A Comparative Study of Old English Metre 9781442673175

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A comparative stuty of old english metre

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A Comparative Study of Old English Metre

F.H. W H I T M A N

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS Toronto Buffalo London

www.utppublishing.com © University of Toronto Press Incorporated 1993 Toronto Buffalo London Printed in Canada ISBN 0-8020-0540-3

Printed on acid-free paper

Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data Whitman, F.H. A comparative study of Old English metre Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8020-0540-3

1.. English language - Old English, ca. 450-1100 Metrics and rhythmics. 2. Latin language Metrics and rhythmics. 3. German language Metrics and rhythmics. 4. Comparative linguistics. I. Title. II. Series. PE257.W44 1993

829'.1

C93-O93952-2

This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian Federation for the Humanities, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Contents

P R E F A C E / vii

Introduction / 3 1 The Earliest Accentual Verse / 17 2 German Accentual Verse /51 3 Old English: Stressed or Unstressed Initials? / 64 4 Light Lines / 85 5 Clashing Stress / 91 6 Towards a New Paradigm / 98 APPENDIX: Sample Scansions / 131 NOTES / 141 B I B L I O G R A P H Y / 159 I N D E X / 167

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Preface

My desire to undertake this study sprang from two fundamental convictions: first, that despite the very many publications on the subject in the last hundred years, attempts to understand and describe Old English metre have not been on the whole as successful as could be hoped; and second, that this failure stems in part from an inability of past systems to advance the claims of either of the two old, competing paradigms - Sievers's and Heusler's. In saying this, it is not my intention to denigrate the efforts of these two great scholars or to minimize the significance of other more recent endeavours on a large scale, such as those by Bliss and Cable on the one hand and Pope, Creed, and Russom on the other. Far from it. When the matter under consideration is ancient, as Old English verse is, and when virtually no contemporary references or treatises are available to assist in the scansion, one is obliged to take one's guide from sound linguistic principles and when these prove insufficient to fall back on intuition. That is what all these scholars have done in varying degrees, and done most effectively in my opinion. It would be nice, however, if one could achieve a little more. And this, I think, is possible. Usually it is forgotten that accentual alliterative verse is not peculiar to German; that it is also a dominant feature of Old Irish and, most think, Old Latin as well. Here, through comparative analysis, might be found both cause to reject the pure fancy of certain private intuitions and reason to embrace other findings derived empirically from a careful analysis of Old English verse in isolation. Since Italic verse is far

viii

Preface

older than anything in German or Celtic and thus more likely to yield up any primitive metrical patterns that might underlie the three traditions, my attention has focused there. Comparative work with Irish I have left for specialists in that language. I must emphasize from the beginning that I am not attempting to establish influence. Given the deep antiquity of intercourse between the Germanic and Italic peoples, I think it quite likely that the verse native to these peoples did come into contact at various times during the first millennium BC and that the impact of this contact may be witnessed in certain features common to both traditions. Unfortunately, there is no way that I know of to raise this impression to any status beyond conjecture: even under the most favourable conditions influence is notoriously difficult to establish; and the conditions surrounding the survival of Italic and Germanic verse are, to say the least, far from favourable. My claim is therefore not that one verse form influenced another but that the two traditions were related, a very different proposition. This is not a new idea. In a way I am merely following the lead of Meillet, who first proposed a relationship between the early metres of Greek and Sanskrit, and, after him, Jakobson, Nagy, Watkins, Cole, West, and others, who have recently contributed so much to our understanding of primitive Indo-European metrical patterns and their evolution within each Indo-European dialect. My hope is that in some small manner I will have extended their findings. I realize that what I claim is as theoretically unprovable as any claim of influence; on the other hand, one has to be impressed by how very different ancient Italic verse is from classical Latin and Greek and, conversely, how remarkably similar it is to early Germanic and Celtic verse. For one thing, ancient Italic in its many forms appears to have been a stressed language, like German and Irish, and to have differed in this respect from Sanskrit, classical Greek, and, I suspect, classical Latin, languages primarily governed by pitch accent. Moreover, the metrical principles underlying the verse of these three stressed languages, however defined (and here there is admittedly much dispute), differ demonstrably from those that pertain elsewhere. Each line of stressed verse is divided into two hemistichs, and these, oddly enough, often appear to be metrically independent. More to the point, perhaps, the hemistich itself seems 'freer' than any other basic

ix

Preface

metrical unit in classical antiquity; as best one can judge, in contrast to classical verse, the feet and their relation to each other do not appear to have arisen out of established constraints based on syllable length, calling first for set patterns within individual feet and second for patterned feet within the line. In short, the stressed verse of the Italic, Germanic, and Celtic traditions seems to be different yet consistent within the parameters of its own difference. The appendix includes some specimens of Old English verse scanned according to the principles developed in chapter 6. The crude musical notations that accompany these verses are not meant to facilitate performance. Their sole purpose is to express the respective lengths of the half-lines by means of a convenient algebra. Because of circumstances outside my control, publication of this work has been delayed for longer than I expected. It may be, therefore, that I have overlooked certain recent publications related to my subject. For these, and any other oversights, I apologize. I should like to thank the many people who in various ways have contributed to the final version of this study. I am indebted first of all to a great many specialists in the field. The extent of this debt cannot be gauged simply from my references to specific scholars. More often than not I address only those aspects of past scholarship with which I most differ, and this bias can create a false impression of my estimation of a scholar's contribution. As a general rule it may be taken that where I am most severe - in my commentary on certain views expressed by Pope, Cable, and Russom, for instance - my admiration, rather perversely, runs highest. In particular, I owe much to Professor Cable. Constance Hieatt's thoughtful criticism of an early draft ultimately also caused me to make a number of changes for the better. Also, my son Victor was of considerable help with the Greek. To the anonymous readers for the University of Toronto Press and the Canadian Federation for the Humanities I am grateful for suggesting many ways to improve the study. Most of all, though, I wish to thank the late Prudence Tracy of University of Toronto Press, without whose continuing kind encouragement publication would have been delayed more than it has.

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A Comparative Study of Old English Metre

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Introduction

For some reason, perhaps because of the paucity of surviving material, we are apt to think of accentual poetry as a rather late development in the Indo-European family. We find it in Old German, of course, and in Old Norse and Old Irish, but none of the texts in these languages predates the seventh century AD. In Latin it is somewhat earlier; here we can talk comfortably of the fourth and fifth centuries AD. But this is as far back as we usually want to go, to the end of the classical period, since classical verse, everyone agrees, was principally quantitative and not accentual, though some would seem to imply that it was both.1 Looked at broadly in this way, the historical line seems comparatively short; yet there is good reason for believing that the accentual tradition in Europe trails back centuries beyond the fourth century AD to a period not just contemporaneous with but predating classical Latin by a considerable margin. The rise of accentual Latin verse in the fourth and fifth centuries AD is usually associated with a decay in classical Latin forms. The standard view teaches that as one began to die the other came to life and that the first signs of this youthful emergence can be found in the Christian hymns of this period. Here, it is said, one may see a progressive erosion of an earlier familiarity with quantitative measures; failure to understand the old rhythms then led to reliance on syllable count and eventually to uniformity of line length:

4

Old English Metre la versification rythmique est une deformation de la versification metrique: la quantite s' effacant peu a peu a 1'epoque de la decadence, et son affaiblissement rendant 1'accentuation de plus en plus marquee, on imagina de faire des vers ou on calquait les vers metriques en substituant des accentuees aux longues (dans les temps forts), et ce fut grace a ces essais que la versification nouvelle prit conscience d'ellememe, et, se degageant de ces imitations serviles, finit par se creer ses propres lois.2

In the main this is Raby's thesis too. 'Once the principles of quantitative verse were abandoned/ he says, 'it was essential, if the new rhythmical verse were to have any principle at all, that some such basis as the numbering of syllables should be adopted. Equality of syllables replaced equality of feet ...'3 But, he adds, progress was slow, in spite of powerful pressures inherent in the favoured trochaic and iambic measures; and it was not until the eleventh century that the principles of accentual (rhythmic) verse were mastered, when words were read 'according to their grammatical accent/4 Beyond doubt Latin was pervasive and its influence profound. There can be no denying, too, that over time understanding of classical quantities did decay throughout Europe.5 Yet it is a curious fact that during the early medieval period, alongside the new rhythmic verse, many poems and hymns continued to be written in the old quantitative measures. Such a continuity does not of course contradict Raby's thesis, for in the face of a general breakdown in the knowledge of older forms, a continuing classical tradition would have been perfectly possible in pockets of culture where careful study compensated for a dying sense of quantity. 'The progress from metre to rhythm/ writes Browne, 'advanced step by step with the obliteration of recognizable metrical quantities. But there were retrograde tendencies. The old metric no longer had any foundation in the living speech, but on the other hand, the old quantities of syllables could be learnt by study, and educated men could write Latin verses which practically ignored stress-accent and conformed as far as possible to classical rules.'6 What he might have added is that these two Latin forms, 'classical' and 'rhythmic/ are sometimes found in the work of

5

Introduction

the same author - Bede, Aldhelm, Boniface, for instance - and, even more remarkably, within the confines of a single poem!? If there is a weakness in Raby's thesis (and all those from the same mould) it lies in the fact that the new verse was accentual. This is not to suggest that the older Latin had no accent; it is simply to say that a primacy of stress now emerged.8 What distinguished the new verse from the old was not that one was based on stress and the other on pitch and quantity, for conceivably both were stressed,? but that the new verse was governed by a dominance of accent position over vowel quantitv. Sometimes accent corresponded with vowel quantity: X / x / y L- x / X - Z _ y — Yegnantem cernat tecum tohs seculis.' Often, as in the famous 'Dies irae,' it did not: &

/ x

>Z«

/ x

Dies irae, dies ilia Solvet saeclum in favilla.

i

i

i

i

/x/x/x/x /x/x/x/x

Nor was this dominance as slow in developing as Raby says. The habit had been established centuries before the eleventh century. One has only to look at the anonymous (ninth century?) 'Ave, maris Stella' to see this: X

. /X / * ./11 Ave, mans Stella, / / / X Dei mater alma Atque sempxer virgo, Felix caeli porta. x

x

, / / /x/x/x I I /x/x/x /x/x/x /x/x/x

I

Siimens illud ave Gabnelis* ore, _/ ,X / * / X Funda nos in pace, n,/.X / X T - . / X Mutans nomen Evae

/x/x/x /x/x/x i i i /x/x/x i i i /x/x/x

Solve vmcfa reis, Prefer lumen caecis, Mala nostra pelle, „/ X / .X / X Bona cuncta posce ...

/x/x/x /x/x/x /x/x/x i l l /x/x/x

/

X

/

X

/

.X

I

I

I

In this hymn the accentual pattern is regularized to the point of mo-

6

Old English Metre

notony, and without much regard for quantity. The question that immediately arises is what caused this dominance, for it cannot have come from classical Latin. The usual explanation is that Latin was influenced by vernacular prose accents, particularly German, where the stress had long before moved almost uniformly to the stem. 'It is agreed/ says Beare, 'that amid the general breakdown of Roman society and the influx of the barbarians in the third century AD, the pronunciation of Latin was affected. The old distinction between long and short vowels and syllables was radically altered, as the Romance languages show ... The accent, whatever it had been earlier, was (so scholars agree) from now on an accent of stress, though its incidence seems to have been governed by the penultimate rule.'10 Eventually, it is said, the whole rhythm of the Latin language underwent change and the old quantitative system became anachronistic, with no foundation in living speech. If this was the case, then we have the interesting situation of the vernacular having influenced Latin in its stress patterns and Latin in turn having impressed syllabic regularity on the vernacular (Old English excepted), via dominance of trochaic and iambic measures and, perhaps, centuries of chanting in the service of the church. But there is another possibility: namely, that the accentual nature of medieval Latin, by which is meant its increasing correspondence with prose accent, arose not from imitation of or pressure from the vernacular in conjunction with a degenerating understanding of classical quantity, but as a re-emergence of a suppressed yet continuing popular accentual tradition that embraced not merely the Celtic and Germanic branches of the Indo-European but the Italic as well. Even though, during the fourth century, Latin hymns were still being written in quantitative measures, and sometimes very strict quantitative measures at that,11 it is clear that at the same time a different kind of poetry was in the air. Almost all historians of medieval Latin verse point to Augustine's Tsalmus contra partem Donati' as an example. About this verse, Browne says, 'it is plain that a new principle of poetical composition has come into being.'12 Raby is of the same opinion: Tn this hymn,' he says, 'we see more distinctly than in Commodian the appearance of a new kind of poetical construction.'13 A trained rhetorician, Augustine was not himself ignorant of his de-

7

Introduction

parture from classical practices: he adopted the new form deliberately, he tells us, in order to avoid the metrical necessity of introducing unfamiliar words ('ideo autem non aliquo carminis genere id fieri volui, ne me necessitas metrica ad aliqua verba quae vulgo minus sunt usitata compelleret').14 Had he been asked, Augustine might have said that his verse was not metrical at all. But of course it was. What he would have meant is that it was not metrical in the classical sense. The grammarians of the period were well aware of this difference too; they called the 'new' verse rhythmus and distinguished it from metrum, the classical form. But for modern scholars its characteristics have remained vague. Ordinarily the early grammarians define rhythmus as modulated verse, minus the strictures of metre.15 Sometimes it is called 'verborum compositio non metrica, sed numerosa scansione ad judicium aurium examinata.'16 The exact meaning of numerosa scansione, which in Bede is changed to numero syllabarum, is not crystal clear; however, it seems reasonable to think that the phrase originally meant 'accentual rhythmic groups' *7 and that by Bede's time this non-classical form had become synonymous with syllable count, for the few examples that Bede gives of rhythmic verse have a strictly regularized number of syllables per line. The distinction of the grammarians would thus seem to be between a division of the old classical line into a regular succession of feet of equal time, each with a pattern of syllables of determined length, in contrast to a division of the 'new' line into rhythmic groupings, each with a somewhat regular pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables of undetermined length. To put the matter another way, though both lines were built on units of time, the classical line attended to qualitative differences in the foot (dactyls, spondees, etc.), whereas the rhythmic line, in that it was governed by patterned stress, ignored these distinctions.18 That this early rhythmic verse imitated prose accent can be seen in Augustine's opening line: / d x j / ^ peccatorum i x J x solet V A ^fratres / J . x conturbare. i.x i_ / x Abundantia

But that the ictus was still to some extent affected by quantity and not in complete correspondence with prose accent is also evident in lines such as

8

Old English Metre quid vobis ad haec videtur? Secunda messis ecclesiae propter hoc dominus noster voluit nos praemonere. [?]

The verse has all the earmarks of a mixed form: under pressure from an accent that is generally at the front, quantity has begun to be disregarded (e.g., genus autem mixtum piscis'); but the movement towards accentual and syllabic regularity in the foot appears to have been temporarily interrupted by an occasional retention of the old rules, particularly the rules of substitution. This is perhaps why the verse seems so rough in places, so rough in fact that there is wide disagreement on its very nature.19 This hybrid form was apparently long-lived, for the same mixture of stress and quantity is found in Bede much later, in the example he offers of iambic: / x

j ./ x ,/ x / [O] rex aeterne domme Rerum creator omnium ,~ X. / X / .X / X, / Qui eras ante saecula Semper cum patre filius.20 r Ai

i / i / x/x/x/x/ x/x/x/x/ I I I I x/x/x/x/ x/x/x/x/ X

Here the syllable count is regularized, but the stress pattern 'x /' (rerum and semper) runs contrary to word accent (rerum and semper) and would seem to be a relic of a decayed quantitative system.21 Whatever the nature of this 'new' verse, all agree that it represented a departure from classical practices. The question to be asked now is what inspired it? Meyer believed that the trail went back to Semitic poetry, particularly to the hymns of Ephrem Syrus, which seem to be governed by syllable count and appear to have influenced both Greek and Latin poetry.22 It is an idea that finds some support in Augustine's claim that his hymns were introduced into the West 'after the manner of the Eastern Church./23 But Raby is not so sure. He is certain of one thing, though: that the source was not the popular verse of Augustine's time or before. 'There is,' he says flatly, 'no clear evidence that the popular verse of the Romans was other than quantitative; rhythmical verse in the West was entirely a Christian possession and it was never employed by pagan writers./24 He is not alone in this opinion.25 But was Augustine's verse so new? One does not have to look very

9

Introduction

far to find verse with much the same look. Take the following two stanzas from Hilary of Poitiers, somewhat earlier than Augustine: ( j

X

/

*

,/

*/

X/ .

X

/

X

/

/

Adae carnis gloriosa et caduci corpons in caelesti rursum Adam concmamus proef/a / x / o/t / ( j ^ . •/ x / per quae primum Satanas est,. Adam victus in novo hostis fallax saeculorunTet dirae mortis a'rtifex . / x L& . / . ) T / i* - / x /. / .*( mm consilns toto in orbe vipennis consitis / I X , / , X (, X ./ X / O X / X ~ / / . ft ad salutem ml restare spei humanae existamat. x

x

x

X

x

x

x

x

2

The metre here is a truncated octonarius, but that is a minor difference. What is interesting about this poem is not just its regularity but its quantitative character. 'The importance/ says Beare, 'is that it gives a quantitative pattern for those very early rhythmic poems in which the eight-syllaber with falling cadence is divided into two groups of four syllables, each with a falling cadence.'2? The later rhythmic poets, Beare thinks, may have copied Hilary's lines, in time progressively ignoring quantity. But while Hilary's verse is quantitative and trochaic, and thus within the classical tradition, it is also like something else - to wit, the popular chant of Caesar's soldiers marching in triumph from Gaul: /

, X /.

X

/

X~

/

X

/

i X

/

i

X

~

j

j

/

x

/

Urbani servate uxores, moechum caluum adducimus. In itself this correspondence would not be worth mentioning except for the departure from quantity in the first foot, which, strictly speaking, should be iambic. The significance of this rhythmic shift, if such it was, is that at this point in time the accent should not be fronted on the opening Urbani. Of course, quantity had never been completely inviolable: there are plenty of examples in classical poetry where vowel length is shortened or lengthened to accommodate a foot to a given measure. But in this instance the principle seems different. The spirit here is accentual: a triumphant cry that echoes the beat and the co-ordinated movement of marching feet. Though but a fragment, and versified at that, this is nevertheless the language of

10

Old English Metre

the people (note, for instance, the second verse: 'Aurum in Gallia effutuisti, hie sumpsisti mutuum' / The money that you borrowed here, you have fucked away in Gaul'), and it suggests either that the rhythm was so dominant as to override natural quantity or that the quantity of the streets was sometimes different from that of the villa. More than one authority has nevertheless insisted that all popular verse in the classical period was quantitative, not accentual. Not until the advent of Christian poetry in the fourth century AD, it is said, does non-quantitative/rhythmic (that is, accentual) verse make an appearance. This is Raby's position, for instance, and also that of Vendryes: 'c'est seulement en 393 dans le poeme de saint Augustin contra partem Donati qu'on trouve un vers proprement rythmique ... Tous les vers populaires de 1'epoque imperiale sont metriques, ou pretendent 1'etre. Ceux que chantaient les soldats de Cesar sont les tetrametres trochaiques tres purs; il serait impossible de les rythmer par 1'accent de mot ,..'28 True, the popular songs of Caesar's soldiers can be scanned quantitatively.29 In this respect Vendryes is quite right. To suggest that the lines are without accentual rhythm, however, seems insensitive to the inherent marching beat of i I i *-* i / / ~ / / Urbani servate uxores, moechum caluum adducimus. AururrTin Gallia^ffutuisti, hie sumpsisti mutuum

and / i l l i L *-* i i Gallos Caesar in triumphum ducit, idem in curiam and

Ecce Caesar mine triumphat qui subegit Galliam, Nicod^mus ncm triumphat qtii subegit Caesarem.3° As Pulgram notes humorously, if one sets out to prove by means of scansions as tortuous as they are unconvincing, that the soldiers' songs and similar verses of various times are actually quantitative, if one insists that they are made up of, say, genuine trochaic feet consisting

ii

Introduction of one long followed by one short syllable (- ^, though the versus quadratus allows also 'trochaic'--), and if one further maintains that long and short are, as in hexameter, in a 2:1 ratio, then one says in effect that these soldiers sang measures (feet) of this kind: f f. This is 3/4 time, it is a waltz. Somehow the picture of Caesar's conquering legions sweetly waltzing rather than clangorously marching through the streets of Rome behind their general lacks credibility.3J

The most striking feature of popular verse such as the above is that, unlike most quantitative verse but like Hilary's trochaics and most subsequent accentual verse, on the whole no clash arises between ictus and prose accent. The one outstanding deviation among the soldiers' songs, raised to high prominence by 'quantitativists' to prove that popular verse was not accentual, Gallias Caxesar subegit, Nicodemus Caesarem,32 looks, as many in the past have thought, suspiciously like an error in transmission - as if Suetonius inadvertently reversed the first two words, for if their order is changed, the accent of the first two feet tallies with that in the remaining feet and also with that in the other two lines: Caesar Gallias subegit, Nicodemus x / lesarem;

d

/x/x/x/x | /x/x/x/

Eccex Caesar nunc triumphat qui subegit /x/x/x/x | /x/x/x/ Galfiam, Nicodemus non triumphat qui subegit /x/x/x/x | /x/x/x/ x / dlesarem.

