives a man (in ?) a Greenland river, 

 and Spieldebedh is his name; 

 he has more vermin (?) 

 than he has fat bacon." etc.) 



The verse, as pointed out by Axel Olrik, is evidently an imi- 

 tation or travesty of the folk-songs, and, as Karl Aubert has 

 shown, ^ its protot3^e must certainly have been the first verse of 

 the same folk-song that is now known in Sweden by the name 

 of "KungSpeleman": 



" Dher bodde een kjempe vid Helsingborg, 

 Kung Speleman mande han beta, 

 Visst hade han mera boda solf, 

 An andra flesket dhet feta. 

 Uren drifver noran, och hafvet sunnan for noran." 

 (" There lived a giant by Helsingborg, 

 King Fiddler -was his name. 

 Sure he had greater store of silver 

 Than others of fat bacon." etc.) 



This method of fabricating geographical names adopted by 

 Clavus recalls the designation of the notes in the mediaeval scale, 

 for which the words of a Latin hymn were used, and it seems 

 likely that this is what he has imitated. But his mystification, 

 with all these strange names which no one in southern Europe 

 understood, and which, in course of time, underwent many cor- 

 ruptions, has caused a good deal of trouble; many intelligent 

 men have racked their brains to discover learned etymological 

 interpretations of their origin, until Bjornbo's lucky find of the 

 later text of Clavus solved the riddle. 



Bjombo and Petersen, who by their valuable work on Clau- 

 dius Clavus with a reproduction of this text have the credit of 

 throwing light on the relation between his first and second maps, 

 have put forward the view that Clavus must have made his 

 first map (the Nancy map) with its Latin text in Italy; but, 

 curiously enough, they think he entirely rejected the Italian 

 compass-charts as unsuitable for the representation of the North, 

 and constructed his delineation of the northern regions inde- 

 pendently of them, as an addition to Ptolemy's coast-lines, 

 1 Danske Studier, 1907, p. 228. 



253 



