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In prosody, alliterative verse is a form of verse that uses
alliteration Alliteration is the conspicuous repetition of initial consonant sounds of nearby words in a phrase, often used as a literary device. A familiar example is "Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers". Alliteration is used poetically in various ...
as the principal ornamental device to help indicate the underlying metrical structure, as opposed to other devices such as rhyme. The most commonly studied traditions of alliterative verse are those found in the oldest literature of the
Germanic language The Germanic languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family spoken natively by a population of about 515 million people mainly in Europe, North America, Oceania and Southern Africa. The most widely spoken Germanic language, E ...
s, where scholars use the term 'alliterative poetry' rather broadly to indicate a tradition which not only shares alliteration as its primary ornament but also certain metrical characteristics. The
Old English Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the mid-5th c ...
epic '' Beowulf'', as well as most other Old English poetry, the
Old High German Old High German (OHG; german: Althochdeutsch (Ahd.)) is the earliest stage of the German language, conventionally covering the period from around 750 to 1050. There is no standardised or supra-regional form of German at this period, and Old High ...
''
Muspilli ''Muspilli'' is an Old High German poem known in incomplete form (103 lines) from a ninth-century Bavarian manuscript. Its subject is the fate of the soul immediately after death and at the Last Judgment. Many aspects of the interpretation of the ...
'', the
Old Saxon Old Saxon, also known as Old Low German, was a Germanic language and the earliest recorded form of Low German (spoken nowadays in Northern Germany, the northeastern Netherlands, southern Denmark, the Americas and parts of Eastern Europe). It ...
''
Heliand The ''Heliand'' () is an epic poem in Old Saxon, written in the first half of the 9th century. The title means ''saviour'' in Old Saxon (cf. German and Dutch ''Heiland'' meaning "saviour"), and the poem is a Biblical paraphrase that recounts the ...
'', the
Old Norse Old Norse, Old Nordic, or Old Scandinavian, is a stage of development of North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and their overseas settlemen ...
''
Poetic Edda The ''Poetic Edda'' is the modern name for an untitled collection of Old Norse anonymous narrative poems, which is distinct from the ''Prose Edda'' written by Snorri Sturluson. Several versions exist, all primarily of text from the Icelandic med ...
'', and many
Middle English Middle English (abbreviated to ME) is a form of the English language that was spoken after the Norman conquest of 1066, until the late 15th century. The English language underwent distinct variations and developments following the Old English ...
poems such as '' Piers Plowman'', ''
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight ''Sir Gawain and the Green Knight'' is a late 14th-century chivalric romance in Middle English. The author is unknown; the title was given centuries later. It is one of the best-known Arthurian stories, with its plot combining two types of ...
'', and the '' Alliterative Morte Arthur'' all use alliterative verse. While alliteration can be found in many poetic traditions, it is 'relatively infrequent' as a structured characteristic of poetic form.Frog, "The Finnic Tetrameter: A Creolization of Poetic Form?", ''Studia Metrica et Poetica'', 6.1 (2019), 20–78. The extensive use of alliteration in the so-called ''Kalevala'' meter of the Finnic languages provides a close comparison, and may derive directly from Germanic-language alliterative verse.


Common Germanic origins and features

The poetic forms found in the various Germanic languages are not identical, but there is sufficient similarity to make it clear that they are closely related traditions, stemming from a common Germanic source. Knowledge about that common tradition, however, is based almost entirely on inference from later poetry. One statement we have about the nature of alliterative verse from a practising alliterative poet is that of Snorri Sturluson in the ''
Prose Edda The ''Prose Edda'', also known as the ''Younger Edda'', ''Snorri's Edda'' ( is, Snorra Edda) or, historically, simply as ''Edda'', is an Old Norse textbook written in Iceland during the early 13th century. The work is often assumed to have been t ...
''. He describes metrical patterns and poetic devices used by skaldic poets around the year 1200. Snorri's description has served as the starting point for scholars to reconstruct alliterative meters beyond those of Old Norse. There have been many different metrical theories proposed, all of them attended with controversy. Looked at broadly, however, certain basic features are common from the earliest to the latest poetry. Alliterative verse has been found in some of the earliest monuments of Germanic literature. The
Golden Horns of Gallehus The Golden Horns of Gallehus were two horns made of sheet gold, discovered in Gallehus, north of Møgeltønder in Southern Jutland, Denmark.Denmark ) , song = ( en, "King Christian stood by the lofty mast") , song_type = National and royal anthem , image_map = EU-Denmark.svg , map_caption = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = Kingdom of Denmark , establish ...
and likely dating to the 4th century, bear this
Runic Runes are the letters in a set of related alphabets known as runic alphabets native to the Germanic peoples. Runes were used to write various Germanic languages (with some exceptions) before they adopted the Latin alphabet, and for specialised ...
inscription in
Proto-Norse Proto-Norse (also called Ancient Nordic, Ancient Scandinavian, Ancient Norse, Primitive Norse, Proto-Nordic, Proto-Scandinavian and Proto-North Germanic) was an Indo-European language spoken in Scandinavia that is thought to have evolved as a ...
: x / x x x / x x / x / x x ek hlewagastiʀ holtijaʀ , , horna tawidō (I, Hlewagastiʀ on?of Holt, made the horn.) This inscription contains four strongly stressed syllables, the first three of which alliterate on /x/ and the last of which does not alliterate, essentially the same pattern found in much later verse. Originally all alliterative poetry was composed and transmitted orally, and much went unrecorded. The degree to which writing may have altered this oral art form remains much in dispute. Nevertheless, there is a broad consensus among scholars that the written verse retains many (and some would argue almost all) of the features of the spoken language.


