Old English metre

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Old English metre is the conventional name given to the poetic metre in which English language poetry was composed in the Anglo-Saxon period. The best-known example of poetry composed in this verse form is Beowulf , but the vast majority of Old English poetry belongs to the same tradition. The most salient feature of Old English poetry is its heavy use of alliteration.

Contents

The most widely used system for classifying Old English prosodic patterns is based on that developed by Eduard Sievers and extended by Alan Joseph Bliss. [1] [2] [3] The discussion which follows is mostly based on that system, with modifications from the more recent literature. Another popular system is that of Geoffrey Russom, which is predicated on a theory of meter involving two metrical feet per verse. [4] [5] [6] Another is that of Thomas Cable, based on the idea that each verse contains four syllables, with specific rules for the addition of extra unstressed syllables. [7] [8] [9]

Alliteration

The basic Anglo-Saxon poetic line consists of two half-lines, connected by alliteration. This means that there is a word or syllable in the second half-line, which will alliterate with one or more important words or syllables in the first half-line. These alliterated words or syllables will have more stress. [10] Consonants will always alliterate with consonants, but a vowel is allowed to alliterate with any other vowel. As in all Old English poetry, the alliterative form can be seen in the "Finnsburg Fragment" (alliterated sounds are in bold):

Ac onwacnigeað nū, wīgend mīne [11]
"But awake now, my warriors,"

ealra ǣrest eorðbūendra, [12]
of all first the men

The words that contain alliterated syllables are also very important because not all syllables can be alliterated. There is a hierarchy of alliteration; nouns and verbs are almost consistently alliterated whereas ‘helping’ words such as pronouns and prepositions are almost never alliterated. The alliteration and positioning of these syllables are what help assign stress to certain words and not others.

Old English treats certain sounds as alliterating, even though they are not identical. Specifically:

Stress

After we find the alliterative syllables in the two half-lines, we can assign stress according to their position and length of the syllables. This stress, or arsis, [14] is usually placed on a syllable containing a long vowel. The stressed syllables are ordered along the same basic hierarchy of the alliteration; it is very rare that a stressed syllable would be a preposition or pronoun. Words such as God, King, and proper nouns are very frequently stressed.

After we apply stresses to the appropriate syllables, we must find the unstressed and secondary-stressed syllables. The unstressed, or thesis, syllables are usually short, and frequently on the words that are lower in the hierarchy. Secondary stresses occur in only a few types of lines, and are usually only on the second part of a compound word.

Stress indicators are usually assigned thus: primary stress (/), secondary stress (\), and unstressed (x). This is the most common way to assign the rhythm and to determine the type-line, or foot.

Sievers-type lines

After applying the appropriate arsis or thesis to a line, we look at the rhythm that the markings make and assign a type-line, or foot, to the half-line. Sievers created type-lines based on the metrical patterns that he saw in Old English poetry, and named them in alphabetical order according to the most frequently used. There are five basic line types, A,B,C,D, and E, and each have their own metrical pattern. Daniel Paul O'Donnell reproduces a very handy traditional mnemonic for helping remember the basic line-types: [15]

Type A ( / × / ×) (Trochaic) — Anna angry
Type B ( × / × / ) (Iambic) — And Bryhtnoth bold
Type C (× / / ×) (Spondaic) — In keen conflict
Type D ( / / \ ×) — Drive Don backwards
Type E ( / \ × /) — Each one with edge

There are numerous subtypes of these lines, as outlined in Cassidy & Ringler and elsewhere. The line types above are in alphabetical order of the most frequently used type-lines in the Old English corpus.

Other scansion systems

Another metrical system was put forward by John C. Pope in which rhythmic stress is assigned using musical patterns. This system seems to make more sense when considering that the poetry of the Anglo-Saxons was set to music. An explanation of the Pope system is also included in Cassidy & Ringler [16] and in Eight Old English Poems. [17]

Use of Anglo-Saxon poetic line in reconstructing documents

The theory of Old English metre has become an obsession for many scholars, such as Sievers, but what does it all mean in the overall study of Old English poetry? As mentioned above, the fact that the structure of Old English poetry is so rigid and formulaic is an incredibly useful tool for extrapolating meaning from damaged or poorly transcribed manuscripts. For example, the first part of the “Finnsburg Fragment” is missing, but by using these basic metric ideas, at what some of the words of the last half-line can be guessed:

oððe hwæþer ðǣra hyssa * * * * *
or whether of the young men * * * * *

First, the most important word in the first half-line is looked at, "hyssa" or "young men." Since the first syllable has an h, and "hwæþer" also has an h in the first syllable, that the "h" syllables are the ones to be alliterated can be guessed. Just from that knowledge of alliteration can be guessed that the alliterated word in the lost second half line will contain a "h" syllable as well.