This coincidence between ictus and prose accent is, in my opinion, highly significant. According to Beare, popular verse was distinguished from Latin 'rhythmic' verse in that a genuine long occurred where a long was needed. 'Neither the accent of word,' he says, 'nor the beat of the verse, can be regarded as lengthening a short syllable. In rhythmic verse ... a single short often takes the beat.'33 Admittedly some popu-

12

Old English Metre

lar verse is constrained in this way. The following witticism, for example: Postquam Crassus carbo factus, Carbo crassus factus est. And where deviations do occur, the abbreviated length seems to be compensated: x

7

x

x

J i- i/ ^ - ^ I ' j X J-$x / x / 34 qui'• de nobis longe vemo late venio: solve me.

But this rule is plainly not universal. As Beare himself was aware, the well-known 'mille' song from the fourth century AD is certainly exceptional: /.,,x

/. n x

/. n x j / x ,,/

x

/

mille mille mille decollavimus unus homo milfe decollavimus ,/ . x / x , /, x, / x / .x / x . /. -ic r / ,x, tantum vim habet nemo quantum fudit sangumis.35 In this song, there can be no doubt, the short syllables in both homo and habet must take stress. Likewise, in the following verses from the second century: Floro xpoetae scribenti ad se: £ x / x / x / x Ego nolo Caesar esse /° , x,/ x / x/ x Ambulare per Britannos ^ x / x / x / x Latitare per Germanos Scythicos pati priunas Rescripsit Hadrianus: Ego nolo Florus esse Ambulare per tabernas

Latitare per popmas Culices pati rotundos.36

I i i i

/x/x/x/x / / / / /x/x/x/x / / / / /x/x/x/x /x/x/x/x /x/x/x/x /x/x/x/x /x/x/x/x /x/x/x/x

Attempts to scan these second-century verses quantitatively as anaclastic ionic dimeters, in which a short syllable is said to change place with a long syllable ( ~ - ^ - > ~ )

13

Introduction Ego nolo Florus esse ambulare per tabernas latitare per popinas,

do not seem to me convincing.37 As the matter itself suggests, the pattern would appear to have derived not from imitation of a Greek quantitative pattern, which the poet might or might not have known at this date, but from the power of initial stress in popular accent, which he surely did know. To what extent can departures from quantity such as these be regarded as the norm? It would be nice if the matter could be easily decided, but the body of surviving popular verse, where it can be confidently distinguished from literary verse, is simply not extensive enough to bear definitive analysis. In the face of this limitation one has little choice but to turn for answers to the contemporary experts, to the observations of the poets and grammarians from the same period. What they have to say is not itself unambiguous, but the general thrust of their comments is this: the 'new' rhythmical verse was different from classical verse and, if it was like anything, it was like popular verse. Perhaps the best known definition of the 'new' verse is Bede's, which in turn may be traced to Marius Victorinus in the fourth century: '[rhythmus] verborum modulata compositio non metrica ratione, sed numerosa scansione ad judicium aurium, ut puta veluti sunt cantica poetarum vulgarium/38 What is significant about this definition is that Bede, like Victorinus before him, thought the 'new' verse was like the songs of the vulgar poets (Bede: 'carmina vulgarium poetarum'). Nor does he seem to be merely recording something that he has read, because he goes on to distinguish between varying quality in the 'new' verse: 'quern [rhythmum] vulgares poetae necesse est rustice, docti faciant docte/39 This distinction suggests strongly that he was aware of a whole tradition of rhythmic poetry, some of it skilled, some of it popular and rough. Exactly what these differences between 'learned' and 'rustic' verse were is unfortunately not made explicit. But since Bede's own illustrations of rhythmic verse are characterized by a regularity of syllable count between the stresses and not by a faithful correspondence between accent and length, as in

14

Old English Metre Apparebit repentina Dies magna domini Fur obscura velut nocte j

/ y

X

/

X

/

Improvises occupans,40 /

Y /

Y

/

Y

/

/x/x/x/x /x/x/x/ /x/x/x/x /x/x/x/

it would seem reasonable to think that the dominant feature of popular ('rustic') verse was variability of syllable count within the feet. If, as seems at least arguable, popular verse was accentual and therefore fundamentally different from quantitative verse, and if, as seems almost certain, popular verse was a continuing tradition and not moribund or dormant, albeit wanting somewhat in respectability, then it is easy to believe that Christian rhythmic verse, with which it shares many similarities, was not new but a revitalization, with newfound respectability, of something in fact quite old. As Todd says, 'The existence of an indigenous accentual basis for rhythm makes more easily understandable the use of accentual hymns by the early Christians. In this light, these appear not as something created ex nihilo, but simply as a re-emergence or continuation of the native method of composing poetry/41 From this standpoint, quantitative verse, rather than representing the norm, is seen as a powerful but nevertheless aberrant form imposed from without, dominant for a time yet never completely victorious. 'Had it not been for the interference of the Greek influence from the late third century BC onward,' says Todd, T cannot believe the Latins, whether educated or illiterate, would ever have had any other ictus in their poetry other than word accent/42 Given the appropriate conditions, it would follow almost inevitably that the older, more entrenched accentual form would in time surface. Brittain puts it this way: 'classical Latin verse, with its foreign basis, had obtained no deep hold on the people, and cannot have been fully appreciated except by a cultured few. The accentual system, on the other hand, though ignored in strictly literary circles, had never lost its hold on the masses, and Christianity, with its popular appeal and popular membership, brought it to the surface again/43 Such a view puts no strain on credibility, provided one regards classical Latin as a dialect coexisting with a broader dialect that had a continuing life in colloquial speech. Nor is it difficult to imagine how

15

Introduction

this dialect first arose and, once established, survived for such an extensive period. The cause was probably sociological, in the desire of the educated to display their sophistication by transferring the pitch accent of Greek to common Latin. Then in time, as this Hellenized pronunciation became more and more fashionable, the grammarians doubtless added their imprimatur. This process is well imagined by Pulgram: The educated (which is the same as saying the upper-class, the rich) Romans derived their literary sophistication, indeed their early literature, from Greek; whatever linguistic curiosity or grammatical concern they indulged in was exercized on the Greek language long before they turned their attention to Latin. And if Greek was, as it appears to most observers to have been, an idiom where accent was predominantly signaled by pitch, and if Greek literature, especially metrical writing, was traditionally recited with pitch accentuation, then it follows that the transplantation of this habit of pronunciation to Latin was practiced by those who wanted to display their literary erudition and sophistication. From the reciting of Greek and, later, Latin authors this mannerism could easily be transferred to speech ...44 The historical development of Latin as an ascendant language might therefore be seen as unfolding in three phases. 'At first/ says Kent, 'the Latin accent was characterized by energy and stress ... In the middle of the second century B.C. the Greek teachers of the Roman youth set a fashion of speaking Latin with a pitch accent ... From that time on, Latin was spoken with a pitch accent by the highly educated class, while the general population retained the stress accent. About 300 A.D., with the dying out of the educated class, the stress accent again gained sway.'45 If Brittain, Todd, and many others are right in their belief that accentual (stress) verse was the native verse of Italy, and that it never did die out even during the classical period; and if, as we will in fact see, this native verse shared many features with ancient Germanic verse, then it is very conceivable that the verse of these two peoples

16

Old English Metre

was related. This being the case, an analysis of one might well shed light on the other. With the hope that the features of Old English verse will become clearer through comparative analysis, I now turn to an examination of the oldest surviving forms of Indo-European accentual verse, the preclassical verse of the Italic peninsula.

CHAPTER ONE

The Earliest Accentual Verse

Umbrian IGUVINE TABLETS

For Indo-European studies the date 1444 is especially memorable. In this year a number of metal tablets were uncovered in an underground chamber at La Schieggia near the ancient city of Iguvium (now Gubbio), at the foot of the Apennines, close to the via Flaminia. It would prove to be a major find. Since this original discovery, two tablets appear to have been lost. Though obviously ancient, the surviving tablets (now seven) are remarkably well preserved; the lettering stands out clearly and can be copied with ease. But the language is Umbrian, and deciphering the contents has proven an arduous business. Of the seven tablets, the first four and part of the fifth have native characters, very much like Etruscan; the others, Latin. Most scholars think that the native writing probably dates from the third century BC and that the Latin is later, perhaps from the beginning of the first century BC. That the recorded material is older, however, seems very likely. This one might infer from the contents, which are religious not surprisingly, because on a mountain overlooking the city once stood a temple dedicated to Jupiter Apenninus, from whose worship the city probably derived its name (Iguvium = Umbrian louium). Contained in the tablets are the Acta, the liturgy of the Fratres Atiedii (a

i8

Old English Metre

fraternal order of priests), as well as regulations governing purification ceremonies for the temple and for the people of Iguvium. This emphasis on ritual has an air of great antiquity. Language Like Oscan, Umbrian seems to have been a language with an extremely heavy initial stress. Good evidence of this stress may be found in the widespread syncopation of vowels following initial stress: e.g., Umbrian (Umb.) nomner 'name/ cf Latin (L.) nominis; Umb. scapla 'shoulder/ cf L. scapula; Umb. stiplatu, steplatu 'stipulator/ cf L. stipulator; Umb. puplum, poplo, poplom 'people/ cf L. populum; *omeso > Umb. onse 'shoulder/ cf L. umerus; *terminocum > Umb. termnuco, cf Umb. termnome, L. termino + cum 'end'; Umb. feitu, fetu 'make, do/ cf L. facito; Umb. amboltu 'walk/ cf L. ambulato; *habito > *hapto > Umb. hahtu 'have'; *deiketod > L. dicito = Umb. deito, deitu 'say'; *prajtero > Umb. pretra 'beyond/ cf L. praeter; Umb. destrame 'right/ cf *dexeter > L. dexter; Umb. subra 'high/ cf L. superi, supra, Oscan (Osc.) suprius. Sample Verses Of particular interest for this study are the occasional dedication, prayer, and malediction woven into the descriptions of rite. These are set pieces, clearly intended for intoning or singing in ritual fashion, and as such seem to have metrical shape, though of course this shape is not recorded on the tablets. Whether what survives is in uncorrupted form cannot be ascertained. However, the religious and ritualized nature of the material might lead one to expect care in the preservation of the original linguistic forms,1 a care perhaps seen in the repetition of almost identical formulas throughout the tablets. To illustrate these verses, I have selected a unit from tablet 73 (7347-9). If both the alliteration and the phrasing are used as a guide, the verse form may be reconstructed in the following way:

totam tarsinatem

Tursa iouia, trifo tarsinatem,

19

The Earliest Accentual Verse tuscom naharcom iapusco nome, totar tarsinater, trifor tarsinater, tuscer naharcer, iapuscer nomner, nerf sihitu, ansihitu, iouie hostatu, anostatu, tursitu tremitu, hondu holtu, ninctu nepitu, sunitu sauitu, preplohotatu, preuislatu

A variant occurs on the sixth tablet: Serfe martie, prestota serfia serfer martier, tursa serfia serfer martier, totam tarsinatem, trifo tarsinatem, tuscom naharcom, iabuscom nome nerf sihitu, ansihitu, iouie hostatu, anhostatu, tursitu tremitu, hondu holtu, ninctu nepitu, sonitu sauitu, preplotatu, preuilatu.2 As best can be understood, both chants are maledictions, the first addressed to the goddess Tursa, calling for a variety of calamities to befall the neighbouring enemies of Iguvine: that they be made to tremble and be put to flight; that they meet death on land and water; that they suffer the storms of winter; that they be beaten; and so on. After this appeal, the first chant adds a prayer to Tursa, asking her to grant peace to the city of Iguvine and its inhabitants. The divisions of the lines are less obvious but would seem to be the following (the traditional marking of the consonant s in such words as sihitir, ansihitir, etc., has been omitted in order to avoid confusion with secondary stress marks in the subsequent scansion): Tursa iouia, futu fons pacer pase

2o

Old English Metre tua pople totar iouinar, tote iouine, erar nerus sihitir, ansihitir, iouies hostatir, anhostatir, erom nomne, erar nomne. Scansion

Though one cannot be certain about the scansion of these half-lines, it is possible to offer something better than a guess. In point of fact, the few scholars who have attended to this Umbrian verse generally agree upon where the stress should be allocated. Any differences in my stress patterns are indicated in the notes. There, for additional comparison, I have also printed the putative etymology for each word in the first specimen.3 For a statement of the principles underlying the allocation of stress, see 'Methodology' under 'Saturnian Verse/ The sign '/x^ indicates resolution; '/x'or 'xx' reduced time; '' a rest; and ""' synizesis: /x\x/x /x/xx /x\x/x /x/\x / A /xx /xx/x /xx/xx / / /x/jcx \xx/x

Tursa ioum totam tarsinatem, trif6 tarsmatem, tuscom naharcom iapusco nom&, to'taV tarsmater, t&fdr tarslnater, tuscer nanarcer, iapuscer nomribr, nerfsihitu, ansihitu, iouie hostatu, anostatu, tursitu trermtu, hondu holtu, ./ ,X •'—-4", X -i 5-.X 4—%r. X ninctu nepitu, sunitu sauitu preplohotatu, preuislatu

/x/x /x\x/x /xx/x /x\x/x /xx/x / A /xx \x/x /x/x Iwl^,^, /jcx^xx \x/x

The subsequent prayer appears to scan this way: /x/ A /x/x /x/xx A Vjcx /xx/x /x/x

/ x

rp/

X

. /

?-

,

,

; Tursa louia /x/x

futu fons [*fau-ni^ pacer pase tua^porMe totar ioWnar, toteioume, erar nerus A A r x spl ' ansihttir, iouies hostatir, anhostatir, erom nomne, erar nomne.

/x/x /x/xx /x/x \A^ XX \x/x /x/x

21

The Earliest Accentual Verse Features

As I have already said, the nature of the accent in this verse must be inferred, so the scansion cannot claim to be definitive. For one thing, it is not clear whether accent fell upon the penultimate syllable when long, as in classical Latin, or whether the habit of accenting the initial syllable still prevailed, as in primitive Latin. In spite of this limitation, one can make certain observations, and what is most surprising about this ancient material is that all the basic features of subsequent alliterative verse are already present. Even by this extremely early date the metrical unit is the half-line. Also, the half-line carries within itself alliteration and sometimes reaches across the boundary of the half-line to bind its companion half. Yet, as in other alliterative verse, it is the full line that seems to be the rhythmic unit (e.g., 'preplotatu preuilatu'). Each half-line has for the most part a minimum of four syllables and two stresses, though exceptions do occur (e.g., 'futu fons, sihitir'). These stresses are ordinarily primary and on the root (exceptions like 'hostatu/anhostatu' and 'preplohotatu/preuislatu'probably exhibit early evidence of the penultimate rule). One of the two stresses sometimes appears to be secondary, and a third stress seems permissible (e.g. 'totar tarsinater')- Unless one word stretches across two feet, each foot is governed by a word boundary and is normally disyllabic in length - significantly the feet with a suppressed thesis usually carry syncopated or shortened forms from antiquity or are prefixed (e.g., *fau-ni-s > fons, *nr-ns > *nerans > nerf, ansihitu). The time of each foot within a particular line seems to be the same. As for syllable count, this is fairly regular within the half-lines of each full line; but that absolute equality was not essential may be gauged from certain disparities. Most important of all, there seems to be no anacrusis and rarely an initial unstressed syllable at the head of the half-line (never, as far as I can tell, at the head of the first halfline). Old Latin LANGUAGE

As indicated above, Umbrian was a language with a dominant initial stress accent. Most scholars feel that ancient Latin had the same fea-

22

Old English Metre

ture, but where this initial stress accent could have come from is not at all clear. Belief that it was inherited at a very early period does not sit well with what is known of older Indo-European languages (Greek and Sanskrit), which appear to have had primarily a pitch accent. Of course, the accent of Proto-Indo-European (assuming such a language actually existed) may have been different from that in the oldest surviving Indo-European languages; but this is only supposition, and the vast distances in time permit one to see only dimly in this direction. Many authorities think that the habit of stressing the initial syllable was probably derived from a non-Indo-European language, possibly Etruscan. So too, perhaps, with Umbrian. The latest date given for such an importation is about 400 BC, very close to the period of recorded Latin - too close, in the opinion of some.4 Ordinarily the date is pushed back to the fifth or sixth centuries BC, since inscriptions after the fifth century BC already reflect the effects of initial stress in vowel weakening and reduction.5 In spite of the great difficulties associated with verification, most American, English, and German scholars agree that Latin did once carry initial stress.6 In France, where pitch accent has sometimes been favoured, the doctrine is less popular. 7 But against this minority view must be set not only the features of related ancient languages that have stress accent (Celtic and German) but also the hard evidence of numerous examples of syncope and vowel reduction discoverable in recorded Latin.8 As in other stressed languages, Latin vowels in initial syllables are typically well preserved: e.g., L. ager, cf Old English (OE) acer; L. iugum, cf Gothic (Goth.) juk; L. ego, cf Old Norse (ON) ek. Vowels in a medial position are, on the other hand, characteristically weakened or lost altogether: e.g., *adfacio > afficio, *unodecim > undecim, *mdcana > macina, frango and confringo. Similarly, in final syllables: e.g., *sonti > sunt, *esti > est, *sequeso > sequere, *anti > ante. To evidence of this kind, where examples can be multiplied, might be added many instances of vowel shortening occasioned by the law of iambic shortening ('brevis brevians'): e.g., modo > modo, behe~>behe, bona> bona- Then too there are forms in the early drama that, as in Plautus, sometimes exhibit ancient stress patterns:

facilius, mulierem.9 ,/, x^^x

yti af t>iosti $der waes haelet>a hleahtor hlyn swynsocle

(Beowulf 611).