Metrical form

The core metrical features of traditional Germanic alliterative verse are as follows; they can be seen in the Gallehus inscription above: *A long line is divided into two half-lines. Half-lines are also known as 'verses', '
hemistich A hemistich (; via Latin from Ancient Greek, Greek , from "half" and "verse") is a half-line of verse, followed and preceded by a caesura, that makes up a single overall prosodic or verse unit. In Latin verse, Latin and Greek poetry, the hemist ...
s', or 'distichs'; the first is called the 'a-verse' (or 'on-verse'), the second the 'b-verse' (or 'off-verse'). The rhythm of the b-verse is generally more regular than that of the a-verse, helping listeners to perceive where the end of the line falls. *A heavy pause, or ' cæsura', separates the verses. *Each verse usually has two heavily stressed syllables, referred to as 'lifts' or 'beats' (other, less heavily stressed syllables, are called 'dips'). *The first (and, if there is one, sometimes the second) lift in the a-verse alliterates with the first lift in the b-verse. *The second lift in the b-verse does not alliterate with the first lifts. Some of these fundamental rules varied in certain traditions over time. Unlike in post-medieval English
accentual verse Accentual verse has a fixed number of stresses per line regardless of the number of syllables that are present. It is common in languages that are stress-timed, such as English, as opposed to syllabic verse which is common in syllable-timed langua ...
, in which a syllable is either stressed or unstressed, Germanic poets were sensitive to ''degrees'' of stress. These can be thought of at three levels: # most stressed ('stress-words'): root syllables of nouns, adjectives, participles, infinitives # less stressed ('particles'): root syllables of most finite verbs (i.e. verbs which are not infinitives) and adverbs # even less stressed ('proclitics'): most pronouns, weakly stressed adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, parts of the verb ''to be'', word-endings If a half-line contains one or more stress-words, their root syllables will be the lifts. (This is the case in the Gallehus Horn inscription above, where all the lifts are nouns.) If it contains no stress-words, the root syllables of any particles will be the lift. Rarely, even a proclitic can be the lift, either because there are no more heavily stressed syllables or because it is given extra stress for some particular reason. If a lift was occupied by word with a short root vowel followed by only one consonant followed by an unstressed vowel (i.e. '(-)CVCV(-)) these two syllables were in most circumstances counted as only one syllable. This is called resolution. The patterns of unstressed syllables vary significantly in the alliterative traditions of different Germanic languages. The rules for these patterns remain imperfectly understood and subject to debate.


Rules for alliteration

Alliteration fits naturally with the
prosodic In linguistics, prosody () is concerned with elements of speech that are not individual phonetic segments (vowels and consonants) but are properties of syllables and larger units of speech, including linguistic functions such as intonation, st ...
patterns of early Germanic languages. Alliteration essentially involves matching the left edges of stressed syllables. Early Germanic languages share a left-prominent prosodic pattern. In other words, stress falls on the root syllable of a word, which is normally the initial syllable (except where the root is preceded by an unstressed prefix, as in past participles, for example). This means that the first sound of a word was particularly salient to listeners. Traditional Germanic verse had two particular rules about alliteration: *All vowels alliterate with each other. *The consonant clusters ''st-'', ''sp-'' and ''sc-'' are treated as separate sounds (so ''st-'' only alliterates with ''st-'', not with ''s-'' or ''sp-''). The precise reasons for this are debated. The most common, but not uniformly accepted, theory for vowel-alliteration is that words beginning with vowels all actually began with a glottal stop (as is still the case in some modern Germanic languages).


Diction

The need to find an appropriate alliterating word gave certain other distinctive features to alliterative verse as well. Alliterative poets drew on a specialized vocabulary of poetic synonyms rarely used in prose texts and used standard images and
metaphor A metaphor is a figure of speech that, for rhetorical effect, directly refers to one thing by mentioning another. It may provide (or obscure) clarity or identify hidden similarities between two different ideas. Metaphors are often compared wi ...
s called ''
kenning A kenning ( Icelandic: ) is a figure of speech in the type of circumlocution, a compound that employs figurative language in place of a more concrete single-word noun. Kennings are strongly associated with Old Norse-Icelandic and Old English ...
s''. Old Saxon and medieval English attest to the word '' fitt'' with the sense of 'a section in a longer poem', and this term is sometimes used today by scholars to refer to sections of alliterative poems.


