A History of English Versification. J. Schipper
§ 14. General remarks. It is highly probable that alliteration was the earliest kind of poetic form employed by the English people. There is no trace in the extant monuments of the language of any more primitive or simpler system. A predilection for alliteration existed even in prose, as in the names of heroes and families like Scyld and Sceaf, Hengist and Horsa, Finn and Folcwald, pairs that alliterate in the same way as the family names of other Teutonic nations: the names of the three sons of Mannus, Ingo, Isto, Irmino, conform to this type.[15] The earliest monuments of Old English poetry, as the fragmentary hymn of Cædmon in the More MS. (Cambridge) and the inscription on the Ruthwell Cross, are composed in the long alliterative line. The great body of Old English verse is in this metre, the only exceptions being the ‘Rhyming Poem’ (in the Exeter Book),[16] and a few other late pieces, in which alliteration and rhyme are combined. This Old English poetry, therefore, together with the Old Norse and Old Saxon remains (the Heliand with 5,985 lines, and the recently discovered fragment of the Old Saxon Genesis, edited by Zangemeister and Braune, 1894, with 335 lines), affords ample and trustworthy material for determining the laws of the alliterative verse as used by the Teutonic nations. In comparison with these the remains of Old High German alliterative verse are both scanty and lax in structure.
§ 15. Theories on the metrical form of the alliterative line. Notwithstanding their comparative scantiness, the Old High German fragments (Hildebrandslied, Wessobrunner Gebet, Muspilli and two magical formulae, with a total of some 110 lines) formed the basis of the earliest theories of the laws of the accentuation and general character of the original alliterative line. They were assumed to have preserved the features of the primitive metre, and conclusions were drawn from them as to the typical form of the verse. When examined closely, the Old High German remains (and this is true also of the longer monuments in Old Saxon) are found to differ widely from Old Norse and Old English verse in one respect. While the general and dominating features of the line remain the same, the Old High German and Old Saxon lines are much longer than the Old Norse or Old English lines. In Old Norse or Old English the half line frequently contains no more than four syllables, in marked contrast to Old High German and Old Saxon, where the half line or section is considerably longer.
The first attempt at a theory of the metrical structure of the alliterative line was made by Lachmann. He based his theory on the form of verse created by Otfrid, in imitation of Latin models, which consists of a long line of eight accents, separated by leonine rhyme into two sections each of four accents alternately strong and weak.[17] The laws of the rhyming and strophic verse of Otfrid were applied by Lachmann to the purely alliterative verses of the Old High German Hildebrandslied, and this system of scanning was further applied by his followers to the alliterative verse of Old English, the true nature of which was long misunderstood on the Continent. In England itself a sounder view of the native alliterative verse was propounded by Bishop Percy as early as 1765, in his Essay on the Metre of Pierce Plowman published along with his well-known Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, not to speak of the earlier writings of G. Gascoigne (1575) and James VI (1585). But the number and authority of some of Lachmann’s followers are such that some detailed account of their theories must be given.[18]
§ 16. The four-beat theory of the alliterative verse, based on the assumption that each of the two sections must have had four accented syllables to bring out a regular rhythm, was applied by Lachmann himself only to the Old High German Hildebrandslied,[19] while on the other hand he recognized a freer variety with two chief accents only in each section, for the Old Norse, Old Saxon, and Old English. The four-beat theory was further applied to the Old High German Muspilli by Bartsch,[20] and to the rest of the smaller relics of Old High German verse by Müllenhoff.[21] The next step was to bring the Old Saxon Heliand and the Old English Beowulf under this system of scansion; and this was taken by M. Heyne in 1866 and 1867. But the metre of Beowulf does not differ from that of the other alliterative poems in Old English, and these in their turn were claimed for the four-beat theory by Schubert,22 but with this important modification, made before by Bartsch, that side by side with the usual four-beat sections there were also to be found sections of three beats only. One obvious difficulty in applying the theory of four strongly marked beats to the Old English half-lines or hemistichs is this, that in Old English these hemistichs consist in very many cases of not more than four syllables altogether, each one of which would on this theory have an accent to itself. To meet these cases E. Jessen[23] started the theory that in certain cases pauses had to be substituted for ‘beats not realized’. A further modification of the four-beat doctrine was introduced by Amelung,[24] who maintained that in the metre of the Heliand each hemistich had two primary or chief accents and two secondary or subordinate accents. In order to bring the verse under this scansion he assumes that certain syllables admitted of being lengthened. He further regarded the Heliand verse as a metre regulated by strict time, and not as a measure intended for free recitation and depending only on the number of accented syllables.
A few other more recent attempts at solving the problem must be mentioned before we pass on to explain and discuss Sievers’s system in the next paragraph. The views of Prof. Möller of Copenhagen[25] have found an adherent in Lawrence, from whose book[26] we may quote the following summary of Möller’s theory. According to Prof. Möller the hemistich consists theoretically of two measures (Takte), each of four morae ×́××̀× (a mora, ×, being the time required for one short syllable), and therefore the whole verse of four measures, thus:
×́××̀×|×́××̀×||×́××̀×|×́××̀×||.
Where, in a verse, the morae are not filled by actual syllables, their time must be occupied by rests (represented by r*) in reciting, by holding on the note in singing.[27] A long syllable——, is equivalent to two morae. Thus v. 208 of Beowulf
súnd-wùdu. sṓhtè. sécg. wī́sàde.
would be symbolically represented as follows:
–́×̀×|–́×̀ r ||–́ rr |–́×̀×.
According to this system the pause at secg will be twice as long as that at sōhte, whilst at wudu there will be no real pause and the point will merely indicate the end of the measure.
Others reverted to the view of Bartsch and Schubert that there could be hemistichs with only three accents alongside of the hemistichs with the normal number of four. Among these may be mentioned H. Hirt,[28] whose view is that three beats to a hemistich is the normal number, four being less usual, the long line having thus mostly six beats, against the eight of Lachmann’s theory; K. Fuhr,[29] who holds that every hemistich, whether it stands first or second in the verse, has four beats if the last syllable is unaccented (klingend; in that case the final unaccented syllable receives a secondary rhythmical accent, for example, fḗond máncýnnès) and has three beats if it is accented (stumpf, for example, fýrst fórð gewā́t, or múrnénde mṓd, &c.); and B. ten Brink,[30] who calls the hemistichs with four beats full or ‘complete’ (e.g. hȳ́ràn scóldè, but admits hemistichs with three beats only, calling them ‘incomplete’ from the want of a secondary accent (e.g. twélf wíntra tī́d, hā́m gesṓhte, &c.). The four-beat theory was reverted to by M. Kaluza, who endeavours to reconcile it with the results of Sievers and others.[31] A somewhat similar view is taken by R. Kögel.[32] Trautmann[33] takes Amelung’s view that certain words and syllables must be lengthened in order to get the four accented syllables necessary for each hemistich. Thus, according to Trautmann’s scansion,
sprécað fǽgeré befóran
would run ×́×|×́×|×́×|⏑́× and
ónd þú him méte sýlest
would also have the formula ×́×|×́×|×́×|⏑́×,
ond being protracted to two units. Another instance of this lengthening would, on this theory, occur in the final syllable of the word radores in the hemistich únder rádorès