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by wavefunction 4320 days ago
It's just an awkward/antiquated phrasing. "Stay" isn't used much anymore except for "stay of execution."
1 comments

Also, "stay one's hand". Still rare and a bit antiquated, but occurs more frequently than "stay" in this sense more generally (... is my impression).

For some data: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=stay+my+hand+%...