Such diversity should make it obvious that any description of the dialectical verse forms (and, even more so, of early Germanic verse as a whole) cannot be both narrow in its terms of reference and inclusive at the same time. And yet scholarship in the last two centuries is marked by continuing efforts to promote precise descriptions of the individual verse dialects and sometimes even to impress these descriptions upon the other verse forms. This search for a simple paradigm has its origins in the earliest investigations of German alliterative verse, in the work of Lachmann, Mullenhoff, Jessen, and others during the first half of the nineteenth century, scholars who thought that early German metre had four accents in each half-line. *3 Though in the longer half-lines four accents are possible, in a high percentage of half-lines, especially in Old Norse and Old English, the total syllable count is itself only four, and it seems doubtful that in sequences of half-lines each with four syllables every syllable would be accented - the rhythm would be too monotonous. Nor is this the only objection. One requirement of the four-accent half-line is that in certain formations (for example, four-syllable half-lines) the beat must frequently fall on unstressed syllables, which, all agree, were throughout this period weakening rapidly under the influence of initial stress. Again, can one believe that in a half-line like 'eal gefeormod' (Beowulf 744b) the very light prefix ge- would be accented? An important alternative to this early paradigm was the two-accent system develped by Rieger, Vetter, and others.14 In many respects this paradigm was preferable to the other because it acknowledged a greater variety of rhythm in the half-lines. Then towards the end of the century, in two seminal studies, later modified, this two-accent system was adapted to even greater satisfaction by Sievers.15 Instead of restricting the half-line to one dominant pattern, Sievers directed

61

German Accentual Verse

attention to a multitude of forms, from which it was however possible to distil five basic types: Type A /x/x, Type B x/x/, Type c x//x, Type D //x\ or //\x, Type E /\x/ or /x\/. According to this new system, each half-line had two prominent stresses and two or more syllables that were unstressed (though one of these could carry secondary stress), distributed through two feet, in either balanced (Type A /x | /x, Type B x/1 x/, Type c x/1 /x) or unbalanced fashion (Type D /| /x\ or / |/\x, Type E /\x| / or /x\| /). By almost general agreement the Sievers system was better than anything before it. For one thing, it was derived in an empirical manner; for another, it had applicability outside Old English. Sievers's impact on Old German studies was therefore great, and deserved. The system was never universally accepted, however; from its inception it had its critics, and today they are still about. This is not too surprising since, through the latter part of his working career, even Sievers himself seems to have been discontented with the model. Many of the objections strike at what appear to be inconsistencies or contradictions in specific features of the model.16 In reply, it might be said that some of these problems are almost certainly the result of faulty transmission and may therefore be dismissed simply as scribal errors. Others may be but reflections of an inadequately articulated paradigm rather than indications of an unsatisfactory model. In the system's favour is that over the years it has proven extremely durable. Though never without its critics, it has at the same time never wanted for defenders either; and in one way or another most, if not all, of the anomalies have been explained away.17 The explaining away of anomalies, however, does not necessarily mean that the model is right or the best possible. As students of Old English will confirm, knowledge of the five 'pure' types is no guarantee that application of these patterns to a given passage of Old English will make it metrically intelligible. On perhaps the two most important counts for any model, inclusiveness and economy, the system does not do very well: it is not economical because of the great number of patterns it admits; and if one tries to make it economical by reducing the patterns to a generalized five or six, then it immediately wants for comprehensiveness. There is, I think, a reason the paradigm is bedevilled in this way: it is because it offers a metrical system that ignores time. Other than for distinguishing between stressed and unstressed

62

Old English Metre

syllables, the system is no help to anyone who wants to read the verse. To put it bluntly, it is a very artificial thing. Where the paradigm is especially weak is in indicating what shapes, other than those found in the cadences, were permissible elsewhere in the half-line. If, for instance, one describes a typical half-line as /x | /x (two feet, each with a stressed and unstressed syllable), one would ordinarily need to add some statement about the limits of linguistic variance permitted in these feet. Among other things, one would need to specify how much unstressed material is permissible. Sievers does not say, except implicitly through his empirical analysis of the corpus. There one finds extraordinary patterns in a foot (e.g., xxxxxxx/). If the concept of the foot is to have traditional meaning (and I think that it should, though not everyone agrees: see the subsequent discussions), then xxxxxxx/ has to be equivalent to x/, found elsewhere. But that so much unstressed material could be compressed into an acceptable tempo seems most unlikely. In short, the paradigm has two serious defects: (a) it is unrealistic, in that it ignores speech acts; and (b) it cannot predict, because it does not impose limits. Of the two, it is not clear which is worse. There is as well another consideration. In Sievers's paradigm, three of the five types open with a stressed syllable (Type A /x/x, Type D //x\ or //\x and Type E /\x/ or /x\/), two with an unstressed syllable (Type B x/x/ and Type c x//x). According to Kaluza, types B and c are more illusory than real.18 Kaluza had noticed that whereas in types A, D, and E the feet correspond well with natural speech boundaries, with each foot opening with the most strongly stressed syllable (Type A: 'geong in I geardum/ Type D: 'feond I mancynnes/ Type E 'weorSmynduml^ah'), in types B and c the correspondence seems artificially violated. Frequently the word must be split to accommodate the boundaries of the foot: X

-I

X

/

Type B: E>urh mi be hand Type C: him se yljdesta. Kaluza claimed that if the natural speech boundaries are recognized in half-lines scanned as types B and c, it soon becomes evident that the so-called types B and c are really variants of Type D, the only dif-

63

German Accentual Verse

ference being that types B and c have a lighter stress in the initial foot: B: t»urh mine hand D: bleed wide sprang i^ /jj^i* i— r i / j £ \ c: him sex yldesta D: leor landfruma. x

Types B and c are so troublesome that it will be well to take up the whole business of initial syllables in the next chapter, where the matter can be treated in some detail, with specific reference to Old English.

CHAPTER THREE

Old English: Stressed or Unstressed Initials?

'The crux of the problem of Germanic versification/ observes Pope in The Rhythm of Beowulf, '[is] in the types that Sievers called B and c/1 What brought Pope to this conclusion was something quite particular: Heusler's earlier struggles with Sievers's types B and c.2 According to Heusler, the first to apply musical notation to early Germanic verse with any success, each half-line, irrespective of type, had two measures in 4/4 time, each with a syllable bearing primary accent situated at the head of a measure followed by an undetermined number of syllables bearing lesser accent to fill up the measure, the only limitation on the number being the time allotment of the measure: j_ L nydwracu nil'grim

r r r

rr |

Where the measure was short, it could be filled out either by a rest firum foldan

rr x r rx

- or prolongation of a note: frea aelmihtig.

r : |r r r

65

Stressed or Unstressed Initials

This system, as Pope was aware, works well for half-lines that open with a strong stress, as in the examples above. It does not work nearly as well when applied to half-lines that begin with anything but a strong stress, and these are many, mainly of types B and C. Heusler's problem had been that if each half-line was divisible into two measures and each measure opened with a syllable bearing primary stress, it was unclear what was to be done with the initial movement of a half-line such as t>aet waes god cyning

f: F T : Sievers: I>aet waes god cyning or

/

JL

him 6a Scyld gewat

r x r |r :

Sievers: him 6a Scyld gewat In these and similar patterns Heusler's strategy was twofold: either to allocate the initial syllables to the measure of the preceding half-line L ( -1 i ece drihten or onstealde.

r rxrr \ r r \ r r He Merest sceop ...

r

- or simply to consider them outside the measure: Eeet waes god cyning

r

r

him 6a Scyld gewat

r r

The first of these alternatives, though neat, is of questionable validity; for in many instances where the initial syllables are allocated to the final measure of the preceding half-line, the appearance of rhythmic

66

Old English Metre

flow is quite illusory because phrasing and sense demand a pause at the end of the half-line:

weorc wuldorfaeder

r r r u

swa he wundra gehwaes:

u r rr r

In any case, Heusler contended, only one or two initial syllables could be allotted in this way to the preceding measure; beyond this number the initials had to be regarded as extrametrical, preludes to the first measure. In theory this seems reasonable enough, but in practice there is a problem since all the early German dialects have half-lines, which, if Heusler's principle is followed, call for anacrusis of at least four syllables: indeed, Old High German requires up to six; Old English as many as seven; Old Saxon even more. That such extensive blocks of sound could be extrametrical is difficult to believe. As Sievers long ago pointed out and Pope has more recently emphasized, it is exceedingly curious that anacrusis of the sort envisaged by Heusler should be restricted to types B and C.3 Types A and D do have anacrusis. Pope estimates that in Beowulf, for instance, of the 2,851 Type A half-lines, 83 have anacrusis, and of the 853 Type D half-lines, 37. But in none of these cases does anacrusis exceed two syllables, and rarely is it more than one (only 10 times). By contrast, the 1,047 Type B half-lines have two syllables before the first primary stress 633 times; three syllables, 258 times; four syllables, 43 times; and five syllables, 9 times. The 1,118 Type c half-lines show a comparable spread: two syllables, 623 times; three syllables, 186 times; four syllables, 43 times; and five syllables, 3 times. 'Why/ Pope asks, 'should types B and c be the only offenders against the rule established by most verse, and supported by types A, D, and E, that anacrusis should be included in the line of a preceding measure?'4 It is a question not easily answered. Though critical of Heusler, Pope, too, believed he discerned in Old English half-lines a unifying rhythmic principle that could be expressed by musical notation.5 In essence the principle was similar to Heusler's - each half-line is built upon two quadruple measures; but whereas Heusler read the verse in 4/4 time, Pope thought this too slow and preferred a 2/4 tempo. Like Heusler, Pope sidestepped the often unnatural word divisions occasioned in Sievers's types B and c

67

Stressed or Unstressed Initials

by shifting the bar to a position of natural pause after a word bound ary before the first prominent stress: he t>aes I frofre gebad Sievers: he t»aes frolfre gebad

xx/ xx/

hu 6a I aedelingas Sievers: hu 6a aectellingas.

xx/x \x

Pope also agreed with Heusler that in a significant number of halflines the initial syllable should be allotted to the preceding measure, especially when the syllable was notably light wundenstefna

gewaden haefde

r r r P p P r r PX

- or sense prevented a pause at the half-line: Hi hyne Pa aetbaeron tcTbrimes farode.

P U* P P r P

P P r

LLT /

But here the similarities ended. Whereas Heusler considered most ini tials extrametrical preludes to the following measure, Pope went to the other extreme, regarding them as the first of the two measures. Thus in a half-line such as 'HwaeEere him on ferl?e greow/ though both would insert a bar before the first prominent stress HwaeEere him on fert>e greow - Heusler would add yet another after ferpe since, according to his system, Hwsepere him on would be extrametrical: Heusler: Hwaetere him on ferhte greow

r r / r:

Pope:

HwaeEere him on ferh^e grebw.

LU* P P P P r 3

'

68

Old English Metre

Moreover, since no succession of syllables will be without some gradation of accent, and since Hwxpere opens the measure, Pope would read it with an accent, though of lower grade than ferhpe: i a \ HwaeJ>ere him on fertile greow. \ He would also read the pronoun him with a light accent (him). Where the initial measure was short, it could be filled out by a rest at the end of the half-line:

L _ // ^ hu da aedelingas.

|m M n

And where the first syllable was obviously light, accent could be transferred to the second syllable: mid Mnra secga gednht.

XM f P U f Such in brief is Pope's solution to the difficult Type B and c halflines. While his intuition about the first measure seems eminently sensible, one has to wonder whether within the totality of the halfline he has not overinflated its importance. At first sight, it seems strange that a measure carrying but a relatively light accent should be given equal time with another that usually has not one but two syllables of greater intensity. In a half-line like '#a ymbe hlaew riodan/ for instance, he gives equal measure to Pa ymbe and the semantically rich hlxw riodan. I suspect that most readers would consider this diLL II vision out of balance. Similarly, in a half-line such as 'frod folces weard' the crowding of folces weard into one measure means that folces, which is alliterative and grammatically long in the stem, has to be unnecessarily de-emphasized by reduction in time to eighth notes on both parts. Yet elsewhere the stem of folces and its variants (e.g., folcum) is given double that time: folces hyrde (Beowulf 610, 1832, etc).

r r rpx

69

Stressed or Unstressed Initials

Compare: foleum gecy&ed.

n t nm/

Reduction of folces, when alliterative, long, and stressed, seems questionable.6 Pope is nevertheless to be applauded for insisting upon the integrity of the first measure in Type B and c half-lines and for allotting stress to most initial syllables within these two types. Unfortunately this insight has not taken hold, and with the Sievers system proving as durable as ever, there is a distinct danger that it will fade from view in the manner of Kaluza's equation between types B and c and Type D. What is needed is further defence of the position. Evidence of Initial Stress In Beowulf certain constructions suggest that Heusler's exclusion of initials in types B and c as extrametrical is wrong, just as Pope has argued; wrong because if the initials were extrametrical there would be no need for this segment to have regularity of syllable count; indeed, the briefer the prelude the better it would seem to be, since disruption of a rhythm necessarily increases with the length of an extrametrical segment. In these constructions syllable count is extremely regular and, more importantly, is maintained at a higher syllable count than demanded either by the grammar of the language or the lexicon. One can see this effect quite well in half-lines from Beowulf that open with da, either as an adverb or a conjunction.7 Analysis of these half-lines shows that syllable count before the first primary stress is highly regular. If the half-lines are divided into two categories, halflines with two fairly clear primary stresses ('normal' half-lines), M him wses manna I>earf, and half-lines with only one obvious primary stress ('light' half-lines), $a waes of teem hroran,

70

Old English Metre

then certain very regular features fall out: 'Normal' Half-lines. The typical structure of the segment before the first primary stress is pa + i syllable: t»a waes sund liden This pattern occurs sixty times, with pa followed by a variety of words, most frequently the verbs com/cwom and waes, the demonstratives se/seio/paet and the pronouns me c/his/him. 'Light' Half-lines. Here the typical structure before the first primary stress is pa + 2 syllables: T^-

X

X

/

£)a waes on burgum There are fifteen examples of this pattern, usually with pa followed by the verb 'to be' plus a preposition. Exceptions to these typical patterns are of three orders: i. When pa is followed by a disyllabic preposition before the first primary stress, (a) the first measure of 'normal' half-lines is increased from pa + i to pa + 2 syllables: #a ymbe hlaew riodan; (b) the first measure of 'light' half-lines is accordingly increased from pa + 2 to pa + 3 syllables; —

X

X

X

t»a waes aefter wiste. 2. When pa is followed by a pronoun, the number of syllables in the initial segment is increased accordingly. (a) 'Normal' half-lines: in the case of monosyllabic pronouns, from pa + i to pa + 2 syllables, - *

X

/

X

/

Sa ic of searwum cwom; so also with disyllabic pronouns,

71

Stressed or Unstressed Initials _

^3/

x x

/

6a hme Wedera cyn, unless an article or a preposition comes before the noun, whereupon pa + i is increased to jbfl + 3 syllables, — x x x _/ / ]>a hine se broga angeat.

(b) 'Light half-lines: in the case of monosyllabic pronouns, from pa + 2 to pa + 3 syllables, ]>a me t>aet gelaerdon. 3. Half-lines in which addition or omission of a demonstrative is mandatory have the number of syllables immediately following pa increased or decreased by one. (a) Addition of demonstrative: 'light' half-lines, pa + 2 > pa + 3, w-

x

x

x

L

1/a waes of Paem hroran. (b) Omission of demonstrative: 'normal' half-lines, pa + i > pa + o, t>a metod nolde Of all these pa half-lines, 'pa + o + stress' is perhaps the most interesting, since it occurs only three times, curiously enough twice in the same formula ('I?a metod nolde') and once in a form thought to , i / ^ \ X involve anacrusis ('I>a I secg wlsode')- Because a demonstrative or a preposition or a pronoun often follows pa, one would expect the pattern 'pa + i + stress' or 'pa + 2 + stress' to be fairly common. But one would also expect 'ba + o + stress' in some frequency as well: for ex— l i — 2. £ _ l ample, ba + noun (e.g. '*I>a mht becom/ '*'I>a aefenleoht/ '*I?a hildeL — _( / — / / deor'), I>a+ stressed adverb ('*t>a inne fealh/ '*I>a eerest weard')- That this pattern was not prohibited by the grammar of the language may be seen below in the siddan half-lines, where 'siddan + stress' is found in abundance - in fact it is the norm: syl?6an niht becom (*x 5b) si56an aefenleoht (413b)

72

Old English Metre silvan morgenleoht (6c>4b).

Also 8343, 85ob, 8863, 9013, 9823, 1077^ 11483, 1235^ 12533, i26ib, i28ib, i689b, i775b, 1784^ i947b, i978b, 205ib, 2o64b, 2072b, 2i03b, 2i24b, 220ib, 22073, 23563, 23883, 2474^ 2888b, 291 ib, 2914^ 29603, 29703, 31273. As both sdverbs 3nd conjunctions, /?« 3nd siddan are semsnticslly quite close. Why, one feels compelled to ask, wss 'pa + stress' studiously avoided when 'siddan + stress' wss the norm? No answer comes readily to mind without reference to metricsl considerations. My suspicion is that by itself pa, unlike siddan, was deemed metrically insufficient 3s an initial segment. In this event the pa and siddan segments cannot have been extrametricsl. It is possible of course that the phenomenon witnessed in the pa and siddan hslf-lines is 3ccident3l. More resesrch is needed in this sres before one can be certsin. But th3t avoidance of the psttern 'pa + stress' wss no sccident seems to be borne out by whst transpires in the half-lines that open with a relative pronoun.8 There is no way to know exsctly now msny hslf-lines in Beowulf begin with a relative clause because the distinction between a demonstrative pronoun heading a new syntsctic unit 3nd a relstive pronoun heading a dependent clause is sometimes unclear, as is also in places the distinction between a relative clause and an adverbial clause. As best one can tell, there seem to be about 150 half-lines. Of these, approximately 30 are headed by various forms of se/seo/paet and another 30 by the indeclinsble pe stsnding by itself. The rest, between 90 3nd 100, are headed by combined forms (most frequently se pe and parape). What for this discussion is most important about these forms is that all have at least one syllable between the initial syllable of the relstive pronoun 3nd the first priirmry stress. In other words, verses of the type se/seb/pzet or its inflected monosylkbic forms + syllsble + first primsry stress (e.g., 'se fraem feonde astwand') or 'pe + syllable + first primary stress' (e.g., 'Pe f»us brontne ceol') are common, but a hypothetical line such as se/seo/pset and its inflected monosyllabic forms or 'pe + first primary stress' (e.g., '*se meregrundas' or '*pe meregrundas') is strictly avoided. When the declinable pronoun 3nd the indeclinable particle are combined, however, no such restriction applies, for in the sepe combination alone 22 of the half-lines have no syllable between the initial se pe and the first primary stress.

73

Stressed or Unstressed Initials

Outside Beowulf, as the following tables show, verses headed by a compounded relative pronoun (RP) (e.g., se pe) divide fairly equally into (a) verses with an unstressed syllable after the relative pronoun, and (b) verses with no unstressed syllable after the relative pronoun. On the other hand, in the verses headed by monosyllabic forms of the uncompounded relative pronoun nothing like this equality is to be found. Indeed, outside volume 5 of the Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records (ASPR) (The Metric Psalms and The Meters of Boethius), and to a lesser extent volume 6, the combination 'monosyllabic relative pronoun + stress' is quite unusual. Table ^ Sample Compounded RP Forms Heading Half-lines

se/seo/paet + pe pape pam pe para pe

+ Unstressed Syllable

+ Stressed Syllable

88 41 37 55

81 68 36

22

Table 2 Monosyllabic RP Forms Heading Half-lines + Unstressed Syllable

+ Stressed Syllable

ASPR 1-4 pe _ 9 376 se/seo 127 6 pxt/pa/paes/pam undetermined 9 ASPR 5

pe se/seo

261 18

41 5

p&ttya/pxs/pam undetermined 15 ASPR 6

pe se/seo

108 15

10 2

pxt/pa/pses/pam undetermined 5

Three questions immediately arise: (i) why the pattern 'monosylla-

74

Old English Metre

bic relative pronoun + stressed syllable' should occur so infrequently in the majority of Old English poems; (2) why, if it does occur infrequently, it occurs at all in the places that it does; and (3) why The Metric Psalms and The Meters of Boethius should be so deviant. These are distinct questions but, I think, ultimately related; and it is to their consideration that I wish to attend for a moment. Part of the answer to all three questions may be found, I believe, in the kind of constraints that controlled the shape of relative clauses generally. These appear to have been both grammatical and metrical, and to have operated for the most part harmoniously; but occasionally these constraints seem to have come into conflict and given rise to a good many of the deviant verses patterning as 'monosyllabic relative pronoun + stressed syllable.' Of the grammatical constraints, the following three may be isolated as especially powerful: 1. Suppressed antecedent > compounded RP. This constraint, the most obvious and the one over which there can be the least dispute, may be seen in a line such as ForPon swa teofened, se J>e teala cut>e (Order of the World 82). Here it is very clear that the compounded relative pronoun (sepe), of which se is in effect a postponed subject ('And so he thus joined, [he] who knows well'), has been generated by a suppressed antecedent in the principal clause. This effect is found consistently in Old English verse. Usually the compounded relative pronoun occurs subsequent to the verb in the clause lacking an antecedent and at the head of its own half-line, but not always; occasionally the relative pronoun is found forward in the antecedent slot (e.g., 'Se J>e sped ahte ...' Exodus 6i4b); and with greater frequency, medially in a verse (e.g., 'Saegde sel>e cul'e' Beowulf 9ob). 2. Indefinite antecedent > compounded RP. This constraint is imposed particularly on restrictive clauses subsequent to clauses carrying an indefinite antecedent. Here, too, a compounded relative pronoun is usually found. Thus: saegdon f>aet saeli^ende,

75

Stressed or Unstressed Initials I>a 6e gifsceattas Geata fyredon (Beowulf 377a-8b).