English alliterative verse


Old English poetic forms

Old English classical poetry, epitomised by '' Beowulf'', follows the rules of traditional Germanic poetry outlined above, and is indeed a major source for reconstructing them. J.R.R. Tolkien's essay " On Translating ''Beowulf''" analyses the rules as used in the poem. Some patterns of classical Old English verse begin to break down at the end of the Old English period. Moreover, Thomas Bredehoft has argued that an alternative system of non-classical Old English poetry with looser constraints existed alongside this classical verse. In Bredehoft's reading, this poetry is epitomized by the homilies of
Ælfric of Eynsham Ælfric of Eynsham ( ang, Ælfrīc; la, Alfricus, Elphricus; ) was an English abbot and a student of Æthelwold of Winchester, and a consummate, prolific writer in Old English of hagiography, homilies, biblical commentaries, and other genres ...
traditionally described as being in 'rhythmical prose'. This section of the article, however, focuses on the classical form.


Metrical form

As described above for the Germanic tradition as a whole, each line of poetry in Old English consists of two half-lines or verses with a pause or '' caesura'' in the middle of the line. Each half-line usually has two accented syllables, although the first may only have one. The following example from the poem ''
The Battle of Maldon "The Battle of Maldon" is the name given to an Old English poem of uncertain date celebrating the real Battle of Maldon of 991, at which an Anglo-Saxon army failed to repulse a Viking raid. Only 325 lines of the poem are extant; both the beginni ...
'', spoken by the warrior Beorhtwold, shows the usual pattern: Clear indications of Modern English meanings can be heard in the original, using phonetic approximations of the Old English sound-letter system: :High ourageshall the harder, heart the keener, :mood shall the more, as our main ightlittleth In addition to the rules outlined above, Old English poetry had constraints limiting the lengths of verses and the number and distribution of lifts and dips. However, there is still no consensus on what precisely the constraints were, and they must have varied slightly from one poem to another. 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. Sievers' system is a method of categorization rather than a full theory of meter. It does not, in other words, purport to describe the system the ''
scop A ( or ) was a poet as represented in Old English poetry. The scop is the Old English counterpart of the Old Norse ', with the important difference that "skald" was applied to historical persons, and scop is used, for the most part, to designa ...
s'' actually used to compose their verse, nor does it explain why certain patterns are favored or avoided. Sievers divided verses into five basic types, labeled A–E. The system is founded upon accent, alliteration, quantity of vowels, and patterns of syllabic accentuation. Another popular system is that of Geoffrey Russom, which is predicated on a theory of meter involving two metrical feet per verse. 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. Single 'half-lines' are sometimes found in Old English verse; scholars debate how far these were a characteristic of Old English poetic tradition and how far they arise from defective copying of poems by scribes.


Rules for alliteration

Alliteration is the principal ornamental feature of Old English poetry. Two stressed syllables alliterate when they begin with the same sound. In addition to the general rules for alliteration in Germanic poetry listed above, there are some further complications due to sound-changes in Old English: *Unpalatized ''c'' (pronounced ) alliterated with palatized ''c'' (pronounced in late Old English), apparently because the sounds were once just one sound (). *Unpalatized ''g'' (pronounced ) likewise alliterated with palatized ''g'' (pronounced like ''y'' in ''yet'', , in late Old English) and with the ''g'' inherited from
Common Germanic Proto-Germanic (abbreviated PGmc; also called Common Germanic) is the reconstructed proto-language of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European languages. Proto-Germanic eventually developed from pre-Proto-Germanic into three Germanic br ...
. There is not yet a consensus on why these alliterated, but the reason must be partly because the first two ''g''s were once just one sound. The first stressed syllable of the off-verse, or second half-line, usually alliterates with one or both of the stressed syllables of the on-verse, or first half-line. The second stressed syllable of the off-verse does not usually alliterate with the others.