Just using a basic understanding of the alliterative verse can give a clue as to what the word might be. The type lines are also used to determine the lost words if only one or two words are missing, and the place of the alliterator and the stressed syllables is known. Extrapolating can find a word that may fit into the missing fragment. A knowledge of paleography and the scribe’s penmanship is also useful; words that would be too long or too short to make something fit can be ruled out.

See also

Related Research Articles

In poetry, metre or meter is the basic rhythmic structure of a verse or lines in verse. Many traditional verse forms prescribe a specific verse metre, or a certain set of metres alternating in a particular order. The study and the actual use of metres and forms of versification are both known as prosody.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Poetry</span> Form of literature

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A rhyme is a repetition of similar sounds in the final stressed syllables and any following syllables of two or more words. Most often, this kind of perfect rhyming is consciously used for a musical or aesthetic effect in the final position of lines within poems or songs. More broadly, a rhyme may also variously refer to other types of similar sounds near the ends of two or more words. Furthermore, the word rhyme has come to be sometimes used as a shorthand term for any brief poem, such as a nursery rhyme or Balliol rhyme.

Alliteration is the repetition of syllable-initial consonant sounds between nearby words, or of syllable-initial vowels, if the syllables in question do not start with a consonant. It is often used as a literary device. An example is the quote "Out of doubt, out of dark to the day's rising" from Lord of the Rings.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Caesura</span> Pause or break in poetry or music

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alliterative verse</span> Form of verse

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References

  1. ↑ Sammlung kurzer Grammatiken germanischer Dialekte. Reihe B: Ergänzungsreihe. Berlin, New York: DE GRUYTER.
  2. ↑ Griffith, Mark (2022-09-30), "Appendix 2.", Tradition and Innovation in Old English Metre, Arc Humanities Press, pp. 251–256, ISBN   978-1-80270-025-1 , retrieved 2023-11-30
  3. ↑ Terasawa, Jun (2011). Old English metre: an introduction. Toronto Anglo-Saxon series. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. ISBN   978-1-4426-4238-6.
  4. ↑ Russom, Geoffrey (1987). Old English Meter and Linguistic Theory. Cambridge University Press.
  5. ↑ Russom, Geoffrey (1998). Beowulf and Old Germanic Metre. Cambridge Studies in Anglo-Saxon England, 23. Cambridge University Press.
  6. ↑ Bredehoft, Thomas A. (2005). Early English Metre. University of Toronto Press.
  7. ↑ Cable, Thomas (1991). The English Alliterative Tradition. University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN   978-1-5128-0385-3.
  8. ↑ Hall, Alaric. "A beginner's guide (hopefully) to Old English metre (version 1.5, September 26th 2016" (PDF).
  9. ↑ Cornelius, Ian; Weiskott, Eric (2021). "The intricacies of counting to four in Old English poetry". Language and Literature: International Journal of Stylistics. 30 (3): 249–275. doi:10.1177/09639470211012297. ISSN   0963-9470.
  10. ↑ Frederic G Cassidy and Richard M. Ringler, eds. Bright’s Old English Grammar and Reader. (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc. 1971), p. 276
  11. ↑ "The Finnsburg Fragment", line 10
  12. ↑ "The Finnsburg Fragment", line 32
  13. 1 2 Minkova, Donka (2003). Alliteration and Sound Change in Early English. Cambridge Studies in Linguistics, 101. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 116–118. ISBN   978-0521573177.
  14. ↑ Frederic G Cassidy and Richard M. Ringler, eds. Bright’s Old English Grammar and Reader. (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc. 1971), p. 276
  15. ↑ Daniel Paul O'Donnell, PhD,. "Old English Metre: A brief guide." September 6, 2009 .http://people.uleth.ca/~daniel.odonnell/Tutorials/old-english-metre-a-brief-guide (accessed 2/15/10).
  16. ↑ Frederic G Cassidy and Richard M. Ringler, eds. Bright’s Old English Grammar and Reader. (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc. 1971), p. 287-288
  17. ↑ John C. Pope and R.D. Fulk. Eight Old English Poems. (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2001), p. 148-150
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