In this instance sxlfyende is generic and subsequently restricted by the pa 6e verse that follows. 3. Specific antecedent > uncompounded RP. As a corollary of the first two constraints there was a third, which as a rule called for an uncompounded relative pronoun when (a) the antecedent was a proper noun (e.g., 't>aette in dagum gelamp / Maximianes, se geond middangeard' Judith 2b~3b) and (b) the antecedent was marked by a demonstrative (e.g., 'and Mm werode wra~6 I?e he aer wurdode' Genesis A 35). Though there is little doubt that these three constraints affected the shape of a great many relative-clause verses in Old English, it would be a grave error to think that their application was universal. In Beowulf, for instance, can be found verses that are shaped contrary to expectation in all three cases. That is, one finds a suppressed antecedent > an uncompounded RP (e.g., '#a waes eadfynde f>e him elles hwair' 138 - deletion of se); an indefinite antecedent > an uncompounded RP (e.g., "Ne bid f»e nsenigra gad / worolde wilna, l?e ic geweald haebbe' 949b~5ob - deletion of para); and a specific antecedent > a compounded RP (e.g., proper noun/Eart I>u se Beowulf, se f>e bid Brecan wunne' 506; and demonstrative, 'waes sio hond to strong, / se 6e meca gehwane' 2684b~5a). Deviations in the expected relative pronoun form, such as these from Beowulf, suggest that in certain contexts constraints other than these three could also affect the shape of the verse. These additional constraints are not easy to isolate, but it seems likely that at least some of the compounded relative pronouns subsequent to specific antecedents were, as in modern English, simply rhetorical, particularly those that occur in direct speech as part of an address. Verse 5o6b from Beowulf, for instance, would seem a probable candidate. Nevertheless it is very doubtful that all, or even very many, of these deviant verses could be accounted for on this ground; and the only other constraints that come to mind, sufficiently powerful to dominate the shape of the verse, would seem to be associated with word order in the antecedent clause and with the metre. It is most probable that the word order of the clause containing the antecedent sometimes had a decisive effect upon the shape of the rel-

76

Old English Metre

ative pronoun heading the relative clause. This constraint would seem particularly predictable within the structure 'antecedent noun + verb + noun > RP/ or (more likely) 'antecedent noun + noun + verb > RP/ in which a noun other than the antecedent is found in closer proximity to the relative pronoun than the antecedent. Here ambiguity is a danger unless the RP form gives a satisfactory indication, by means of gender, case, and number, which noun in the preceding clause is being subsequently described. No doubt this is at least one of the reasons for such variations in the demonstrative form as se pe, pone pe, para pe, etc. Within this structure the demonstrative part of the compounded RP form seems to serve as a recapitulating and clarifying feature. Still, analysis of word order fails to account for many other examples of compounded RP forms, which, given their linguistic environment, would seem unwarranted. In order to understand why these compounded RP forms are so abundant, it is first necessary to acknowledge (without for the moment being given any explanation why) that the Old English poets avoided the pattern 'x + /' at the head of relative-clause half-lines; and second to be aware of the parts of speech that usually occupy the unstressed-syllable slot immediately subsequent to the relative pronoun (either compounded or uncompounded). In the unstressed-syllable slot between the initial relative pronoun and the first stress one is apt to find such unstressed forms as verbal prefixes (e.g., 'se onwende gewit' Andreas 353), the verb 'to be' (e.g., 'E»e bid synna fuJ'Seafarer loob), auxiliaries (e.g., 't>e can naman 6inne' Metric Psalms 88.13), and unstressed adverbs ('se Peer feorda wees' Daniel 354b). But the most common forms by far, in order of frequency, are: pronouns (e.g., 'se hie georne freegn' Genesis A 22/ob), demonstratives (e.g., 'se done sld beheold' Elene 24^), and prepositions ('se mid sunnan wunad' Psalm 71.5). Given this knowledge, it is possible to postulate certain structures that would effectively prohibit the inclusion of these last three forms (pronouns, demonstratives, and prepositions) in the unstressed-syllable slot immediately subsequent to the relative pronoun. For instance, a demonstrative would ordinarily not be expected before the following: a proper noun (in most contexts), a noun used indefinitely, a partitive genitive, a strong adjective, a pronoun, a verb, an adverb.

77

Stressed or Unstressed Initials

The operation of constraints such as these contributed in large measure, I believe, to an accretion of the verse type 'compounded RP + stressed syllable/ in that most Old English poets, when faced with the prospect of constructing an atypical syllabic pattern at the head of a half-line because the grammar of the language precluded the inclusion of one of the usual forms in the unstressed-syllable slot, showed a willingness to hold to syllabic conformity by resorting to a compounded relative pronoun, even though such a decision violated another constraint under which they normally operated. This is perhaps the explanation for the exceptional verse from Beowulf, mentioned earlier: 'wees sio hond to strong, / se 3e meca gehwane/ Normally one would expect in the relative clause either seo or de standing alone, since the antecedent hond is specified by the demonstrative slo. But, of course, *de meca gehwane would have an atypical initial pattern. The point here is that nieca, a partitive genitive, effectively blocks out, amongst other things, a pronoun, a demonstrative, and a preposition; and as the possible categories of unstressed syllables are reduced, reliance increases on the compounded RP form to supply the necessary unstressed syllable. Compare the following: Forton se bi5 eadig se 6e aefre wile man oferhycgen, metode cweman (Christ and Satan 303-4) I>a se waldend cwom, se f>e reorda gehwaes ryne gemiclad (Christ 46b-7b) tonne se hondwyrm, se I>e haeleta beam secgas searofroncle seaxe delfad (Riddles 40.963-7^. If what has been argued to this point is valid - that a fairly complex set of constraints caused a diminution in the total number of verses that might otherwise have patterned as 'monosyllabic RP + stressed syllable' and a corresponding accretion in the number of verses patterned as 'compounded RP + stressed syllable' - why is the pattern 'monosyllabic RP + stressed syllable' found at all? One can only theorize. I am inclined to think that many of these deviant verses were the result of differing attitudes among the poets, when certain constraints came into conflict, as to which should hold supremacy. An-

78

Old English Metre

other possibility is that the metrical tradition was decaying. Some evidence for the latter might be found in The Metric Psalms, which, despite their name, are often decidedly unmetrical - unmetrical, at least, in the sense that Beowulf is metrical. Whether or not this metrical irregularity is indicative of late composition within a decaying tradition or ignorance of the tradition or experimentation within a received tradition cannot be decided. Nevertheless it is interesting that the work with by far the highest number of verses patterned as 'monosyllabic RP + stressed syllable' happens also to be distinguished in other respects by its metrical irregularity. Though metrical irregularity may account for much that transpires in The Metric Psalms, it would not seem to explain adequately the high deviancy found throughout volume 5 of the ASPR, since the second work, The Meters of Boethius, is not characterized to the same extent by departures from the norms of alliteration and stress. What one does find in this work that is unique - and that would seem to have given rise to many deviant verses - is a peculiarly limited use of the compounded RP form. In the entire work, omitting the se~jje half-lines that open syntactic units (e.g., 'Se J>e wille wyrcan' 12.1), there are, as far as I can tell, only four examples of relative-clause half-lines headed by compounded RP forms. To my knowledge, this stylistic feature has no parallel in any of the other Old English poems of major length. Its uniqueness may be gauged when contrasted with Beowulf, more than one-third longer but containing almost ninety halflines headed by compounded RP forms. Since Beowulf, with so many compounded RP half-lines, has no verses patterning as 'monosyllabic RP + stressed syllable/ The Meters of Boethius, with very few compounded RP forms, might be expected to have a significant number of verses patterned atypically; for if, as it would seem, a significant percentage of relative-clause half-lines, because of their structure, required compounded RP forms at their head in order to comply with syllabic conformity, it might be predicted that in a work within which this option was withheld a significant number of atypical syllabic verses would arise - and they do. These considerations may help to explain the deviancies in The Metric Psalms and The Meters of Boethius, but one is still left with the most basic question of all: why most Old English poets avoided the pattern 'monosyllabic RP + stressed syllable' at the head of a half-line.

79

Stressed or Unstressed Initials

It is not good enough to say that they simply considered the pattern unmetrical, because Old English poetry, both early and late, abounds in verses of the type 'x/x/' and 'x//x'; and if these are metrical, one might expect the same patterns in relative clauses to be considered metrical as well, for it is a curious metrical system that permits a given pattern in one grammatical structure and denies it in another. And yet Old English metre seems to be this way. Why would a poet who created half-lines like on land Dena to brimes farode gegan E»ence6, each of which has a solitary weak syllable before the first primary stress, hesitate to produce '*]?e moras heold' or something similar? It is a great puzzle. By Pope's estimate there are in Beowulf 367 Type B and c half-lines introduced in this way. By any measure this is a substantial number; in fact, it constitutes one-sixth of the two types and one-seventeenth of the entire poem! Pope's way around these awkward half-lines is, like Heusler's, to allocate the initial syllable of some to the preceding measure,

1-1 t lj- \ to-ibrimes '! ii *\ hi hyne ,A Pa setbaeron rarooe.

P LT P P r P P p r in v

and (here he is innovative) to introduce a rest before the others, on land Dena,

/r r p p

though which treatment a half-line should get is, he admits, in most cases a difficult decision. These rests fill either a half-measure, as immediately above, or a quarter-measure: Ne meeg byrnan hring.

I/P r P p r

What in my view is unsatisfactory about this intuition is that flexibil-

8o

Old English Metre

ity of this order would seem to render unnecessary a syllabic minimum in the first segment, since a rest could always be introduced to compensate for the syllabic deficiency. A shortage at the head of a hypothetical verse such as '*t>a niht becom' (or '*de moras heold'), for instance, would seem easily accommodated by a rest: _ / _ "Pa niht becom.

/r M r

Why not then create pa (or 8e) patterns with the frequency seen in the siddan (or se 6e) half-lines (i.e., adverb or conjunction or monosyllabic RP + stress)? The doctrine of rests has much to be said for it, but the notion that a rest can fill a deficiency in the first measure seems contradicted by consistency of syllable count in this measure, consistency that is sometimes maintained in obvious ways. For instance, just as in the pa examples 'normal' and 'light' half-lines ,have a regular syllabic differential of one syllable before the first primary stress, —

X

/

/

'normal': f>a waes sund liden 'light': Pa wees on burgum in certain independent clauses (e.g., paet clauses) the same phenomenon is evident: 'normal': J>aet waes god cyning 'light': tfzet wees Pam gomelan These pdet half-lines are especially instructive when the syntax of the verse threatened to preclude the required number of syllables between past and the primary stress. Such a situation arose in a 'pset + verb' structure. When this happened the poet seems to have resorted to fillers: X

x

/

'light': #aet, la, maeg secgan (17003,28643); 'normal': breostnet broden: I>aet gebearh febre (1548). Here la in the 'light' half-lines and probsbly ge- in the 'normal' halfline only warrant inclusion to regularize the metre. If a rest of a

8i

Stressed or Unstressed Initials

quarter or eighth note before the opening of the measure had been able to fill the hiatus, strategies of this kind would most likely have been avoided. What then is to be done with the pattern 'one syllable + stress'? And why does it appear infrequently, or not at all, in some constructions? Half-lines of the type 'of feorwegum' have such a light initial syllable that it seems highly doubtful the unit could open with a stress, as scanned by Pope (eg., 'of feorwegum'); and it seems even more doubtful that the preposition 'of plus a rest could have the same time as 'feorwegum': of feorwegum.

/r r LT

In my opinion these half-lines should be distinguished from most other Type B and c half-lines, which call for a stress on the initial syllable, as originally suggested by Kaluza. As deviant forms of a sort, they might be compared profitably with the half-lines carrying unstressed initials in the first measures of Italic verse. In Old Latin, as we have seen, the ancient trochaic and dactylic forms, under pressure from a shifting accent, began to show early signs of strain at both ends of the half-line. Eventually it was in the cadence that the collapse came, with a shift from /xx to x/x. This unstressed initial then became the property of the preceding foot (e.g., ... x /x). For some reason, perhaps owing to a vestigial instinct for initial accent, the collapse in the first measure was not nearly as extensive, so that iambic inversions were tolerated there but not in great numbers. One may imagine these unstressed initials to have come about in Germanic in rather the same way, with the important difference that the unstressed initial of the first measure was here occasioned not by a shift in accent, as in Old Latin, but by the grammar of the language, particularly the increasing syntactic dependence upon prepositions and the like, best illustrated, perhaps, in formulaic forms of the prepositional phrase. A sample scansion of the first hundred lines of Beowulf throws up the following unstressed forms in this category: in ge~ardagum (Ib) on faeder [bea]rme (21b)

82

Old English Metre in maegEa gehwaere (253) on Frean waere (2?b) to brimes farocte (28b) on bearmes scipes (35^) of feorwegum (37a) ond headowaedum (39a) in worold wocun (6oa) J>aet healreced (68a) ond feorum gumena (73b).

To these should be added ofer hronrade (loa), since in Old Norse yfir appears to have had the equivalence of one syllable. Also, though of a different type (Sievers's Type B), on flodes aeht (423) ond Halga til (6ib). Inspection of these half-lines shows that, in addition to their light initial, all share one feature in common: each can be read without pause in the rhythm of the preceding half-line, hi hyne Pa aetbaeron to brimes farode Heorogar ond HroSgar ond Halga til. For us, so far removed from the spoken language and sight-dominated, these half-lines appear deviant; but for one attuned to the rhythms of the language, the uniqueness of the iambic initial would doubtless have been lost to the ear within the greater rhythmic framework of the whole unit. Here would appear to be the reason a poet could construct a halfline such as 'to brimes farode/ patterning with one syllable before the first primary stress (e.g., x/), yet feel obliged to avoid the same pattern in certain other constructions (e.g., '*0a mht becom'). The reason lies in the rhythm of the unit. In given structures - for example,

83

Stressed or Unstressed Initials

when an adverb (e.g., pa) opens a syntactic unit - both sense and phrasing call for a pause after the preceding half-line. In such a structure, the first syllable is then a 'true' initial and, in the manner of all 'true' initials, stress-bearing. Presumably all independent clauses and, judging from the syllable count in the first measure of relative clauses and pa and siddan half-lines, most dependent clauses fell into the same category - that is to say, they were read with a pause then a lightly stressed initial. Rhythm of this kind calls for the initial to be allotted a measure unto itself, usually distributed through a minimum of two syllables #a waes I Hrodgare (643) - though apparently some monosyllables were strong enough to occupy a full measure: Oft I ScyldScefing (43). Summary of Types Among types B and c half-lines, traditionally scanned with an unstressed initial, may be discerned the following major classes: i. A sizeable body of half-lines, usually structured with two or three syllables (but occasionally only one syllable) before the first primary stress, whose rhythm tends to be independent of the preceding half-line and whose first measure carries a light stress, ordinarily on the initial syllable, as suggested by Kaluza: Oft I ScyldScefing (43) #aer waes I madma fela (36b) him on I bearme laeg (4°b) J*a him I mid scoldon U1^) Ee hine let I frumsceafte (45a)> \

y

_

The patterns in this class are very much like those in Sievers's Type D, except that in the latter the light stress is to the right and not to the left.

84

Old English Metre

2. Another sizeable body of half-lines, each with an unstressed initial, which, during recital, becomes absorbed in the larger rhythmic unit, as suggested by Pope: _

_

Heorogar ond Hrodgar

X

_

ond I Halga til (61).

Occasionally two unstressed syllables seem to be absorbed by the rhythm: feorhseoc |fleon under |fenhleo6u

(820).

3. A smaller body of half-lines that have their own rhythmic integrity yet open with an unstressed syllable: x

x

lA J "* -^- A/ o x ne nyrde ic cymhcor (383) x A. ( x / gebad wintra worn (2643) Onsend Higelace (452a)-

Within this class the first syllable appears to be a prelude to the first beat, in the manner advocated by Heusler: -\-

(

X

/

ge I bad wintra worn. A small sub-class of half-lines are unnaturally shortened by this prelude. Presumably this deficiency was compensated by a lengthening of one of the measures: for (grand gramum

r

ru

a I ledon J>a (34*). If

P

f

(4243)

CHAPTER FOUR

Light Lines

As Hoover quite correctly observes, Verses that apparently contain only one stress have always created problems for traditional theories because they contrast so sharply with the majority of verses in which there are at least two stresses .../1 From the total number of half-lines in any Old English poem, these 'light' verses constitute only a small percentage: Beowulf (B.), for instance, has slightly under 5 per cent (299), The Battle of Maldon almost double this (9-10 per cent: 62); the other poems fall somewhere in between: Genesis A about 3 per cent, Exodus 4 per cent, Daniel 8-9 per cent.2 Though the ratio of 'light' to 'normal' half-lines never rises above one in ten, even in a late poem like Maldon, the percentage is nevertheless high enough to call attention to itself. What has to be decided from the outset by anyone who scans Old English verse is whether these 'light' half-lines are in fact different from the rest in having fewer than two stresses or whether this difference is merely illusory. Should one decide in favour of the latter, then additional matters must be resolved: first, which of the syllables preceding the alliterative syllable (that is, the second stress) should receive the first stress; and second, what the character of this stress should be (that is, primary or secondary). Most scholars consider the 'light' half-lines variants of a norm and therefore scan them as they would most 'normal' half-lines, with two stresses. Among the dissenters, the most prominent are probably Bliss, Hoover, and Russom. According to Bliss, many 'light' half-lines simply do not offer the possibility of two stresses. By way of exam-

86

Old English Metre

pie, he points to 'ond ge him syndon' (B. 3933). Outside the alliterative syndon, he says, another stress is embarrassingly difficult to find: Ond can hardly be stressed at the expense of ge and him; if ge is stressed, not only is the anacrusis irregular (since the caesura, if there must be one, comes rather after than before him) but the verse offends against Kuhn's Law of Particles; if him is stressed, the verse no longer belongs to Type A but to Type c, and Type c with postponed alliteration is unparalleled. In this verse (and there are a great many like it) it is not possible to stress any of the particles without producing some anomaly. 3 These half-lines, he notes, are structurally different from the norm (Sievers's Type Ai): In Type AI, the most frequent number of syllables before the second stress is two, then three, four and five in that order; there are no examples of six syllables; the average number of syllables is 2.6. In Type A3 [e.g., ond ge him syndon], the most frequent number of syllables before the only stress is four, then three, five, six and two in that order; the average number of syllables is 3.9.4 This difference in length, he thinks, must be meaningful: 'it is probable that the reason is the need for extra weight to compensate for the absence of one of the usual stresses; what the verse lacks in stress it makes up in length/5 Type A3 verses are not the only half-lines that Bliss considers 'light/ but they are the most obviously so and therefore pose the greatest threat to the traditional view that each half-line has at least two stresses. Bliss's analysis did not go for long unchallenged. Lehmann,6 Taglicht,7 and others8 were all quick to realize that a good percentage of these Tight' verses opened with a finite verb and suggested that, as a legacy of old Indo-European stress patterns, these initial verbs, even in the Old English period, probably still retained some vestige of their original stress. In this way the number of anomalous half-lines could be significantly reduced. What was left faced further erosion from the

87

Light Lines

investigations of Cable? and Fakundiny,10 who argued that past stress-bearing categories had been too narrowly defined and should be expanded to include, respectively, adverbs like pa and even proclitics. Thus what had seemed a serious anomaly in the two-stress minimum paradigm was for most satisfactorily explained away. Very recently, however, Russom and Hoover have re-opened the matter. For the moment I must postpone any response to Russom (see chapter 6, 'The Boundary') and focus upon Hoover. Hoover is especially critical of Cable's rule distinguishing between the stress allocated to pa as an adverb in two different patterns: 'pa + x + stress' (e.g., 'jzfe waes haten hret»e/B. 9913) and 'pa + x + x + (x) + stress' (e.g., ' JZ>a waes gegongen,' B. 28213). In the former, says Cable, pa does not receive metrical stress (']Z)a waes haten hrefce'), but in the _/-•• y x / x second it does ('0a waes gegongen').11 This distinction seems to be a direct consequence of a need to accommodate the theory to other received patterns, since stress on an initial adverbial pa at all times would disturb the scansion of many Type B ('J^a waes eft swa eer/ B. 17873) and Type c ('Xa waes Bibwulfe/B. 23243) patterns. In other words, if one believes in Type B and Type c patterns, then one cannot argue that the initial adverb pa is always stressed. The distinction thus smells of expediency. Linguistically, the difference between patterns carrying an alleged stressed pa and an unstressed pa is sometimes very slight. What, for instance, is the structural difference between 'J#a waes haten ...' and 'Zfa waes gegongen'? Both pattern as 'adverb + auxiliary + past participle'! Besides, it is possible to find outside Beowulf a number of examples that seem to violate the rule that says in a 'pa + x + x + (x) + stress' structure pa takes stress:12 #a waes se ofen onhaeted (Daniel 242b) Efe geSvat se eng^l up (Daniel 4403) #a waes geboren aerest (Christ iisib) #a Wcer6 se brema on mode (Judith 57b) How are these half-lines to be scanned: as Type B patterns or as three-stress verses? Hoover, who has other complaints, would have Cable abandon the idea that pa is ever stressed. But that this is not the right solution to the dilemma is suggested by one curious phenomenon: no 'pa + x + x