The Middle English 'alliterative revival'

Just as rhyme was seen in some Anglo-Saxon poems (e.g. ''
The Rhyming Poem "The Rhyming Poem", also written as "The Riming Poem", is a poem of 87 lines found in the Exeter Book, a tenth-century collection of Old English poetry. It is remarkable for being no later than the 10th century, in Old English, and written in rhy ...
'', and, to some degree, '' The Proverbs of Alfred''), the use of alliterative verse continued into
Middle English Middle English (abbreviated to ME) is a form of the English language that was spoken after the Norman conquest of 1066, until the late 15th century. The English language underwent distinct variations and developments following the Old English ...
.
Layamon Layamon or Laghamon (, ; ) – spelled Laȝamon or Laȝamonn in his time, occasionally written Lawman – was an English poet of the late 12th/early 13th century and author of the ''Brut'', a notable work that was the first to present the legend ...
's ''Brut'', written in about 1215, uses a loose alliterative scheme. Starting in the mid-14th century, alliterative verse became popular in the English North, the West Midlands, and a little later in Scotland. The
Pearl Poet The "Gawain Poet" (), or less commonly the "Pearl Poet",Andrew, M. "Theories of Authorship" (1997) in Brewer (ed). ''A Companion to the Gawain-poet'', Boydell & Brewer, p.23 (''fl.'' late 14th century) is the name given to the author of '' Sir ...
uses a complex scheme of alliteration, rhyme, and iambic metre in his ''
Pearl A pearl is a hard, glistening object produced within the soft tissue (specifically the mantle) of a living shelled mollusk or another animal, such as fossil conulariids. Just like the shell of a mollusk, a pearl is composed of calcium carb ...
''; a more conventional alliterative metre in ''
Cleanness ''Cleanness'' (Middle English: ''Clannesse'') is a Middle English alliterative poem written in the late 14th century. Its unknown author, designated the ''Pearl poet'' or ''Gawain poet'', also appears, on the basis of dialect and stylistic eviden ...
'' and ''
Patience (or forbearance) is the ability to endure difficult circumstances. Patience may involve perseverance in the face of delay; tolerance of provocation without responding in disrespect/anger; or forbearance when under strain, especially when face ...
'', and alliterative verse alternating with rhymed quatrains in ''
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight ''Sir Gawain and the Green Knight'' is a late 14th-century chivalric romance in Middle English. The author is unknown; the title was given centuries later. It is one of the best-known Arthurian stories, with its plot combining two types of ...
''.
William Langland William Langland (; la, Willielmus de Langland; 1332 – c. 1386) is the presumed author of a work of Middle English alliterative verse generally known as ''Piers Plowman'', an allegory with a complex variety of religious themes. The poem tr ...
's '' Piers Plowman'' is an important English alliterative poem; it was written between ''c''. 1370 and 1390. The form of alliterative verse changed gradually over time. From ''Piers Plowman'': A feir feld full of folk fond I þer bitwene, Of alle maner of men, þe mene and þe riche, Worchinge and wandringe as þe world askeþ. In modern spelling: A fair field full of folk found I there between, Of all manner of men the mean and the rich, Working and wandering as the world asketh. In modern translation: Among them I found a fair field full of people All manner of men, the poor and the rich Working and wandering as the world requires. Alliteration was sometimes used together with rhyme in Middle English work, as in ''Pearl'' and in the densely structured poem '' The Three Dead Kings''. Middle English alliterative poets invented some innovative structures; the Pearl Poet, for instance, often adds a third alliterating word to the first half-line (e.g. ''Sir Gawain'' l.2, "the borgh brittened and brent , , to brondez and askez"), and the medial pause is not always strictly maintained. After the fifteenth century, alliterative verse became fairly uncommon; possibly the last major poem in the tradition is
William Dunbar William Dunbar (born 1459 or 1460 – died by 1530) was a Scottish makar, or court poet, active in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. He was closely associated with the court of King James IV and produced a large body of work i ...
's '' Tretis of the Tua Marriit Wemen and the Wedo'' (c. 1500). By the middle of the sixteenth century, the four-beat alliterative line had completely vanished, at least from the written tradition: the last poem using the form that has survived, ''Scotish Feilde'', was written in or soon after 1515 for the circle of
Thomas Stanley, 2nd Earl of Derby Thomas Stanley, 2nd Earl of Derby (before 1485 – 23 May 1521) was an English nobleman, politician, and peer. Family Thomas Stanley was the eldest son of George Stanley, 9th Baron Strange and Joan Strange, daughter and heiress of John Strange, ...
in commemoration of the
Battle of Flodden The Battle of Flodden, Flodden Field, or occasionally Branxton, (Brainston Moor) was a battle fought on 9 September 1513 during the War of the League of Cambrai between the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland, resulting in an English ...
.


