Historical Manual of English Prosody. Saintsbury George

Historical Manual of English Prosody

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ma|de prud;

Fif we|den best | bar Ben|iamin

Thre hun|dred plates | of sil|ver fin,

Al|so fele | o|there | thor-til,

He bad | ben in | is fa|deres wil,

And x | asses | with se|mes fest;

Of all | Egyp|tes welth|e best

Gaf he | is brethe|re, with her|te blithe,

And bad | hem ra | pen hem hom | ward swithe.

And from Richard Cœur de Lion, 3261–3268:

Nay quod | Kyng Rich|ard, be God | my lord,

Ne schal | I ne|vyr with him | acord!

Ne hadde ne|vyr ben | lost A|cres toun

Ne had|de ben | through hys | tresoun.

Yiff he yil|de again | my fad|erys tresour

And Jeru|salem | with gret | honour,

Thenne | my wrath|e I hym | forgive

And ne|vyr ellys | whyl that | I live.

Here, it will be observed, the foot of three syllables—generally, if not always, an anapæst—and even, it would seem, that of one sometimes, are freely substituted for that of two, adding immensely to the variety, spirit, and freedom of the line. The first "ne hadde" is perhaps run together.

VIII. Early Middle English Period
The Romance-Six or "Rime Couée."

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At an uncertain period in the thirteenth century this makes its appearance—no doubt directly imitated from the French, but probably also in part a derivative of the application of metrical tendency to the aboriginal line-couplet. Its French name[33] is not, to our eyes, appropriate—one would rather call it "waisted" or "waisted-and-tailed rhyme"; and as it is very largely (in fact, with the plain couplet predominantly) used in the English romances, "romance-six" as opposed to "ballad-four" seems a good name for it. It sometimes, however, extends to three, four, or even six sets of two eights and a six, and is found both plain and equivalenced, as thus:

The brid|des sing|e, it is | no nay,

The spar|hauk and | the pap|ejay,

that joy|e it was | to here.

The thrus|telcok made eek | his lay,

The wo|de dowv|e upon | the spray

She sang | ful loud|e and clere.

(Chaucer, Sir Thopas.)

As soon|e as the em|peroure yil|dyd the gast,

A prowd|e gar|son came | in haste,

Sir Syn|agote | hight he—

And broght | an hun|dred hel|mes bright

Of har|dy men | that cowd|e wel fight

Of felde | wolde ne|ver oon flee.

(Le Bone Florence of Rome, 778–783.)

The plain form, as Chaucer, of malice prepense, showed in the above, is particularly liable to sing-song effect.

IX. Early Middle English Period
Miscellaneous Stanzas.

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(a) A very considerable number of these were introduced, sometimes no doubt by direct imitation of French or (as in the case of the "Burns-metre,"[34]) Provençal originals, sometimes by the ingenuity of the individual poet, working on the plastic material of the blended language, according to the new metrical foot-system. They all scan easily by this, as may be seen in a stanza of Tristrem, one of the Harleian Lyrics, and a "Burns stanza" from the York Plays; while anapæstic substitution, amounting to something like "triple time" as a whole, appears in the Hampolian extract.

The king | had a douh|ter dere,

That mai|den Y|sonde hight,

That gle | was lef | to here

And romaun|ce to rede | aright.

Sir Tram|tris hir | gan lere,

Tho, | with al | his might,

What al|le poin|tès were

To se | the sothe |in sight,

To say,

In Yr|lond nas | no knight,

With Y|sonde | durst play.

(Sir Tristrem, 1255–63.)

(Three-foot iambic with single-foot "bob." All final e's sounded or elided. One monosyllabic, and two or three trisyllabic, substitutions.)

Bytuen|e Mershe | ant A|veril

when spray bigin|neth to springe,

The lut|el foul | hath hi|re wyl

on hy|re lud | to synge;

(Alison, Harleian MS. p. 27, ed. Wright.)

(From the other stanzas it appears that the middle quatrain should consist of three eights and a six, and that something has dropped—supplied now by carets. Otherwise the scheme is clear.)

Fro thaym | is lost[e] | both[e] game | and glee.

He bad|de that they | schuld mais|ters be

Over all[e] kenn[e] thing, | outy-taen | a tree

He taught | them to be

And ther-|to went[e] | both she | and he

Agagne | his wille.

("York" Plays, vi. § 2.)

(The final e's are beginning to be neglected, and the whole is probably in strict iambics here, though vacillation between four- and five-foot lines is not absolutely impossible. But there is trisyllabic substitution elsewhere, though not very much. It may be remembered that there is little of it in Burns's own examples of this metre. Closer still to his is the following):

Adam. Nay at | my speech|e would thou ne|ver spare That has | us spilte.

(Ibid. § 24.)

(b)

My tru|est trea|sure so trai|torly ta|ken,

So bit|terly bound|en with by|tand band|es,

How soon | of thy ser|vants wast thou | forsa|ken

And loathe|ly for my | life hurled | with hand|es

(Horstmann's Hampole, i. 72.)

(Probably, when first written, the ultimate e's of the even lines were sounded; but even this is not certain, and the superiority of the shortening would soon have struck the ear.)

Myght|ful God | veray, || Ma|ker of all | that is

Thre per|sons without|en nay, || oone God | in end|les blis,

Thou maid|è both night | and day, || beest, fowle | and fish,

All crea|tures

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Historical Manual of English Prosody. Saintsbury George