88

Old English Metre

+ (x) + stress' structure carrying only one obvious stress in the verse occurs in the second half-line; it appears only in the first. Indeed, Type A3 verses as a whole are found only in the first half-line. Given this odd fact, it is impossible to escape the suspicion that all 'light' verses only appear to lack an initial stress because what would ordinarily be the initial stress (that is, the alliterating syllable) is in a postponed position and, coming second, sometimes conceals the stress before it. Such a situation never arises in the second half-line, because of a universal rule in Old English verse that the alliterating stress in the second half-line will not be the last stress. This expectation frequently causes one to allocate a final stress to a syllable that would ordinarily be unstressed. One does this confidently, without the slightest concern for error. In the first half-line, on the other hand, when the alliterating syllable is out of its normal first-stress position, which of the preceding syllables should bear the first stress is more problematical. Some proof of this may be found in the way certain half-lines (or very close variants) are scanned as 'light' verses when they appear in the first half-line but as normal two-stressed verses when they appear in the second half-line. Thus Cable's instinct was, I think, right: the adverb pa when heading a Tight' half-line should be stressed. But there is no good reason for denying it stress in a 'normal' verse as well. That general application will convert many half-lines, formerly scanned with two stresses, into three-stress verses is no matter. As we have seen in the previous chapter, a case can be made to suggest that many half-lines traditionally scanned as types B and c (opening with one or more unstressed syllables, followed by two stresses) should be scanned with initial stress. On the same grounds I believe that Cable and others are correct when they extend stress to other initials: pset, swa, odd&t, siddan, etc. And once one acknowledges that these normally unstressed words can, in certain environments, bear stress - and they can, as alliteration attests - then the illusion of one-stressed half-lines rapidly begins to disappear. What kind of stress the initials of 'light' half-lines should bear would seem to depend on the pattern of alliteration. In all probability, alliterative initials such as the following ought to receive full stress: /

^

X

/

X

Heht M se hearda Hrunting beran

(B. 1807)

89

Light Lines /

Y

X

X

/

Y

Bugon P~a to bence blaedagande (8.1013) / X". X X .£. X Secge ic Pe to so6e sunu Ecglafes (B. 590) Hyrte hyne hordweard, hreder sedme weoll (B. 2593). Whether non-alliterative initials - verbs ('Com Pa to recede/ B. 7203) or others ('Ic Paet gehyre/ B. 2903) - should be treated in the same way is difficult to decide, but the disparity in the syllable count between 'light' and 'normal' half-lines, first documented by Bliss, appears to offer some clue to the proper answer. Taken as a whole, 'light' half-lines have one more syllable before the obvious stress than 'normal' half-lines. This differential cannot be accidental, and the most obvious explanation for the discrepancy is Bliss's: 'what the verse lacks in stress [i.e., a Tight' verse] it makes up in length.' Bliss thinks that the extra weight is needed to compensate for the absence of a primary stress. This is a legitimate enough assumption, but it does not follow necessarily. Equally plausible is an assumption that posits an initial stress, but a stress lighter than the last stress in the half-line - in short, a secondary stress, characterized not only by less expiratory force but usually shorter duration:13 rX-^ x X , / x 0a waes on burgum

r

\

X

u\ r t X

J. X

Ic Paet gehyre

r LT r P \

* £

^JL-.x

r

u rlr

Com Pa to recede. Usually one has little trouble deciding which syllable in a Tight' half-line carries the first stress. Frequently these verses are headed by verbs ('mynte Paet he gedaelde/B. 7313) or adverbs ('J^onne bi6 on hrePre/B. 17453), which are naturally stress-bearing. In most environments conjunctions do not pose much of a problem either (T>eah Pe ne meahte/ B. 11303). In some verses, however, it is not immediately obvious which of the initial syllables should take the stress ('Paet hie ne moste/ B. 7063). When confronted by a verse like this, one's initial response is to stress the first syllsble. But one C3nnot be sure. In the verse subjected to snslysis by Bliss ('ond ge him syndon') it is impossible to tell whether ond is extrametricsl so thst stress should fall on ge or whether ond should actually be stressed. The syllable count perhaps suggests the latter. To be certain, one would have

90

Old English Metre

to be privy to what the poet intended to accent, and there is no way of knowing this. Sad to say, in a number of verses there must remain some doubt as to which of the initial syllables should take stress. But fortunately this number is not large.

CHAPTER FIVE

Clashing Stress

Old English verse, most readers would agree, both looks arrhythmical and sounds rough. In part this sense of roughness and arrhythmicality is a response to a variation of syllable count from foot to foot and from half-line to half-line, since for centuries poets have composed in metres governed by such strict syllable count that our ears have routinely come to expect that regularity in their work; even today, after a number of generations of prosodic experimentation, it is still difficult to accommodate to the irregularity of Old English measures, and only a rare student of Old English literature takes away from his classes as an earliest impression anything but this sense of roughness in the verse.1 In some ways even more alien to the ear than irregularity of syllable count is the pattern of stresses that occurs in a high percentage of the half-lines. As Cable notes, 'a conspicuous feature of Old English meter that accounts for much of its strangeness to the modern reader is the frequent occurrence of clashing stress.'2 Cable devotes a chapter to this subject in an attempt to show that the first stress in the half-line takes prominence over the second. It is a worthwhile endeavour, but at the same time it sidesteps what seems a more interesting question: how the Old English ear had such tolerance for what today is so abhorrent. One has to wonder whether the last millennium has seen a fundamental shift in attitude to stress patterns and, if so, what the conditions were that brought it about. In my opinion Pope was right to question what he perceived as a 'widespread notion that the ancient Germanic people had a sense of

92

Old English Metre

rhythm all their own, one not to be understood by those people whose verse had learned manners from Greeks and Romans/3 For to suggest that the Old English poets tolerated consecutive stressed syllables without any adjustment to the time of the consecutive stresses, either through extended durations or rests, is to say they violated a rhythmic principle found throughout the ancient world, the principle of alternation, the same principle that underlies modern iambic and trochaic forms. Certainly it is wrong to assume that our modern dislike of clashing stress developed as a comparatively recent (that is, post-medieval) phenomenon, for the modern insistence on a buffer of some sort between contiguous stresses has its parallel throughout antiquity. Within the Indo-European group, Vedic, Greek, and Latin all consistently avoid an arrangement of consecutive syllables carrying the beat. One can see the principle rather well, for example, in Ovid's Elegiacs: _/ ~ r \L-\_L , i - / r ~ | L r~.\ J. cum subit mi us tns tissima noctis i magq J. r,f I ./ Ll / A| / i ^ |_/ ' P& I I | qua mini | supre mum |te~mpus in | urbe ru|it ~ | _/. _ | _L AA | j. cum repe to noc! tern qua tot mihi cara re ITqui JL ~ ~ \L ~ H A| I~ ~ \ -L ~ ~V labitur | ex ocu [Us | nunc quoque | gutta me [is _ ~ ~ | - / ~ ~ | 1 A Nor is there any reason to think that the stressed dialects of Italic were any different. The Iguvine chants are essentially trochaic and the surviving verse in Old Latin is mainly trochaic, or dactylic. Consecutive stresses are very rare; almost always the stresses are separated by at least one unstressed syllable, and, when they are not, the exceptional character of the pattern prompts one to fill the hiatus with a rest /

X

/

X

X

hone |oino ploirume

r / r u r LT

- or to extend the duration on the stressed syllable in the truncated foot: /

I x

/.

x

x

none oino ploirume.

r

r p r LT

Within the Indo-European family, therefore, German seems to have

93

Clashing Stress

been different. So too Celtic. But that it was ever thus in these two languages has to be seriously doubted. In German, for instance, a high percentage of consecutive stresses is the consequence of either decayed (and subsequently lost) inflexions between discrete lexical / X / items (e.g., *handu + stress > hand + stress) or the disappearance of an unstressed composition vowel (sometimes an inflexional morpheme) originally attached to the first component of a compound (e.g., *mudabanan > mudbonan, *dagahwila > dasghwla). To dwell for a moment on the latter, which is less familiar. The earliest Germanic compounds are sometimes called 'primary compounds/ that is to say, compounds formed by the union of independent items, the first element of which preserved its stem vowel and carried no inflexional forms (e.g., Goth, handu + waurhts > handui i ii waurhts, wadja + bokos > wadjabokos). In surviving Old English this bridging vowel has virtually disappeared, except for an occasional appearance in the earliest texts (e.g., stanegella, gund aeswilge, cynidom, endistab, reccileas, dumweard)A These primary compounds should be distinguished from another class called 'secondary compounds/ which typically preserved a case form with the first element (e.g., Goth. baurgs 'of the city' + waddjus 'wall' > baurgswaddjus 'city wall', ON hjalps 'of help' + madr 'man' > hjalpsmadr 'helper'), though at first the case of the initial element was possibly restricted to the genitive and only in time extended to other grammatical categories. Of these two classes the former appears to have been the older. According to Carr, secondary compounds were a development later than Primitive Germanic and probably arose in Primitive West Germanic.5 Even so, in Old English few secondary compounds survive, outside descriptions of time (e.g., sunnandseg, uhtantid, restedxg), relationships (e.g., tunesman, oxauhyrde, aehtemann) and botanical forms (e.g., gatetreow, haranwyrt). Plenty of other Old English compounds also have a vowel in the bridge of these two elements, but these are usually thought to be late accretions and quite different (e.g., weregild, godefrxtwe). Amongst the primary compounds the preservation of the stem vowel was apparently such a powerful instinct that -n stems, which should show no composition vowel in the bridge, analogically preserved a vowel as well (e.g., Goth, gumakunds). The -s stems alone seem to have wanted for this bridging vowel. Phonologically, the development of the composition vowel was regular: in Old English its

94

Old English Metre

tendency was to weaken eventually to -e or to be lost altogether, though some older forms do survive (e.g., hygiponcum, beadufolm, diverg&dostla). The exact date of the disappearance of the composition vowel cannot be established, since the process must have taken considerable time, but rough limits may at least be gauged from surviving forms within the various German dialects. What is interesting about these limits is that they are not distantly removed in time from AD 800, when our knowledge of early German verse essentially begins. One can infer this from surviving runic inscriptions, which ordinarily carry the oldest linguistic forms. Admittedly caution is needed here, not only in matters of transcription but also in interpretation and dating. Still, enough compounded forms survive to permit cautious generalization. Significantly, the vowel is found in a number of compounds on stones and artifacts from the fifth century or earlier: Karstad Stone: aljflmarkiR R6 Stone: StainawarijaR / SairawidaR Tune Stone: witadflhlaiftan / wo6wride Gallehus Horn: HlewflgastiR Kragehul Lance: Answgisalas Torsbjaerg Scabbard: Owl&wt'ewaR. The same is true in the sixth century or later: M^jebro Stone: Anoana Skarkind Stone: Skmf>01eu6aR Noleby Stone: ragina ku[n]So Kjolerig Stone: HagustaldaR Seeland Bracteate: faravisa Tjurko Bracteate: kum'mu[n]5iu. On the other hand, the vowel is absent in compounds from the seventh century on: Eggjum Stone: bormol>a Bjorketorp Stone: haidruno Solvesborg Stone: Asmu[n]t,

95

Clashing Stress

It would thus seem that the composition vowel began to disappear about AD 600. The precise conditions associated with this reduction are not universally agreed upon. Carr thinks that the vowel began to erode first after long stems, then after short stems.6 The evidence for this assumption, while inconclusive in the runic inscriptions, is much stronger elsewhere. In Old Norse the vowels of long stems in the first element of compounds give evidence of phonological shifts before the seventh century, whereas vowels in the short stems do not show corresponding shifts until considerably later. It seems too that the composition vowel was dropped in certain environments: before h (e.g., hauhhairts), w (e.g., Dagvaldus), another vowel (e.g., haimopli); between identical or closely related sounds (e.g., elland); and after polysyllabic stems (e.g., midjungards). In Beowulf it has been estimated that on the average a nominal compound occurs about every four half-lines.7 Even in The Battle of Maldon, a very late production, the occurrence is about every ten half-lines. Compared with other early Germanic verse this is a very high rate; the Heliand, much earlier than Maldon, of course, has no greater frequency; the Hildebrandslied, less; so too the Muspilli, which has a frequency of about one nominal compound for every sixteen half-lines. Old English verse is thus comparatively replete with compounds, and a high percentage of the clashing stresses may be traced directly to this distinction, subsequent to the gradual disappearance of the composition vowel from about AD 600 on. In view of what is known about the evolution of Germanic compounds, it would seem that in antiquity the elements of surviving compounds were most often fuller and probably claimed measures for themselves. For instance, a compound like m&gburge undoubtedly looked more like *maga + 'city/ with each element trochaic and at some time presumably a measure unto itself. Compare the following forms: Gothic:

airl>flkunds

faihwgairns frumabaur

OE:

eordcund cf eorlcund, gastcund, hellcund, etc. feohgeorn frumbearn

96

Old English Metre grundwwaddjus gumakunds himinakunds honduwaurhts harduhairtei missfldets missflleiks

grundweall gumcynn heofoncund handworht heardheort misdsed misllc cf misselic und£urrifmats undernmete wit)iflwairf)s witerweard

Because the stem preceding the composition vowel in the first element usually carried alliteration and was frequently the hofudstafr for the full line, it would seem reasonable to think that the eventual loss of the composition vowel in the bridge between the two elements was compensated either by a rest before the second stress, as between the beats in classical antiquity or, alternatively, by a prolongation of the alliterative stem. Of these two possibilities, the first seems the less likely since it is a characteristic of compounds that over time the separate elements tend to coalesce into one, both semantically / x and temporally. By AD 800, for instance, a name like H&dcyn had probably lost the composite sense of Haed (headu? 'war') and cyn (cynnl 'race') as well as the temporal distinction of each part. At the same time the contrast in the intensity of the two stresses would have become very marked, with an eventual descent of the second element / x into unstressed status (e.g., Hxdcyn). This kind of coalescence would seem to preclude the possibility of a pause between the original elements. It seems far more likely, at least during the period of the composition vowel's disappearance, that compensation for this loss came in the form of added duration on the alliterative stem of the first element and that this added duration arose only when the first stress in the compound, now in truncated form, had gained in intensity over the second. If one acknowledges that most 'clashing' stresses in Old English verse are a consequence of syllabic loss, primarily the loss of stem vowels between stressed items, either discrete or compounded, then it would seem that 'clashing' stress was not occasioned by some quirk of national disposition, some national fondness for a rhythm that set

97

Clashing Stress

the German race apart from other Indo-European peoples, who found consecutive stresses displeasing, but by gradual changes in the language over long periods of time. One is then obliged to ask whether these gradual changes in the language would have caused an originally unacceptable rhythm to become in time acceptable or whether the language in its changed form had to adapt to a set of ancient, inherited rhythms to which itself it had probably long before given birth. It is a difficult question, and I fear there can be no definite answer. No doubt over time the verse that we know as Old English changed significantly, but at the same time it is difficult to believe that the underlying rhythms saw changes as radical as a naked abandonment of the principle of alternation. In my opinion there must have been some compensation for the loss of unstressed syllables/and, as indicated above, I think this compensation probably came in the form of lengthened duration on surviving syllables in the truncated feet.

CHAPTER SIX

Towards a New Paradigm

The Foot TIME

PRINCIPLE: the feet in any given half-line are of equal duration. In Old English studies, Heusler and Pope were among the first to draw attention to past misconceptions about the foot. Previous discussions, by concentrating solely on the distinction between quantities or between stressed and unstressed syllables, obscured and even concealed something fundamental: namely, that each foot is of equivalent time and that the traditional notation is deficient in signalling the distribution of syllables through time. For their efforts neither escaped criticism, however. In English the attack was first mounted by Baum,1 then Bliss,2 Taglicht,3 Cabled and others.5 All make much the same points: that the systems are unhistorical and that they do not work in practice. Typical is Bliss's assessment: The current interpretation [1958] of modern English verse is that it is chronometric: that is, that its stresses recur at equal intervals irrespective of the amount of speech material that separates them. This theory has the advantage that it is susceptible of verification, though it does not appear that the

99

Towards a New Paradigm verification has ever been done. Recent interpreters of Old English verse, notably Heusler and Pope, have attempted to apply this theory to Old English, on the explicit assumption that the fundamental structure of Old English verse is the same as that of modern English verse; there is absolutely no evidence for this assumption, and in fact the widespread and deepseated changes which the English language underwent during the Middle English period render it exceedingly implausible. Moreover, the chronometric theory is even more difficult to apply to Old English than to modern English verse, because of the greater variety of speech-material which the former allows.6

Exactly what Bliss means towards the end is not immediately clear, but his general message is: that Pope and Heusler have illegitimately imposed a modern feature (chronometry) on something ancient and are thus guilty of gross anachronism. 'The only contemporary music of which we have any detailed knowledge/ he proceeds to argue, 'the Gregorian chant, is certainly not isochronous: its rhythm is variable, and is entirely dependent on the natural prose rhythm of the words sung; any such arbitrary lengthening of words and syllables as is required by the chronometric theory is quite alien to its nature.'7 By way of illustrating the difficulty of equalizing the time in given half-lines as scanned by Pope, Bliss points to the halfline 'wis welt>ungen/ To make wis equivalent to wetyungen, he says, it must be drawled out 'to an impossible length' or have its measure filled up with a pause that 'breaks up the sense of the verse.' The attack on historical grounds was also taken up by Cable. 'Pope/ says Cable, 'has imposed a modern conception of rhythm, derived from familiar music of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, upon eighth-century poetry.'8 In the Preface to his 1966 edition Pope had defended his disregard of Gregorian chant with the observation that 'there would seem to be no likelihood that Old English verse, with its deep roots in the Germanic past, had at any time experienced the influence of a type of music devised in the Mediterranean world for the chanting of liturgical prose/9 To which Cable replies, 'The point, of course, is not that Gregorian chant influenced Old English poetry (though in eighth-century England, mutual influence would by

ioo

Old English Metre

no means have been impossible) but that no medieval music, as far as we know, had isochronous measures.'10 This attack on historical grounds is much confused by a shift in the debate away from the measures of Old English verse to a discussion of what might or might not have been the character of ancient music. In part Pope is to blame for the direction the debate has taken because of his insistence that Old English verse was sung and that its rhythm could be expressed intuitively in musical notation, which is mathematically precise. Whether or not Old English verse, all or in part, was sung or intoned or spoken is not known, though prima facie evidence suggests that at least some was sung. By the same token, it is not known whether ancient music was isochronous or not. About ancient verse we know much more. And since Heusler and Pope have been accused of anachronisms, it would seem necessary to say something about the nature of this ancient verse. Greek verse, we do know, was especially constrained by time. There the basic units were a short syllable (~), equivalent to one mora, and a long syllable (-), equivalent to two morae. From these basic units, feet of diverse looks but of equivalent time could be constructed (e.g., — = -~~). Admittedly, in certain Greek verse the patterns within the feet can create an impression that the tempo was sometimes irregular. This impression arises primarily because in certain environments a long syllable could be substituted for a short syllable (e.g., "~|~~ and~~|-~) and because specific Greek forms (e.g., the Glyconic: ~ _ ~ _ ) are not readily broken into base patterns.11 The point is that at first sight neither these substitutions nor these divisions seem reconcilable with a base equation of ~ = ~~. But if one rejects the notion that the ratio of every long syllable to every other must be mathematically precise; and if one recognizes that the duration of long and short syllables could be protracted or reduced (in some environments to zero, as with syncopation), then, as support for the argument that at least some Greek verse ran in irregular time, these observations lose much of their strength. Experiments in fact show that - is not an exact equivalent of w ~ and that within certain parameters both - and ~ ~ are of variable durations. In performance, therefore, the equation '- = ~ ~ / though ideal, could only be considered of general and approximate application. We also know that the Roman poets consciously imitated the pro-

ioi

Towards a New Paradigm

sodic features of Greek verse, in particular its strict attention to time intervals in the feet. As in Greek, the base measurements of time were - and -. But again, as in Greek, these equivalencies were only approximate, since protractions and contractions of duration were also permitted. In places these variations can be rather complicated, as the following line from Horace attests: eras donlaberislhaddo

i r p in pi rir/i

Here the first foot ( \cfas don-\) is an irrational spondee, with reduction of the long syllable don- to ~; the second ( \-aberis\) is a cyclic dactyl, also with reduction in time; the third (\hae-l) is protracted; and the fourth (\-do\ ) is terminated by a rest equivalent to ~.12 If we were insecure in our belief that in the ancient world equivalence of time was a dominant constraint in the foot, we could not scan Horace's line in traditional fashion. Fortunately, we can be confident about the operation of this constraint, as could the poets, who in their own day relied upon this awareness in their audience when, as in the case of Horace, they were bending the constraint to its limits while yet writing metrically. The oldest accentual verse seems to have been under strict temporal constraints too. Inspection of the Iguvine chants leaves little doubt that the feet in any half-line, which are dominantly trochaic

(/*)/x\x/x totam tarsinatem trifo tarsinatem /x^x x tuscer .rjaEarcer^.iipuscer nornner / A /x x nerAffiitu ansffiitu.