Modern revival


J. R. R. Tolkien

J. R. R. Tolkien John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (, ; 3 January 1892 – 2 September 1973) was an English writer and philologist. He was the author of the high fantasy works ''The Hobbit'' and ''The Lord of the Rings''. From 1925 to 1945, Tolkien was the Rawlins ...
(1892–1973), a scholar of Old and
Middle English Middle English (abbreviated to ME) is a form of the English language that was spoken after the Norman conquest of 1066, until the late 15th century. The English language underwent distinct variations and developments following the Old English ...
, used alliterative verse extensively in both translations and original poetry. Most of his alliterative verse is in modern English, in a variety of styles, but he also composed Old English alliterative verses. Tolkien also wrote alliterative verse based on other traditions, such as the '' Völsungasaga'' and ''
Atlakviða ''Atlakviða'' (''The Lay of Atli'') is one of the heroic poems of the ''Poetic Edda''. One of the main characters is Atli who originates from Attila the Hun. It is one of the most archaic Eddic poems, possibly dating to as early as the 9th centu ...
'', in ''
The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun ''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things already mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the ...
'' (2009), and '' The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm's Son'' describing the aftermath of the
Battle of Maldon The Battle of Maldon took place on 11 August 991 AD near Maldon beside the River Blackwater in Essex, England, during the reign of Æthelred the Unready. Earl Byrhtnoth and his thegns led the English against a Viking invasion. The battl ...
(1953). His Gothic ''Bagme Bloma'' ("Flower of the Trees") uses a trochaic metre, with irregular end-rhymes and irregular alliteration in each line; it was published in '' Songs for the Philologists'' (1936). He wrote a variety of pieces of alliterative verse in Old English, including parts of '' The Seafarer''. A version of these appears in ''The Notion Club Papers.'' He also made translations including about 600 lines of '' Beowulf'' in verse. The 2276-line ''The Lay of the Children of Húrin'' (c. 1918–1925), published in '' The Lays of Beleriand'' (1985) is written in Modern English (albeit with some archaic words) and set to the ''Beowulf'' meter. Lines 610-614 are given here: 'Let the bow of Beleg to your band be joined; and swearing death to the sons of darkness let us suage our sorrow and the smart of fate! Our valour is not vanquished, nor vain the glory that once we did win in the woods of old.'


C. S. Lewis

Alliterative verse is occasionally written by other modern authors. C. S. Lewis (1898–1963) wrote a narrative poem of 742 lines called ''The Nameless Isle'', published posthumously in ''Narrative Poems'' (1972). Lines 562–67 read: The marble maid, under mask of stone shook and shuddered. As a shadow streams Over the wheat waving, over the woman's face Life came lingering. Nor was it long after Down its blue pathways, blood returning Moved, and mounted to her maiden cheek.


W. H. Auden

W. H. Auden Wystan Hugh Auden (; 21 February 1907 – 29 September 1973) was a British-American poet. Auden's poetry was noted for its stylistic and technical achievement, its engagement with politics, morals, love, and religion, and its variety in ...
(1907–1973) wrote a number of poems, including ''
The Age of Anxiety ''The Age of Anxiety: A Baroque Eclogue'' (1947; first UK edition, 1948) is a long poem in six parts by W. H. Auden, written mostly in a modern version of Anglo-Saxon alliterative verse. The poem deals, in eclogue form, with man's quest to fin ...
'' (published 1947), in a type of alliterative verse modified for modern English: Deep in my dark. the dream shines Yes, of you you dear always; My cause to cry, cold but my Story still, still my music. Mild rose the moon, moving through our Naked nights: tonight it rains; Black umbrellas: blossom out; Gone the gold, my golden ball. …


Richard Wilbur

Richard Wilbur Richard Purdy Wilbur (March 1, 1921 – October 14, 2017) was an American poet and literary translator. One of the foremost poets of his generation, Wilbur's work, composed primarily in traditional forms, was marked by its wit, charm, and gentle ...
's ''Junk'' opens with the lines: An axe angles from my neighbor's ashcan; It is hell's handiwork, the wood not hickory. The flow of the grain not faithfully followed. The shivered shaft rises from a shellheap Of plastic playthings, paper plates. Other poets who have experimented with modern alliterative English verse include Ezra Pound in his version of '' The Seafarer'', and Alaric Watts, whose famously complex ''
The Siege of Belgrade ''The Siege of Belgrade'' is a comic opera in three acts, principally composed by Stephen Storace to an English libretto by James Cobb. It incorporated music by Mozart, Salieri, Paisiello and Martini, and is therefore considered a pasticcio oper ...
'' combines alliteration with both rhymed meter and abecedarian verse. Many translations of ''Beowulf'', in keeping with the source material, use alliteration: among recent translations that of
Seamus Heaney Seamus Justin Heaney (; 13 April 1939 – 30 August 2013) was an Irish poet, playwright and translator. He received the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature.
loosely follows the rules of modern alliterative verse, while those of Alan Sullivan and Timothy Murphy follow them more closely.


Old Norse poetic forms

The inherited form of alliterative verse was modified somewhat in Old Norse poetry. In Old Norse, as a result of phonetic changes from the original common Germanic language, many unstressed syllables were lost. This lent Old Norse verse a characteristic terseness; the lifts tended to be crowded together at the expense of the weak syllables. In some lines, the weak syllables have been entirely suppressed. From the '' Hávamál'': The various names of the Old Norse verse forms are given in the
Prose Edda The ''Prose Edda'', also known as the ''Younger Edda'', ''Snorri's Edda'' ( is, Snorra Edda) or, historically, simply as ''Edda'', is an Old Norse textbook written in Iceland during the early 13th century. The work is often assumed to have been t ...
by Snorri Sturluson. The '' Háttatal'', or "list of verse forms", contains the names and characteristics of each of the fixed forms of Norse poetry.


Fornyrðislag

A verse form close to that of ''Beowulf'' was used on
runestone A runestone is typically a raised stone with a runic inscription, but the term can also be applied to inscriptions on boulders and on bedrock. The tradition began in the 4th century and lasted into the 12th century, but most of the runestones d ...
s and in the Old Norse
Poetic Edda The ''Poetic Edda'' is the modern name for an untitled collection of Old Norse anonymous narrative poems, which is distinct from the ''Prose Edda'' written by Snorri Sturluson. Several versions exist, all primarily of text from the Icelandic med ...
; in Norse, it was called ''fornyrðislag'', which means "old story metre". The Norse poets tended to break up their verses into stanzas of from two to eight lines (or more), rather than writing continuous verse after the Old English model. The loss of unstressed syllables made these verses seem denser and more emphatic. The Norse poets, unlike the Old English poets, tended to make each line a complete syntactic unit, avoiding
enjambment In poetry, enjambment ( or ; from the French ''enjamber'') is incomplete syntax at the end of a line (poetry), line; the meaning 'runs over' or 'steps over' from one poetic line to the next, without punctuation. Lines without enjambment are end-sto ...
where a thought begun on one line continues through the following lines; only seldom do they begin a new sentence in the second half-line. This example is from the '' Waking of Angantyr'': ''Fornyrðislag'' has two lifts per half line, with two or three (sometimes one) unstressed syllables. At least two lifts, usually three, alliterate, always including the main stave (the first lift of the second half-line). It had a variant form called ''
málaháttr Málaháttr (Old Norse: ) is a poetic metre in Old Norse poetry, which is usually described as "conversational style." It is similar to fornyrðislag except that there are more syllables in a line; usually five. Poems with verses in this metre: * ...
'' ("speech meter"), which adds an unstressed syllable to each half-line, making six to eight (sometimes up to ten) unstressed syllables per line. Conversely, another variant, kviðuháttr, has only three syllables in its odd half-lines (but four in the even ones).


Ljóðaháttr

Change in form came with the development of ''ljóðaháttr'', which means "song" or "
ballad A ballad is a form of verse, often a narrative set to music. Ballads derive from the medieval French ''chanson balladée'' or ''ballade'', which were originally "dance songs". Ballads were particularly characteristic of the popular poetry and ...
metre", a stanzaic verse form that created four line stanzas. The odd numbered lines were almost standard lines of alliterative verse with four lifts and two or three alliterations, with cæsura; the even numbered lines had three lifts and two alliterations, and no cæsura. This example is from
Freyr Freyr (Old Norse: 'Lord'), sometimes anglicized as Frey, is a widely attested god in Norse mythology, associated with kingship, fertility, peace, and weather. Freyr, sometimes referred to as Yngvi-Freyr, was especially associated with Sweden an ...
's lament in '' Skírnismál'': A number of variants occurred in ''ljóðaháttr'', including ''galdralag'' ("incantation meter"), which adds a fifth short (three-lift) line to the end of the stanza; in this form, usually the fifth line echoes the fourth one.