/x\x/x /xx/x \ A£x x

- were meant to be of equivalent duration. The same is true of the surviving non-Saturnian chants, prayers and wise sayings in Old Latin: /x/x /x^x x

Novumvetus vim/m bjbo Novo veteri morbo mecleor.

/x/x /x/5-x

Though the number of unstressed syllables in the matched feet fre-

102

Old English Metre

quently varies by a count of one, as when a dactylic foot is matched with a trochaic foot (e.g., Vosque terrestreV), it is clear from other half-lines within the same verse, where equivalence is obvious (e.g., / X j x \ X / X 'te hoc fercto obmovendo'), that a differential of one unstressed syllable in paired feet should not be interpreted as a change in the time interval from one foot to the next. Only in Saturnian verse does one find consistency in a differential of more than one unstressed syllable in the respective feet. But even here a foot never contains more than three unstressed syllables. In the first half-line, three unstressed syllables in a foot is actually rare and never occurs more than once in a half-line. In the second half-line, three unstressed syllables are commonly found in a foot, but only in the first foot. In my opinion this differential should be regarded not as a shift in time from foot to foot but as a shift in the durative ratio of the elements comprising the feet. One additional point should be made. A scholar like Bede, and before him Augustine, men who were familiar with, indeed wrote, both quantitative and accentual Latin verse, must have been intimately acquainted with the constraint of time within a foot. Yet there is no evidence to suggest that either of these scholars, or any other, thought that a foot of accentual verse was anything other than what they understood a foot to mean from their classical training. Of course, they would have recognized differences, differences in the number of syllables that accentual verse permitted from foot to foot and also differences in the combination of syllabic length permitted in these feet. But it is difficult to believe that these differences extended to time, that the feet comprising a larger metrical unit - say, a half-line could be of indeterminate and variable duration. If they had, this fundamental difference would surely have been explicitly stated somewhere in the literature. THE B O U N D A R Y

PRINCIPLE: a foot usually does, but need not always, coincide with a word boundary. Russom claims as a fundamental principle that in Old English verse 'every foot boundary must coincide with a word boundary.'13 So too

103

Towards a New Paradigm

Heusler and Pope. Russom's reason for thinking this derives from a general observation: that poets have a tendency to align with linguistic boundaries both their verses and the feet that make up their verses. In accordance with this principle, Russom provides a specific list of allowable foot patterns in Old English verse, ranging from a single unstressed syllable (x) to four syllables carrying two stresses of different intensity (/xx\). What he finds common in these diverse patterns is that they all correspond with native Old English word patterns. His idea is that once one can uncover the patterns of stress and unstress in common Old English words, this knowledge can be used to divide each Old English half-line into its 'natural' constituent parts. For instance, since Old English words for the most part stress the root and never pattern as 'xx// one could rule out the possibility that a foot would ever be structured in this way. On the other hand, a pattern like '/\x' is frequently found in Old English compounds. Information of this sort could then be used to divide a half-line such as —

•L.

?

\

'I>aet wees god cyning (Beowulf [B.] lib) into 'I>aet waes I god cyning' X

X

and to recognize that other divisions, such as Sievers's 'I>aet wees god I cyning/ are not correct. Few will quarrel with Russom's observation that foot and line endings frequently correspond with word boundaries. However, I suspect that many will object to his extension of this tendency to a categorical rule. In fact, this constraint does not pertain in English verse of any period that I know of. The principle is certainly violated in post-Renaissance verse: X

/

I

X

X

^ I

X

X

/ . X X

/

I sprang I to the stir'rup and Jo Iris and he On purl pie peaks I a deelper shade I descenl ding Round from I his par|tld forellckk manlly hung. And in medieval verse: ./

X

IX

/

He wasla verlray, parlfit genltil knyght. Within the English verse tradition two factors - our habit of stressing the root and our love of iambic metre - virtually guarantee that a

104

Old English Metre

high percentage of feet will not correspond with word boundaries. Even within trochaic and dactylic verse the principle does not always hold: Earnest! earthless, lequal, atltuneable,lvaulty, vo I luminous, stupendous In ancient verse, of course, the principle is violated all the time: Arma vilrumque calno Troilae quijgrimus abloris cum subitlillilus tris|tissima|noctis ilmago. The notion that a foot must correspond with a word boundary ignores experimental evidence showing that, outside artificial speech conditions (e.g., dictation), juncture is signalled not only by word boundary but also by intonation and duration. Speech calls for the allocation of syllables in contours, which in artificially slowed delivery tend to be bound by the word, but which in speech delivered at a normal rate tend to exceed the word boundary. 'As one proceeds from artificially slow speech to a more normal discourse tempo,' note Devine and Stephens, 'pauses between syntactically coherent words are increasingly deleted as the words and phrases of the syntax become integrated with higher level phonological units.'1"* In other words, coincidence of the foot boundary with the word boundary, as a categorical rule, might only be expected in either a very primitive verse, wherein traditional patterns of stress and unstress were at a formative stage, or in verse that deliberately ignored intonation contours and variability of duration, as sometimes occurs in chants. Old English verse would seem to be neither so primitive nor so artificial. At some period in the development of English metre Russom's principle probably did operate as a basic constraint. But the patterns that arose as a consequence of this constraint must have developed at a time much earlier than the eighth century AD, the earliest tentative date given for surviving Old English verse. Long before this time the foot must have begun to encroach upon syllables beyond the word boundary. We must remember, too, that the shape of individual items in the Old English lexicon during the eighth or ninth century AD had changed significantly from their primitive forms. How were these shifting linguistic boundaries reconciled with traditional rhythms? Are

1O5

Towards a New Paradigm

we to believe that as the word boundaries of individual words changed (as with the loss of inflexions, for instance) the boundaries of the feet changed too? If so, then Germanic metre must have undergone progressive and radical change. I suppose it is possible that our metric patterns evolved in this manner. But the history of prosody in diverse languages and cultures suggests that metrical patterns are ordinarily highly resistant to change. Over long stretches of time, when a pattern has become traditional it is usually the language, not the pattern, that has to accommodate to the dynamics of further change. One can see a form of this accommodation rather well, for instance, in post-medieval iambic and trochaic English verse. Historically, as the language increased its dependence on function words, the necessity arose, if traditional patterns were to be preserved, for these function words to occupy positions of stress that in antiquity had once been the domain of semantically rich words. Now no English poet alive is unaware of the dangers entailed by these new conditions. STRESSED AND UNSTRESSED SYLLABLES

Unstressed Syllables Absence of stress is usually associated with: (a) non-alliterating monosyllabic and disyllabic words from specific grammatical categories occupying normal syntactic positions: in particular, prepositions, demonstratives, auxiliaries, and pronouns; (b) inflexions; (c) medial syllables in uncompounded nouns, subsequent to initial long, stressed syllables; (d) most prefixes; (e) non-alliterating adverbs de-emphasized by strong stress in their immediate environment. Stressed Syllables Nature of Stress Primary (/) The following are candidates for primary stress: (a) alliterating syllables;

106

Old English Metre

(b) semantically rich words: in particular, nouns, adjectives, verbs, and adverbs; (c) normally unstressed words displaced from their usual syntactic position; (d) normally unstressed words in their usual syntactic position but occupying stressed slots. Secondary (\) Secondary stress ordinarily falls upon: (a) the second element of compounds; (b) candidates for primary stress whose stress is subordinate to that of other stressed syllables in the same half-line, principally alliterating syllables; (c) normally unstressed syllables at the head of half-lines. Since category (c), immediately above, is the most contentious of all the categories of stress (and fundamental to this paradigm), the character of this stress might be illustrated by the following paired halflines in Beowulf, selected from Kurylowicz:^ ac him on hrefre (1878) \ y. / x. x / ac him dryhten forgeaf (696)

/xx/x \x/xx/

gif i^ ae*t frearfl (1477) gif i£ wist! hu (2519)

/xx/x \x/x/

no he mid hea'rme (1892) no he wiht fram me (541)

/xx/x \x/x/

I>onne he aet gude (1535) I>onne he tor saecce baer (2686)

/xxx/x \xxx/x/

8^ h^ne* gesohton (2204) M heo to fenne gang (1295)

/xxx/x \xx/x/

d3arhel>y fyrste (2573) t>aer waes sang ond sweg (1063)

/xx/x \x/x/

swa he nl forwyrnde (1142) swa he selfa baed (29)

/xxx/x \x/x/

\

y

_\_

_X.

/

/

X

y

/

I

io7

Towards a New Paradigm /

x

-

x

/ A

sy56an hie gefricgead (3003) \ x — JL ' x x / x sy66an hie 6a maerda geslogon Paes 6e icxmoste (2797) Paes Pe him God seald^ (1751) /

X

/

(2996)

/xxx/x \xxx/xx/x /xx/x \xx//x

s^ waes 6r> ^am Sreate; (2406) sefwaes betera 6onne~lc (469)

/xxx/x \x/xxx/

Pe he~wi6 E>am wyrme (2400) Pe he him aer forgeaf (2606)

/xxx/x \xx/xx/

/

X

y

Y

/

y

Past he Paes gewinnes (1721) \ _x x / x x L Paet he for eaxlum gestod (358) _/

_x

x

£

x

/

x

/xxx/x \xx/xx/

he\ _5aX mid Paere sorhge (2468) _ j l x 2 o v - r / he Pa fag gewat (1263)

/xx5cx/x \x/x/

hwaePre he gemunde (1270) hwae"9re him God Ode (2874)

/xxx/x \xx//x

\

y

/

y

X

/

X

Y

'

X

/

X

Peah Pe he [ne] meahte (1130) x 2! / — Pe~ah 5e he geond sy (1831)

/xxx/x \xx/x

wolde se Ia6a (2305) wolde dom Codes (2858)

/xx/x \x//x

X

/ X — — X haefde Pa gefrunen (2403) i \ri* — * "~~^ ~" /V-.Q1 18 haefde mare maagen o )

/

X

x

/

x

\

waes 5a gebolgen 2304) waes se grimma gaest (102)

/xxx/x \\/\l\

/xx/x \x/x/

Cf Jiet (1114), het (198); frehf (1035), heht (1808); cwsed (92), cws^f (199); gewot (115), grawf (1601); sohte (3067), so/ite (376); eorfp (358), 'code (612); sea/rfe (2994), sealde (672); com (720), com (702); scolde (1443), scolde (805); geseah (728), gesea/i (926); hea/rf (2247), heald (948); fieo/d (2183), heold (2737); s^egde (2632), sa^gde (1809); geaf (2623), ^a/ (2430).

io8

Old English Metre

Tertiary (x) According to Bliss,16 tertiary stress is found under the following conditions: (i) In compounds that: (a) have undergone certain shifts: (1) where the meaning of the word has departed from the composite sense of the parts; (ii) where the meaning of the second element is obsolete; (iii) where the second element has seen significant phonetic change; (b) have a part of a proper noun as the second element; (c) have a part of a pronominal compound as the second element; (d) contain certain suffixes; (e) contain certain prefixes. (2) All long or disyllabic derivative or formative endings. It is my view that what contrast there was between syllables carrying tertiary stress and no stress must have been subtle and in large measure contingent upon the antiquity of the compounded or derived forms, about whose chronological development we unfortunately know very little. When we say that a certain syllable carried tertiary stress we are really referring to a theoretical and unspecified actual period in the whole word's development, a period that might or might not have corresponded with the time when the word was written down. The variables are many, and our margin for error is therefore considerable. For this reason, tertiary stress is here not distinguished from absence of stress; both are signalled by 'x/ which has only contrastive meaning. Position of Stress PRINCIPLE: stress occurs at the head of each foot. There is a popular misconception, initiated by certain Indo-Europeanists specializing in ancient Indie and Greek forms and promoted by people with a deep knowledge of English poetry after the French invasion (people like Fry), that English was 'naturally' iambic. In Italic and German the early habit of stressing the root or stem (documented in numerous morphological changes, which this habit caused) suggests that in the primitive verse of these dialects (as in the Iguvine chants) the dominant patterns were trochaic and dactylic - that is to

io9

Towards a New Paradigm

say, the stresses were initial and came at the head of the feet (see 'Length/ below). More sophisticated subsequent poetry permitted an extension of the foot beyond the word boundary and sometimes even beyond the half-line, so that stresses do not always coincide with word or half-line openings (see chapter 3); however, this encroachment would not seem to have interfered with the original structure of the foot, which carried the beat on the initial syllable. RESOLUTION

PRINCIPLE: resolution is permitted when a short syllable carrying the beat is followed immediately by another short syllable within the same word. Experiments in acoustics show that two short syllables in sequence have longer duration than one long syllable. However, since the duration of a long syllable cannot be expressed as a mathematically precise and inflexible unit, it is a prosodic commonplace that two short syllables in succession may satisfactorily approximate the duration of a long syllable, provided the two successive short syllables are not separated by a word boundary. Others believe that this approximate equivalence is also violated when the two successive short syllables are themselves followed by a word boundary. Most metrists are prepared to accept the first of these constraints (that there can be no resolution across a word boundary) and to question the validity of the second. But the matter is far from simple. Greek, for instance, seems to permit resolution of successive short syllables when followed immediately by a word boundary: 7/

-^

—

\

y •-

"-7 /

•-

acrco TTOI 8e||7tXaKe OE cealf, *foti > OE/et) and many contractions (e.g., *twio^p > OE tweo, *hwe%il > OE hiveol); even so, it is still exceedingly well preserved in a high percentage of Sievers's Type A patterns (/x /x): e.g., *aipos + ... > OEapas + ..., *godai + ... > OEgdde + ...)• —

-™

' X

-L-

Dactylic (/xx) Alongside these trochaic patterns must have once coexisted an almost equal number of dactylic patterns. These were the result of a variety of conditions: inflected monosyllabic forms (e.g., L. rex > revibus, vis _l x x Si. _/ X x _ > virium), inflected disyllabic forms (e.g., L. miles > militem, nomen 1 X . , 1 1 . , / X / X .L ? > nomina), trisyllabic stems (e.g., L. arbiter, portions, copia; cf OE earfode), and so forth. Within the word boundary these dactylic forms are in German somewhat diminished in certain categories by a reduc/ X ^ tion of the final unstressed syllable (even in Gothic: e.g., *stainumiz > stainam, cf OE stanum; but note blindhn$, tuggono) and syncopation of the medial vowel after a long initial syllable (e.g., OE Grendles I Grendeles; cf L. niatrem and Sanskrit (Skt) mataram). x

X

x

x

Mixing of Measures Since x was of indeterminate length, it is not uncommon to find - a feature usually avoided in classical verse - that these two measures (trochaic and dactylic) are often paired within a half-line: L. audiiluppiter OE. mihtigan|Dnhtne (B. 13983).

/xl/xx /xxl/x

Constraint This mixing of measures was, however, constrained. Judging from Saturnian verse, where dactylic forms are much more common to the left than to the right, it would seem that in Latin a dactylic cadence

112

Old English Metre

became increasingly undesirable. Old English was apparently no different; indeed, traditional scansion (e.g., that of Sievers) says that the pattern does not occur in the final measure. However, this doctrine appears to be contradicted by such half-lines as, segen g[yi]denne (B. 4/b) Beowulf Scyldinga (B. 53b) ond gefraetwade (B. 963) / X X ymbsittendra (B. 9b), whose final measures have their counterparts at the other end of the half-line: egsode* eorlfas] (B. 6a) irenna cyst (B. 8ozb). Most of the words responsible for this pattern do have descending stress: inflexional (e.g., -sittendm) and compound (e.g., Scyldinga, sepelingas)- In these words the middle syllable does seem to have heavier stress than the final syllable. But it is very doubtful that this order of stress would be true of words like gefrxtwade and gyldenne, since the same (or comparable) forms show characteristic weakening of the medial vowel (e.g., frseturian > frxtwode > fraetwade > frsetiuede; '3emec frsetwede'; gylden > gyld(-)ncm: 'to Samgyldnan gylde'). Cf Russom,18 who scans Sievers's Type c 'j*enden reafode' as xx | /xx and Type Da 'last sceawedon' as /1 /xx. Of course, one can never be certain about stress, particularly in verse, where the demands of metre or the idiosyncracies of performance can significantly alter received pronunciation. Even so, it would seem most unlikely that the middle syllables of words like frxtwade, irenna, gyldenne (and even Scyldinga and -sittendra) could take stress comparable to, say, -dxdum in lofdxdum. or -nsessas in ssensessas. Encroachment If these rhythmic patterns first arose from the interior rhythmic structures of the vocabulary of each language, as seems probable, then it

H3

Towards a New Paradigm

could not have been long before the imprint of these rhythmic structures was felt outside the word boundary. Old Latin, which though ancient was yet very sophisticated, already shows this development: mactus hoc fercto

/xx I /x

And by the Old English period the practice was very common: /

X

/

X

men ne cunnon (B. 5ob) / x x / . secgan to so6e B. 513). x

/x I /x / , , /xx I /x

One additional development of significance, a consequence of shifting stress patterns in certain formations, was to allow the rhythmic pattern to impress itself even upon the initial syllable of a stress-bearing word. This form of encroachment is best seen in Latin, where the penultimate rule had such profound impact: /

X

X I,/

X

/

omnes caellestes / X X I / X vosque ter|restres.

I /

/xx I /x / I / /xx I /x

Old English, which generally speaking stressed as far to the left of a word as possible, only exhibits this tendency in a few select formations, such as when a prefix is absorbed into a preceding measure: gledum forl grunden

(6.26773).

/xxl/x

'Light' Feet (\x and \xx) Since intensity of stress characteristically varies through trisyllabic and polysyllabic words, even in the earliest times this differential had wider meaning than simple contrast between a stressed and an unstressed syllable. Latin, which most often threw the penultimate (stress-bearing) and final (unstressed) syllables into high contrast, yet retained a vestigial instinct to stress the initial syllable. In most trisyllabic words this instinct had by recorded times lost out to the newer and more powerful habit of stressing the penultimate syllable. But in words of four syllables or more the old instinct and the penultimate rule were not in conflict. Thus words with this internal structure seem

114

Old English Metre

to have carried two stresses or more. In times that antedate our records it is likely that in relative intensity the initial syllable in a foursyllable word was primary, and the penultimate, secondary; but in surviving Old Latin verse this order is almost certainly reversed (e.g., pollucenda, immolando). In six-syllable words there may even have been three levels of stress intensity: e.g., valetudinemqiie. Almost from the first, then, a common variation in the trochaic measure (/x) must have been \x. Old English shows no parallel to this shift in primary stress from the initial syllable; as in primitive Latin, the second stress in a four-syllable word appears to have been of lesser intensity. For the most part this difference may be attributed to an increasing contrast between the two stressed roots of compounds, where the old habit of emphasizing the initial held sway and, under this influence, the stress of the second element weakened progressively. In Old English, therefore, the weakened trochaic form (\x), where it appears in a polysyllabic word, appears to the right, whereas in Latin it is found to the left: /

X

\

X

hringedsteman (6.11313).