Dróttkvætt

These verse forms were elaborated even more into the skaldic poetic form called ''dróttkvætt'', meaning " courtly metre", which added internal rhymes and other forms of
assonance Assonance is a resemblance in the sounds of words/syllables either between their vowels (e.g., ''meat, bean'') or between their consonants (e.g., ''keep, cape''). However, assonance between consonants is generally called ''consonance'' in America ...
that go well beyond the requirements of Germanic alliterative verse and greatly resemble the Celtic forms (Irish and Welsh). The ''dróttkvætt'' stanza had eight lines, each having usually three lifts and almost invariably six syllables. Although other stress patterns appear, the verse is predominantly trochaic. The last two syllables in each line had to form a trochee (there are a few specific forms which utilize a stressed word at line-end, such as in some ''docked'' forms). In addition, specific requirements obtained for odd-numbered and even-numbered lines. In the odd-numbered lines (equivalent to the a-verse of the traditional alliterative line): *Two of the stressed syllables alliterate with one another. *Two of the stressed syllables share partial rhyme of consonants (which was called ''skothending'') with dissimilar vowels (e.g. ''hat'' and ''bet''), not necessarily at the end of the word (e.g. ''touching'' and ''orchard''). In the even lines (equivalent to the b-verse of the traditional alliterative line): *The first stressed syllable must alliterate with the alliterative stressed syllables of the previous line. *Two of the stressed syllables rhyme (''aðalhending'', e.g. ''hat'' and ''cat''), not necessarily at the end of the word (e.g. ''torching'' and ''orchard''). The requirements of this verse form were so demanding that occasionally the text of the poems had to run parallel, with one thread of syntax running through the on-side of the half-lines, and another running through the off-side. According to the '' Fagrskinna'' collection of
sagas is a series of science fantasy role-playing video games by Square Enix. The series originated on the Game Boy in 1989 as the creation of Akitoshi Kawazu at Square. It has since continued across multiple platforms, from the Super NES to th ...
, King
Harald III of Norway Harald Sigurdsson (; – 25 September 1066), also known as Harald III of Norway and given the epithet ''Hardrada'' (; modern no, Hardråde, roughly translated as "stern counsel" or "hard ruler") in the sagas, was King of Norway from 1046 to ...
uttered these lines of ''dróttkvætt'' at the
Battle of Stamford Bridge The Battle of Stamford Bridge ( ang, Gefeoht æt Stanfordbrycge) took place at the village of Stamford Bridge, East Riding of Yorkshire, in England, on 25 September 1066, between an English army under King Harold Godwinson and an invading No ...
; the internal assonances and the alliteration are emboldened: :''Krjúpum vér fyr vápna,'' :''(valteigs), brǫkun eigi,'' :''(svá bauð Hildr), at hjaldri,'' :''(haldorð), í bug skjaldar.'' :''(Hátt bað mik), þar's mœttusk,'' :''(menskorð bera forðum),'' :''hlakkar íss ok hausar,'' :''(hjalmstall í gný malma).'' : In battle, we do not creep behind a shield before the din of weapons (so said the goddess of hawk-land
valkyrja Valkyrja is a black metal band from Stockholm, Sweden formed in 2004. History The band released their first demo in the same year under the name ''Funeral Voices''. The demo was re-released on cassette September 11, including additional mater ...
], true of words.) She who wore the necklace bade me to bear my head high in battle, when the battle-ice [a gleaming sword] seeks to shatter skulls. The bracketed words in the poem ("so said the goddess of hawk-land, true of words") are syntactically separate, but interspersed within the text of the rest of the verse. The elaborate ''kennings'' manifested here are also practically necessary in this complex and demanding form, as much to solve metrical difficulties as for the sake of vivid imagery. Intriguingly, the saga claims that Harald improvised these lines after he gave a lesser performance (in ''fornyrðislag''); Harald judged that verse bad, and then offered this one in the more demanding form. While the exchange may be fictionalized, the scene illustrates the regard in which the form was held. Most ''dróttkvætt'' poems that survive appear in one or another of the
Norse Saga is a series of science fantasy role-playing video games by Square Enix. The series originated on the Game Boy in 1989 as the creation of Akitoshi Kawazu at Square. It has since continued across multiple platforms, from the Super NES to the Pl ...
s; several of the sagas are
biographies A biography, or simply bio, is a detailed description of a person's life. It involves more than just the basic facts like education, work, relationships, and death; it portrays a person's experience of these life events. Unlike a profile or c ...
of skaldic poets.