/xl\x

The weakened dactylic form (\xx) occurs principally in the first measure — X

/

06 I>eet him aighwylc (B. 93)

\xx I /x

- and only occasionally in the final measure: ymbsittendra (B. 9b).

/ I \xx

Expanded Pattern (/or\x(x) > /or\xxx) In classical literature this pattern rarely occurred within the word boundary. Greek, which limited to two the number of unaccented syllables between the accent and the end of the word, excluded any possibility of its development; and Latin, since it followed Greek in adopting the penultimate rule, was equally prohibitive. Only in certain Plautine forms (e.g., mulierem) is the pattern at all visible, and even here it is anything but common. In earlier times still, many four-

115

Towards a New Paradigm

syllables must have carried initial stress (e.g., *confacere > conficere, *dexiteros > dexter); in such configurations, however, it seems probable that the third syllable did not entirely escape stress (on the other hand, note a form like sociotas > societas, where the reduction of o to I xx x I ""* e would seem the result of a stress pattern of either sociotas or sociotas). When it did occur, then, the expanded pattern was almost always the result of accretion beyond the boundary of a stress-bearing word. This kind of accretion is exceedingly common in the Saturnians. Sometimes it is a consequence of a half-line structure of threesyllable word plus one-syllable word plus two-syllable word, wherein the first word carries the pattern '/xx' and the second word is unstressed: I

x

x

x

.

i

x

lacrimis cunv multis fieri perlgentes.

/xxx I /x /^xx' / x

But far more frequently it arises in a structure of three-syllable word plus three-syllable word, when the second word has an unstressed initial: /

X

Y

y

/

Y

hominum for I tunas traditus thelsauro.

I***- ' / x /xxx I /x

As mentioned elsewhere, during the period of universal (or, perhaps better, dominant) initial stress, this last structure once yielded two dactylic measures (/xx /xx); consequently proliferation of the expanded pattern (/xxx) would appear to have been a comparatively late phenomenon, for the most part traceable in time to the shift from initial to penultimate stress. In German, as in Latin, the pattern seems to have evolved not from the interior structure of individual words but as a result of certain syntactic formations, encouraged doubtless by the language's increasing dependence on demonstratives, prepositions, connectives, prefixes, and the like, all of which were ordinarily unstressed: /

X

X

X

i

/

X

winder aefterl wundre (6.931) dryeorig ond ge I drefed (B. 14173) WTston ond ne Iwendon (B. 16043).

/xxxl/x /xxx I /x /xxx I /x

n6

Old English Metre

Just how extensive the distribution of x could be through a measure is a subject of debate. In the traditional systems of Sievers, Bliss, and others, it is said that x can extend over as many as seven syllables (xxxxxxx/\: 'Hyrde ic f»it hi 6one healsbeah/B. 21723). In my opinion this claim is extraordinary and necessitated by either an unwillingness to allocate stress where it ought to be allocated or an insistence upon division of the half-line into two measures. If temporal constraints operated within the foot, as I think they did, then it is beyond belief that articulation could be so rapid as to crowd anywhere from five to seven syllables into a time equivalence given to, say, -an in 'gomban gyldan.' Clearly seven syllables exceeds the upper limit. How many unstressed syllables a foot of Old English verse could tolerate cannot be definitively stated. However, everything we know about ancient verse suggests that the upper limit was probably three. This number is the maximum permitted not only in classical Greek and Latin verse but also in accentual Umbrian and Old Latin. Reduced Measure (/ or \ ) Reduction of the measure from /x(xx) or \x(xx) to / or \ can in part be attributed to the loss of common Germanic vowels. For the nature of this loss and its approximate period the most useful comparisons for Old English are the runic inscriptions and Gothic: e.g., Runic ON gastiR (nominative singular) > gestr, cf. *^astiz > Goth. gasts, OE giest; Runic ON staina (accusative singular), *stainam > Goth. stain, OE stan; *tosme > Goth, pamma, OE paim, pom, Goth, pata, OE p&t; *feXu> Goth. faihu(cf L. pecu), OEfeoh; Goth fbtus (cf Greek rco'uq), OE fot *razdho > Goth, razda, OE reord; Goth, hana, OE hxn, cf OE hana; Goth, hardus (nominative singular masculine), OE heard, cf Goth, heardu (nominative singular feminine), OE heard; Goth, liuhap, OE leoht, cf Greek tevKoq; Goth, mizdo, OE meord, cf Greek jiio'Qoc, Goth, kuni, *kunjo > POE *kynnu > OE cynn. That this reduction was an ongoing process from very ancient times is evidenced by a wealth of other material: e.g., *fimfi > Goth, fimf, OE ftf cf Greek rcevie L. quinque; *warpi> Goth, warp, OE wearp, cf Skt w-varta; *roudhos > Goth, rdups, OE read, cf Greek epx>6po, L. genu. It would seem a reasonable inference,

117

Towards a New Paradigm

therefore, that in German the reduced measure probably had its roots in the deep past. Compensation A reduced foot (/ A )was made possible by either: (a) a rest (to fill the time) nine famous Imen^ or (b) protracted duration on the accented syllable >

nine men. ine iiramous If; Compare the following lines from Euripides' Helena: E\) pcottav 0a vovioq (350) U01)

-A

aeia|0pr|vr|p,a|bi £o |v(p8a (174)

X,ai |ioppi)|ko\) aaes frofre gebad, \x /x / weox under wolcnum weor5m>Tidum Pah. / |\x |/ S

I think it unfortunate that Pope, whose instincts were so often right, was locked into a belief that each half-line must be of equivalent time. In the primitive period the rhythmic unit of the half-line or the full line was likely very regular, but little in the surviving Indo-European accentual tradition that is ancient, outside chants, has the regu-

n8

Old English Metre

larity that Pope seeks in Old English verse. Indeed, arguably the most ancient arrangement capable of documentation within the Indo-European group seems not of equivalent pairings at all but rather of alternation between a 'long' half-line and a 'short' half-line. These pairings occur not only in Italic, malum dabunt Metelli Naevio poetae, but in Greek, ixj/oi 5r| TO UEtaxGpov

i)|^r)vaov

Vedic, agnir devebhir a gamat anjanalj sapta hotr,bhir havigmate, Irish, o modaib marc

mrogsaite,

and Slavic. Proliferation of this magnitude suggests strongly that what survives in each of these ancient Indo-European languages is an Indo-European reflex; and this being the case, it would be very surprising if much the same thing was not detectable in Germanic. In fact early Germanic verse is not atypical. The same variation in half-line length seen in ancient Greek, Vedic, Italic, Irish, and Slavic is also found in German. Half-lines such as 'folces hyrde' and 'nihtweorce gefeh' not only look different as they stand but can be shown through reconstruction to have been significantly different in more primitive times. What is usually scanned as secondary stress in the surviving literature, particularly the second part of compounds, would seem to have once carried primary stress and to have formed the principal parts of measures unto themselves. If one goes far enough back in time one arrives at the inescapable conclusion, I think, that many, indeed a great many, early Germanic half-lines, like the Saturnians, comprised not merely two measures but three measures. Since then the reflex of this old three-measure half-line has been obscured by two events: an erosion over time of the com-

ii9

Towards a New Paradigm

pounded units, and a dominance in the scholarship of a two-measure paradigm, the last of which has concealed the presence of a third measure carrying secondary stress, primaril^ at the head of the halfline. In my opinion the two-measure paradigm is seriously inconsistent. For instance, if both utan- and -weardne in a hypermetric half-line such as 'ealne utanweardne' (B. 22973) are given feet to themselves (e.g., /x /x /x), why should not -weorce in 'nihtweorce gefeh' be treated in the same way? Or madpum- in 'maere madEumsweord' (B. 10233)? Both -weorce and madpum-have a long initial syllable and are disyllabic like -weardne and utan-. I suppose the answer would be that the first part of the compounded nihtweorce (niht-) and the second part of niadpumsweord (-sweord) are too light to extend through a measure. But elsewhere long monosyllables, in detached or compounded form, are given measures to themselves (see below). In the Sievers system, X

J.

\

x

Paer swi6ferhE>e (B. 4933)

x/ I \x

6ft Scyld Scefing

x/ I /x

and

(B. 43)

are metrically identical in the first measure (x/) - that is to say, the long monosyllabic and alliterative word Scyld is said to be equivalent to the long alliterative element swid- within the compound swidferhpe. In Type D patterns, however, long monosyllabic and alliterative words are characteristically allocated a measure unto themselves: leofllandfruma

(B. 313).

And in Type E patterns long monosyllabic words are allotted a full measure even when they do not alliterate: beaghrodenlcwen (B. 623b). If there is to be any consistency in the Sievers system, it would seem that since long alliterative syllables capable of detachment as mono-

120

Old English Metre

syllables are metrically equivalent, the first element of a compound, when long and alliterative, ought to be extended in time through a full measure as it is in detached form within the first foot of Type D; and that, since a compound like swdferhbe is distributed through two measures, alliterating compounds like landfruma in Type D half-lines and beaghroden in Type E half-lines ought to be distributed in the same way - which would mean, of course, that the Type D and Type E half-lines should be allocated to three measures: Type D leoflland-lfruma Type E beag-lhrodenlcwen If the compounds are given their due measure in this way, then there would appear to be no good reason to distinguish between the various Type D forms or between Type D generally and Type E and many Type B and c forms that should have initial stress. Structurally the three-measure half-line may be described as /(x) I AX) I AX),

with the provision that in any one of the three measures the primary stress (/) may be reduced to secondary stress (\) and x may be reduced to zero (/ A or \ A ) or expanded (/x or \x > /xxx or \xxx), though the cadence is in most cases restricted to /x or \x and never expanded beyond /xx (/xxx) or \xx. The number of patterns that may be generated from this basic structure, '/(x) /(x) /(x),' is quite large, as the following examples illustrate: First Measure side I saenessas leof I landfruma i— a^ollangengea ^ocenelleodsyrcan OftlScyid Scefing Eendenlwordum weold

/_ x / — J^ J^ ^ \ \ x

x

121

Towards a New Paradigm Swylce helsiomian geseah |*2et waes Ifeohleas gefeoht t»ces I^himlyMade.

\_x x \^x \ xx

Second Measure / - . * . meerel ma6um-|sweord — -L side|sae-|naessas hladen I ^ere-1 weedum y5de I catena I cyn gu5-|billa|nan ealdlenta ge-lweorc r - i - r v X X , , j faer-lnioa\ ee-lrremed X beae-| Hrocten i cwen — jheaTolan -XJ^-ix |baer. wig-

/ x

—I L^ L ^x ^x \_ x x \ X X —\ ^— \ ^x —

Third Measure side see-lnaessas beaghrodenlcwen OftScvidlSce^fine -A _ JiP leof land-lfruma yQde eotenaicyri x seleweard a- Isetecl.

—x _ J- x \ ^^ ^ ^—

It would be pointless to attempt a listing of all the possible combinations, since their number is very great; in any case, it is not necessary to do so once the underlying pattern is grasped. What would be useful to know, however, is what patterns from the possible combinations are avoided, whether totally or typically, and what percentages fall out in the patterns that do occur. Unfortunately that information lies outside the scope of this enquiry. Anacrusis or Preludes We have seen that a breakdown in the old trochaic and dactylic forms of primitive Latin appears to have generated unstressed initials

122

Old English Metre

in the subsequent verse. We have also seen that this breakdown seems to have occurred first in the final measure, but that in time unstressed initials also began to appear in the first measure: /

x

m|Pylum de|vemes su Iperbiter c6n I temptim X ,, ( X i / X neclhbens I aeque / * / 1 aX ,Imicum cumI -I vides, X

x|/xx|/xx x | /xxx| /x x|/x|/x I / I / x|/xx|/x I

X

/

I

/

Since the oldest accentual verse is often distinguished by an avoidance of an unstressed initial in the first measure, it seems reasonable to infer that, during the earliest phases of the shift from trochaic and dactylic patterns in both Latin and German/unstressed initials when they appeared in the first measure were meant to be absorbed in the metre of the preceding half-line, as a daring manifestation of the general phenomenon of encroachment, which first saw the measure extend beyond the boundary of a stressed word and later beyond even the boundary of the half-line. Compare the following: / x l / x x l / x postquamlavem alspexit /

/

I

/

I

/

/

*

I

/

X

X i ,./ X

in Itemplo An Ichisa X

l

l

/

X

|

\

x

,

1

/

x|/xx|/x .

X

I /

l\

I /

/*1/XX1/X quam cum1 stupro re1 dire ad 1 suos 1popopu1laris x1x 1/x11x

\xl/t\x xl/xl\x

Pset se Ihearmlscafra on bneodu Ibence

X

/

X

x

to| Heorute~a|teah

(6.766) x|^xx|/

... t>aet he Isy6t>an I waes ... (B. i9Oib-2a).

\x|/x|/

Whether or not in this form of encroachment the boundary of the half-line was so ignored as to permit elision — / g_ ^ i quam cum stupro redire ad ... I /x -^ flod after I farrfelTbn ... (B. 580),

I /x x ^

- is impossible to tell. Though a fair percentage of unstressed initials in the may be accounted for in this manner both in Latin and others unquestionably cannot. Most often the latter are half-lines syntactically and rhythmically independent of a new sentence, say, or a new clause:

first measure Old English, found heading at the opening

123

Towards a New Paradigm

x l / x x l / x Sdml pubhcus Inuntmsl popul^Rolmam x I /xx I /x Si Iprior del fexit I Publico conl silio

/xxxl/x /xxx l/xx

x I /x I /x Ge 'sloh t>Tn ' faede'r I fseh^e I maeste (B. 459) /x |/x ...; ne I hjh-de ic I snotorllTcor (B. 1842) x|\x |/x|\x Unstressed initials of this sort are best considered preludes to the metre proper.20 These preludes are almost always monosyllabic (e.g., 'Gelsyhftlsorhlcearig/ B. 24553). Certain half-lines, especially those that open with a negative, do appear to call for disyllabic preludes: Ne gefraegn ic freondlicor (B. 10273) ne gefeah he ]>aere faeh6e(B. 1093) ne gewebx he him to willan(B. 17113) Ne gemealt him se modsefa(B. 26283). But it is conceivable that in hslf-lines like these the neestive was \ x / x meant to be emphssized (e.g./Ne gel frsegn ic') and thus took some stress, as it frequently does in modern poetry when the negative is emphstic. Disyllsbic preludes may therefore be either very mre or wholly illusory. In any case, they should not be confused with unstressed disylkbic prepositions thst open some hslf-lines but belong elsewhere rhythmicslly ... ofrerlnsenig under I swegles belgong

/x|/x ... (B. 859b-6oa) xx|/xx|/

- nor with prefixes that have a disyllsbic sppearance but are really monosyllabic: X

Oferlhogode 3a (B. 23453) Oferl swam 6a sioleda bigong

(B. 23673).

Tempo One can only guess what the tempo of Old English verse might hsve been during performsnce, whether spoken or intoned or sung, but most resders would agree with Pope thst Heusler's 4/4 time is too slow 3nd thst a 2/4 or 4/8 time is more suitsble for recitstion. Whst

124

Old English Metre

patterns of distribution prevailed within the measure is equally uncertain. A trochaic half-line like 'gomban gyldan' (B. na) is notated by Pope as

rrrr and Heusler as

rrxi r r.\ The major difference between the two is the durative contrast in Heusler's system between the long stem and the inflexion. To my mind, this notation is preferable to Pope's, which ignores not only the quantity of long stems but also the force of alliteration, each of which (and certainly both together) would have been capable of lengthening a note. But since a rest between phrasal components like 'gomban gyldan,' as advocated by Heusler, seems artificial, a compromise between the two notations would appear best: gomban gyldan.

r f r p Major variants might then be notated in this way: ana wid eallum (B. i45a) '

v

X

r LT

fyrene fremman (B. loia)

irrr

wunder aefter wundre (B. 9313) /

X

r

Y

¥

p LT

irenna cyst (B. 8o2b) \\

X A

r

&a of wealle geseah

rr

x X

x

(B. 2293)

hu 6a aectelingas (B. 33).

125

Towards a New Paradigm Hypermetric Half-lines

PRINCIPLE: hypermetric half-lines, usually found in balanced pairs, are three- or four-measure verses apparently formed, as in Old Latin, by the addition of a trochaic or less frequently a dactylic foot, sometimes with anacrusis, at the head of a non-catalectic half-line. Though it seems obvious that hypermetric half-lines like 'gan under gyldnum beage' (B. 11633) should have three stresses and three measures, not all scholars have admitted this distribution. Heusler, for instance, divides a hypermetric half-line as he does a normal half-line, into two measures: gan under | gyldnum beage 'seghwylc | o6rum trywe'

(B. 11653).

But this is a most unsatisfactory division, for a couple of reasons. First, it contradicts Heusler's own principles of division within normal half-lines, which for the most part correspond with word boundaries of naturally stressed words:

meotodesl meahte (Ccedmon's Hymn 2a) He serest | sceop (Ccedmon's Hymn 53). By the same reasoning a half-line like 'gan under gyldnum beage' would appear to require three accents and three measures: gan under gyldnum beage

/xx|/x|/x

Second, a single division of the half-line necessarily puts the two measures out of balance (e.g., 'Eeghwylc jodrum trywe') and calls for unnatural and awkward compression in one of the measures, usually the second. In doing so, the division is open to the same objections that face Pope's division of normal half-lines (e.g., 'J^aer aet | hy5e stod/B. 323). A further difficulty, already seen in Heusler's division of the normal half-line, is the unacceptable length of some preludes necessitated by the exclusion of material before the alliterative syllable:

126

Old English Metre Pa gyt wses hiera |sib astlgseclere (#• n64).

I /x |^xx

Sievers saw intuitively what is in fact found elsewhere in antiquity, that the hypermetric half-lines were not merely fuller normal halflines (that is to say, not normal half-lines with more material crowded into each of the two measures), but expanded two-measure half-lines, carrying sometimes three and sometimes four measures: weaxan I wTte Ibrogan (Genesis A 453) /x I /x I \x oft man | fered I feor bi Itune (Maxims I 1453). \x I /x I /x I /x Pope, who consistently divides a normal half-line into feet of equal time, thus making every half-line equivalent in duration, is understandably resistant to the idea that three- and four-measure hypermetric half-lines could be mixed. This mixing, he says, is not only 'awkward' but 'improbable.' Not surprisingly, he comes to the conclusion that any incongruity in hypermetric passages (that is to say, any mixing of three- and four-measure half-lines) must be only apparent: that in reality hypermetric half-lines are just as uniform as normal halflines; that just as light normal half-lines can be filled by a rest, so too can light (three-measure) hypermetric half-lines; that hypermetric half-lines are therefore divisible into equal durations as well. The only difference is that whereas normal half-lines are in 4/8 time, hypermetric half-lines are in 4/4 time: normal: xr hefeorh sele6.(B. i37ob) hypermetric sende him of hean rodore (Daniel 235b)

siQ6an e h hsefe d shi gastonsended

(Dreamf theo

Thus, by invoking the doctrine of rests, Pope is able to make uniform not only what appear to be unbalanced pairings of normal half-lines but also unbalanced pairings of hypermetric half-lines. Since a rest can be of any one of a number of durations, it is a variable that may be used to equalize the time of any half-line pairing. The doctrine of rests is therefore suspiciously convenient and also

127

Towards a New Paradigm

suspiciously neat. As early as the third century BC accentual verse gives evidence of a certain indifference to equality of stress count in the paired half-lines, an indifference well illustrated in the following inscription: Hoc est factum monumentum Maarco Caicilio Hospes gratum est quom apud meas restitistei seedes Bene rem geras et valeas dormias sine qura. Here, there can be little doubt, the second half-lines are significantly shorter (that is to say, have fewer stresses and thus fewer measures) than the first half-lines. Nor is this a phenomenon peculiar to Old Latin. Similar imbalances are also found in Greek and Sanskrit - languages seemingly governed by pitch accent. It is not at all to be wondered at, then, that other similar imbalances should show themselves in the texts of Old Irish and Old English. Moreover, in keeping with what is known about these ancient Indo-European languages, it might be expected, as in fact it proves to be, that these imbalances would occur with greater frequency in more recent texts; for, as best one can tell from both the earliest chants and the character of ancient verse generally, the historical development was at first away from the monotony of primitive balance in the pairings to greater variety. Later, of course, under the tyranny of quantity and, much later still, under the all-powerful impress of isosyllabism, there would be a return to balance, with the result that the greater freedom of these old forms, ubiquitous in Old Irish and Old English, would seem strangely alien. To make Old English verse uniform, beyond equality of time in each measure, by dividing the full line (whether normal or hypermetric) into two equal units, each in turn divisible into two measures of equal time, would thus appear to be not only artificial but also unhistorical. CATALEXIS

Though hypermetric half-lines are usually paired and thus seem distinct from any other, they are, I believe, close relatives of the normal half-line. Hypermetric half-lines carrying the pattern '/x /x \x' (e.g., 'feran folces raeswan/ Juliana 123) or its variants '\x /x /x' and '/x

128

Old English Metre

\x /x' seem to be intimately related to (a) other half-lines with a resolved final measure (e.g.,'#Ee~r wass madma fela/B. 3^b) and (b) catalectic counterparts patterning as '/x /x \' or '\x /x /' or '/x \x /.' The only difference between a normal half-line like 'IrySlic ]>egn& heap/B. 4003 (/x /x \) and "reran folc?es raesw^n'(/x /x \x) is that one is a catalectic form of the other. To suggest that these two patterns are not related seems to me to deny the obvious: each has a running trochaic foot, except for the catalectic heap (\A). In quantitative verse, it is worth noting, the close relationship of comparable patterns is a prosodic commonplace. What classical scholar, for instance, would dare to claim that the septenarius and the octonarius are unrelated? Rhythmic Principle I am extremely reluctant to deal so cursorily with a subject deserving a full-length study of its own. Yet I feel obligated to say something on this subject, if only to suggest a direction that I think subsequent investigations might take to account for the curious mixture of two-, three- and four-measure half-lines in Old English verse. As mentioned earlier, imbalance in half-line pairings is common to much ancient Indo-European verse; but that it was not universally required is attested by balanced pairings within this same ancient verse and also by other verse of roughly the same age, particularly imprecations and prayers, wherein the half-lines often seem consciously balanced. Past descriptions of Old English verse have regarded this occurrence of balanced half-line pairings as the norm and in one way or another endeavoured to establish balance between any remaining half-lines that at first sight might appear to be of diverse length. My position is somewhat different. I believe that the variations in length of paired half-lines are not illusory but real and that these mismatchings are more frequent than is usually acknowledged. But why were these unbalanced half-line pairings often tolerated or even desired? Quite frankly, I do not have an answer to this question. At the very best, I can make only the most tentative of suggestions; and this is a pity, because in some respects the question is the most interesting of all. One possibility is that imbalances in the length of half-line pairings

129

Towards a New Paradigm

were compensated by rests, either between the full lines or the paired half-lines. There is something to be said for this notion, since a great many full lines and a fair proportion of first half-lines are stopped to some degree. On the other hand, it has to be asked why the Old English poets would have felt any compulsion to balance the duration of their paired half-lines. The regularity and balance of much ancient verse, particularly classical verse, perhaps put powerful constraints on the possibility of this sort of irregularity. But it must be remembered that not all ancient verse had, or was meant to have (via the addition of rests), an equivalent number of feet in its contiguous components. Much depended, I suspect, on what the ancient poets considered was the metrical unit of the form within which they were composing. Ordinarily, it seems to have been either the half-line or the full line, and so it is that a high proportion of ancient verse is balanced throughout. But frequently, as is well illustrated in strophic verse, the metrical unit seems to have extended beyond the line. Another possibility, therefore, is that half-line imbalances were consciously employed to generate designed rhythmic sequences suggested by the character of each sentence's thought. Within such a system the sentence, not the full line, would ultimately become the unifying force in the verse: within the larger rhythmic framework of the sentence both the half-line and the full line would be vital components, but only components. Like most ideas, this is not new. It was developed years ago by Thomson,21 following earlier work by Headlam, to account for perplexingly mixed rhythmic patterns in Greek lyrics. Thomson's underlying thesis is that the primary metric unit is not the foot, or even the phrase, but the sentence. To illustrate the dominance of the sentence over other metrical units, he quotes the following four English lines:22 Fair stood the wind for France, When we our sails advance, Nor now to prove our chance Longer will tarry. This verse may be broken into feet (principally iambics) and, beyond the feet, into lines and, beyond the lines, into paired lines. But, says Thomson, neither the ear nor the mind is satisfied until the lines are

130

Old English Metre

read as a unit, the end of which is signalled by the cadence 'Longer will tarry/ Greek lyric poetry was constructed in much the same way, Thomson thinks, in sentences comprising different rhythms calling in turn for diverse cadences. It would be unproductive to describe Thompson's analysis in detail, since it is geared to Greek. Suffice it to say that he identifies four major classes of rhythm - Dorian, Ionian, Aeolian, and Paeonic - each containing a number of phrases, themselves composed of common metric patterns. Old English verse might profit, I think, from a similar investigation.

APPENDIX

Sample Scansions

Beowulf Hwaet, we Gar-DericTln geardagum

i r r i r ir r i r ir r i J \ * T, ' *£_.Peodcymnga Prym gefrunon, X

T,-

X

i r i rxr i r p i r- P i X

x

7

x

7

X

X

u^ oa A- aePelmgas > K V ii £J i hu ellen fremedon!

i r r i H t n r- n rlr i Oft Scyld Scefing

sceaPena Preatum,

i r i r i r- n r^r i r- p i c

/

x

x

^.

x

/

x

v

x

x

/

5 monegum maegPum meodosetla ofteah,

rj^r i r- p i r r i THI r i

egsode eorl[as], sy66an serest weard

i r P p i r- P i r r i r- P i r i feasceaft funden; he P^bs frofre gebad,

i r r i r- p i r r ir P P i r i we"bx under wolcnum weor6myndum Pah,

i r P P i r- P i r i r- P

ri

132

Appendix 06 Pelt him aeghwylc >mbsittendra

f r r ir r

r

HP

10 ofer hronrade hyran scolde,

H r I T - P I r-Pi r- H

U JJ T J L -J ' I gomban gyldan; Paet waes god cynmg!

i r- P r- P I r

0sem earera waes \

/ ..X

X

r

/

r ir r i

/

X

X ,

aefter cenned

i r ; i xixr ;i xr i r- Px i r; P i x j oPone ^Godj sende /j geong in geardum, i r p i r- p i r r i r 1 1" P i rl, x x

^

,. / x j,

/

\ ^^

x r rolce to rrorre; fyrenoearfe ongeat,

i r p i J i r - PI rr i r- PI r i

15 Pe hie aer drugon aldor[le]ase

i r r i r j r r i r- p j r- p

lange hwile; him Paes Liffrea,

i r- P i r- P i r r i n n

wuldres Wealdend woroldare forgeaf,

i r- P i r- P i r r i r PPI r i

Beowulf was breme. bleed wide sprang

i r p P i r- P i x

c

7 x x

4j r Scyldes eafera

i r- PI rj; i

~n

\_

x

r i r- P i r i

c> ' J i \ j x

X

x

Scedelandum - in.

rr

/

i r Hr i

, /

_/

x

x

x

/

x

20 Swa sceal [geong g] uma gode gewyrcean, n

i r r i r

fromum feohgiftum

r r i r P PI r- p i dh faedlr [beajraie,

i r r i r i r P P r r i r- P i

•r

\ . !?

^"N X

I, j X

X

/

.X X

Paet nine on ylde eft gewunigen

irrr

i r- P i r- p r f r i

133

Appendix / x

1

-\

x

I x

4-

x wilgesiPas, Ponne wig cume,

i r-Pir-p i rr i n r n

lebde gelaesten; lofdaedum sceal

r p P i r- P i r i r- P i r-

25 in meegPa gehwaere man gePeon.

p i r P P i r- P i r P i r i Him 6a Scyld gewat to gescaephwile

i r r i r* P i r i r r i r i r- P i / *

L

\_

x

J.

x

felahror feran

±

x

on Frean waere;

irri r i r P p i r i r - p i x x

.^ x

1L.

— x

x

/xx

hi hyne Pa aet baeron to brimes farode,

ir Lrir ri r P P i r r i IT/I -L X

X -T,

X

X.

\_

/

/

x

swaese gesiPas, swa he selfa baed,

i r P P ir- PI r r ir-Pi r i \

X

/

X

—

/• X

/

?

x

30 Penden wordum weold wine Sc)ddinga

i r- P i r- P i r i r- p i r c_r i

leof landfruma

lange ahte.

ir i r ir r i r- P I T PI x

x

X

x

ft— £->r — 1 t •/ 1 . \ / jpaer aet ,hyoe stod hnngedstema

ir r ir PI r i r P ir- PI

4 .x

x

/

x

/

x

x

x

/

isig ond utfus, aePelmges faer;

irp P i rr

pPpPi r i

aledon t>a leofrie t>eoden,

n r p i r i r n r- u i x

x

x

o r / . X , / / 35 beaga bryttan on ibearm scipes,

i r- P I r p p i r i r r i

134

Appendix maerne be maeste. I^aer wses madma fela

i r n i r- P i r r i r- t \ r p

of feorwegum fraetwci gllaed&i;

p i r i r r i r P P i r- P i X , L

J.

, x*7-

A-

-L ,

X

X

/

ne hyrde ic cymhcor ceol gegyrwan X

i m r r ir i r t \ r-n ir- t \

hildewaepnum ond heaSowsedum,

ir- P I r P p i r nr P I

40 billum ond byrnum; him on bearme laeg

i r P v i r- P I r r i r- p i r i

madma maemgo, Pa him mid scoldon

ir- H rl; i r r i r i r p

oxn flodls aeht feor g&vlMn.

M r- M r i r- p i r- p

Nal^s hi hme Isessln laci!m teodan,

r r r u" i r- p i r- p i r p i

Peodgestreonum, f»on[ne] ^a dydon (Kl. pori)

r- p i r- p i r r i r i r r i

._

.. ^ . X

^^x

/

\

X

45 I>e hme aet frumsceafte

i r LT —-

y

X*^*N

r

r

/ •

/

> £

X

/

J

X

foro onsendon

i r i r Pi r P i r Pi y

/

y

\

y

X

aenne ofer ySe umborwesende.

ir P P IT-PI r- P i rxr i

Fa~ g)^t hie him asetton segen g[y[] denne

ir r ir P P i r - P i r r i r ex

i

heah ofer heafod, leton holm beran,

i r- P i r r i r r i r i r r i

geafdn on garse^g; him wses g^omor sefa,

i r P p i r r i r r i r p ir r

135

Appendix 50 murnende mod.

Men ne cunnon

i r r_r i r i r- P i r- P i / x

.*_-/. x

/ x ^ - x

x

secgan to so6e, seleraedende,

i r p P i r p i r rir nr i

haeled under heofenum, hwa Paem hlaeste onfeng.

i p p p P r JLr

i r

r i r- P x

$a waes on burgum Beowulf Scylding a,

i rir

i r p i r P i r u* i

lebf leodcyning longe Prage

i r r i r r i r- P r- P i

55 folcum gefraege

ir P P ir-P

faeder ellor hwearf,

r r ir- p r i

aldor of earde- oP Paet him eft onwoc

i r p P i r- p

rJLr i r- P i r i

heah Healfd^ne; heold Penden lifde

ir i r r r

r i r- P i r- Pi

gamol ond gu6reouw glaede Scyldingas.

i rxr i r r i r r i r u \

Psem feower beam forSgerimed

i r i r- p i r i r- P i r p

60

x

/ x

-^-X

/

x

x

x

in worold wocun, weo^oda raeswa[n],

PI r r i r-p i rxr i r- p i

Heorogar ond Hrodgar ond Halga til,

P P p p i r P P i r- P r i

ir i

136

Appendix Caedmon's Hymn \_

x x

/

x

x

/ x

—

x

/

Nu sculon herigean heofonrices weard,

i r is i rj^r i r r rr i r i meotodes meahte,

and his modgel>anc,

i r JLr i r- P i r r i r- P i r /

x

x

7

/ u r^j weorc wuldorfaeder,

X

x

/

— uJ u swa he wundra gehwaes,

i r i r- H r r i r r i r p M r i JL

X

, /,

X

-^

X

/

, ,X

ece dnhten, or onstealde.

ir PI r- P i r- p i r- p i 5 He Merest sceop eor6an bearnfim

i r i r- P i r i r- p

r- p i

heofon to hrofe, halig scyppend;

i rir xi r- P i r- P r rx -i. .1* , \ i / \ /, E>a middangeard moncynnes weard, ir i r- P i r i r i r- P i r i ece drihten, setter teod^,

ir;Pi r- P i r- PI r- P i firum foldan,

frea aelmihtig.

ir- p ir- P i r- P i r- P i The Dream of the Rood \

x

/

x

/

/ x

/ x

Hwset, ic swefna cyst secgan wylle,

i r r i r- P i r i r-p ir- p

h[w]aet me gemaette to midre nihte,

i r p P i r P p i r- P i r- p i

137

Appendix \~_ X

/

„

\

X

/

syoPan reordberend

X

/

X jX

reste wunedon.

i r r i r i r r i n rJLr i -, .X

*. ^\ . *.

X1

X

X

/

X

/

#uhte me Paet ic gesawe syilicre treow

ir n i r n I T P I rr_r i r-

5 on lyft laedan leohte bewunden,

PI r i r- P

r P P i r- P i

beama beorhtost. Ball Paet beacen waes

i r p i r p i r r i r- p i r-

, x

x

/.x

,

x

./

/.jx

JL x

begoten mid golde; gimmas stodon

pirjj ' r ' p i r' P i r P i /

r I-i jx

X ^X

-/ . X

\,

X_

X.

=r-£X

L X

raegere aet foldan sceatum, swylce Paer rife waeron r

i rjj i r- PI r- P i r p p ir-Pi r- p i r> x u— i i x

/ ^> x ,J *D(i)jou-(i)jo. Voc. sing. f. (louie: voc. sing, m.). Other cases: luviu/Ioui (ace.), luvi/Iuvie/Ioui/Iouie (dat. sing.), louiu (abl. sing.). Cognates: L. lovius, lovis totam: 'state,' ace. sing, totar (gen. sing.). *teut-a-m/s. *tot-/tut-. *-am > -am/-a[m]. *-as > -as/-ar. Variants: tuta/tota (totam), tutas (totar). Other cases: tute/tote (dat. sing.), tula + per/tuta + pe/tota + per (abl. sing.). Cognates: Goth, piuda, Osc. touto, Lith. tauta, L. totus Tarsinatem: 'people of Umbria', ace. sing. Tarsinater (gen. sing.). *Tarsinati-m/s. Variant: Tarinate (Tarsinatem). Other cases: Tarsinate (dat. sing.). Cognate: L. Tadinates. Modern name: Gualdo Tadino trifo: 'tribe/ ace. sing. *tri-bhu-m. Variant: trifu. Other cases: trifor (gen. sing.), trifo (dat. sing.), trefi + per (abl. sing.). Cognate: L. tribus Tuscom: 'Tuscan, Etruscan,' ace. sing. *Tors-ko-m. Variant: Turskum. Other cases: Tuscer (gen. sing.), Tursce (dat. sing.). Cognate: L. Etruscus, Tuscum, Naharcom: 'Narcan,' ace. sing. *Nar-ko-m? -aha- = a? Other cases: Naharcer (gen. sing.), Naharce (dat. sing.). Variant: Naharkum. Cognates: L. Nahartis, Nar. Modern forms: Nera, Naja lapusco: Tapudic,' ace. sing. *Iapud(i)s-ko-m. Variants: labuscom, lapuzkum. Other cases: labuscer/Iapuscer (gen. sing.), labusce (dat. sing.). Cognates: L. lapydes 'people of Illyria,' itx7i\)8eg

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Notes to page 20

nome: 'name/ ace. sing, nomner (gen. sing.). *nom-m. Variant: numen. Other case: nomne (dat./abl. sing). Cognates: OE nama, Skt nama, L. nomen nerf: 'officials, elders/ ace. pi *nro-qs *-ns > -ns > -/. Other case: nerus (dat. pi: *-bhos > -MS). Cognates: Osc. niir, Skt n%-/narsihitu: meaning uncertain ('in military office'?), passive participle, ace. pi *Keng-to-ns? *-ngt- > -nkt- > -nht- > -hi- (with lengthening of root vowel). Variant: sihitu. Other case: sihitir/sitir/sihitir (dat. pi: -ir = L. -is). Cognate: L. cinctos 'girded'? -ihi- = -i-? ansihitu: negative form of sihitu, 'not in office'?, passive participle, ace. pi *n-keng-to-ns? Variant: ansihitu. Other case: ansihitir (dat. pi). Cognates of negative prefix a-/an-: L. in-, Greek a' (u)-, Osc. am-/an-, Skt a-/an-, Germ, uniouie: 'youth, young men/ ace. pi *juw-ije-ns. Other case: iouies (dat. pi). Cognate: L. iuvenis hostatu: 'armed/ passive participle, ace. pi *ghodh-ta-to-ns. *-dht- > -st. Other case: hostatir (dat. pi). Cognates: L. hasta, hastatus, hastati anostatu: 'unarmed/ negative passive participle, ace. pi *n + root. Variant: anhostatu. Other case: anhostatir/anostatir (dat. pi) tursitu: 'terrify/ future imperative sing. *tors-eje-tod. *-eje- > -e[j]e- > -i-. *-tod > -to[d] > -tu (cf *etod > L. ltd), -rs = -s (cf tors-/tus-). Cognate: L. terreo tremitu: meaning uncertain ('make tremble'?), future imperative sing. "trem-eje-todl Cognates: L. tremol, Greek Tpefj,to. hondu: meaning uncertain ('cast down'?), future imperative sing. *ghomdhe-tod > *hon-de-tod > *honne-tod > *hon-tod. Roots: *ghom- 'earth' (cf Skt xam, L. humus), *-dhe- 'place' (cf L. do). Cognates: hondra 'below' (*ghom-terad), hontus 'infernal deity' (*ghom-to-s) holtu: meaning uncertain ('destroy'?), future imperative sing. *ol-e-tod > *hol[e]-tod (parasitic hi). But note the cognate L. aid. ninctu: 'inundate with snow', future imperative sing. *sningwh-e-tod > *ninkwtdd > *nink-tod. Cognates: L. ninguit/ningit 'it snows' (cf ninguito), mod. Engl. snow

148

Notes to pages 20-2

nepitu: 'drown/ future imperative sing. *nep-eje-tod? Cognate: L. Neptunus? sunitu: 'deafen/ future imperative sing. *swen-eje-tod. Cognate: L. sonare sauitu: meaning unknown. *?-eje-tod preplohotatu: meaning uncertain ('trample under foot'?), future imperative sing. *prai-plek-ta-tod. Variant: preplotatu. Cognate: L. plecto 'weave'? preuislatu: 'bind/ future imperative sing. *prai-wink-ela-tod. Variant: preuilatu. Cognates: L. praevinculato, vinculum Gray ('Possible Trochaic Dimeters'): Naharcom/ Naharcer, labuscom / labuscer, sihitu, ansihitu, tursitu, tremitu, nepitu, sonitu, sauitu i \ / DuBois (The Stress Accent in Latin Poetry [New York 1906]): sihitu, ansihitu

Cf the following from Table 6a 49-55: / x / ^* A x / x A /x/x Di Grabouie pihatu^ x/x / / / x X -x ./ x . / x x 7/x/x ocrer fisier totar loumar /x/xx / / A / X / , A / X / X , . A /x/ nome, nerr asmo viro /x/x / / ' ' M. £ '• U / / /x/x pequo castruo fn pihatu. /x/x / /A T ^ / . X ,/ / X / X / X i , , /x/ Futu tua /x/x/x x x tons,X pacerpase / / i x •nouine ./* x , r~ /x/x ocre Ansi* i.tota /x/xx , , / x / x / x / x /x/x erer nomne erar nomne. /x/x