Hrynhenda

''Hrynhenda'' or ''hrynjandi háttr'' ('the flowing verse-form') is a later development of ''dróttkvætt'' with eight syllables per line instead of six, with the similar rules of rhyme and alliteration, although each ''hrynhent''-variant shows particular subtleties. It is first attested around 985 in the so-called ''Hafgerðingadrápa'' of which four lines survive (alliterants and rhymes bolded): :''Mínar biðk at munka reyni'' :''meinalausan farar beina;'' :''heiðis haldi hárar foldar'' :''hallar dróttinn of mér stalli.'' : I ask the tester of monks (God) for a safe journey; the lord of the palace of the high ground (God — here we have a kenning in four parts) keep the seat of the falcon (hand) over me. The author was said to be a Christian from the
Hebrides The Hebrides (; gd, Innse Gall, ; non, Suðreyjar, "southern isles") are an archipelago off the west coast of the Scottish mainland. The islands fall into two main groups, based on their proximity to the mainland: the Inner and Outer Hebr ...
, who composed the poem asking God to keep him safe at sea. (''Note'': The third line is, in fact, over-alliterated. There should be exactly two alliterants in the odd-numbered lines.) The metre gained some popularity in courtly poetry, as the rhythm may sound more majestic than dróttkvætt. We learn much about these in the ''Hattatal'': Snorri gives for certain at least three different variant-forms of hrynhenda. These long-syllabled lines are explained by Snorri as being ''extra-metrical'' in most cases: the "main" form never has alliteration ''or'' rhyme in the first 2 syllables of the odd-lines (i.e., rhymes always coming at the fourth-syllable), and the even-lines never have rhyme on the fifth/sixth syllables (i.e.: they cannot harbor rhyme in these places because they extra-metrical), the following couplet shows the paradigm: :''Tiggi snýr á ógnar áru'' :''(Undgagl veit þat) sóknar hagli''.'' '' ote the juxtaposition of alliteration and rhyme of the even-line Then, the variant-forms show unsurprising dróttkvætt patterns overall; the main difference being that the first trochee of the odd-lines are technically not reckoned as extrametrical since they harbor ''alliteration'', but the even-lines' extra-metrical feature is more or less as the same. The 2nd form is the ''"troll-hrynjandi"'': in the odd-lines the alliteration is moved to the ''first'' metrical position (no longer "extra-metrical") while the rhyme remains the same (Snorri seems to imply that ''frumhending'', which is placing a rhyme on the first syllable of any line, is preferably avoided in all these forms: the rhymes are always preferred as ''oddhending'', "middle-of-the-line rhymes") — in the even-lines the rhyme and alliteration are not juxtaposed, and this is a key feature of its distinction (the significant features only are marked in bold below): :''Stála kendi steykvilundum'' :''Styriar valdi raudu falda''....'' '' The next form, which Snorri calls "ordinary/standard hrynhenda", is almost like a "combination" of the previous — alliteration always on the first metrical-position, and the rhymes in the odd-lines juxtaposed (all features in bold in this example): :''Vafdi lítt er virdum mætti'' :''Vígrækiandi fram at sækia.' There is one more form which is a bit different though seemed to be counted among the previous group by Snorri, called ''draughent''. The syllable-count changes to ''seven'' (and, whether relevant to us or not, the second-syllable seems to be counted as the extra-metrical): :''Vápna hríd velta nádi'' :''Vægdarlaus feigum hausi.'' :''Hilmir lét höggum mæta'' :''Herda klett bana verdant.'' As one can see, there is very often clashing stress in the middle of the line (''Vápna hríd velta....//..Vægdarlaus feigum....'', etc.), and ''oddhending'' seems preferred (as well as keeping alliterative and rhyming syllables separated, which likely has to do with the syllabic-makeup of the line).


Post-medieval Scandinavian alliterative verse

Alliterative poetry is still practiced in
Iceland Iceland ( is, Ísland; ) is a Nordic island country in the North Atlantic Ocean and in the Arctic Ocean. Iceland is the most sparsely populated country in Europe. Iceland's capital and largest city is Reykjavík, which (along with its s ...
in an unbroken tradition since the settlement, most commonly in the form of rímur. The most common alliterative ''ríma'' form is '' ferskeytt''.Vésteinn Ólason, 'Old Icelandic Poetry', in ''A History of Icelandic Literature'', ed. by Daisy Nejmann, Histories of Scandinavian Literature, 5 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2006), pp. 1-63 (pp. 55-59).


High German and Saxon forms

The
Old High German Old High German (OHG; german: Althochdeutsch (Ahd.)) is the earliest stage of the German language, conventionally covering the period from around 750 to 1050. There is no standardised or supra-regional form of German at this period, and Old High ...
and
Old Saxon Old Saxon, also known as Old Low German, was a Germanic language and the earliest recorded form of Low German (spoken nowadays in Northern Germany, the northeastern Netherlands, southern Denmark, the Americas and parts of Eastern Europe). It ...
corpus of ''Stabreim'' or alliterative verse is small. Fewer than 200 Old High German lines survive, in four works: the ''
Hildebrandslied The ''Hildebrandslied'' (; ''Lay'' or ''Song of Hildebrand'') is a heroic lay written in Old High German alliterative verse. It is the earliest poetic text in German, and it tells of the tragic encounter in battle between a father (Hildebrand) ...
'', ''
Muspilli ''Muspilli'' is an Old High German poem known in incomplete form (103 lines) from a ninth-century Bavarian manuscript. Its subject is the fate of the soul immediately after death and at the Last Judgment. Many aspects of the interpretation of the ...
'', the '' Merseburg Charms'' and the '' Wessobrunn Prayer''. All four are preserved in forms that are clearly to some extent corrupt, suggesting that the scribes may themselves not have been entirely familiar with the poetic tradition. Two Old Saxon alliterative poems survive. One is the reworking of the four gospels into the epic ''
Heliand The ''Heliand'' () is an epic poem in Old Saxon, written in the first half of the 9th century. The title means ''saviour'' in Old Saxon (cf. German and Dutch ''Heiland'' meaning "saviour"), and the poem is a Biblical paraphrase that recounts the ...
'' (nearly 6000 lines), where Jesus and his disciples are portrayed in a Saxon warrior culture. The other is the fragmentary '' Genesis'' (337 lines in 3 unconnected fragments), created as a reworking of Biblical content based on Latin sources. However, both German traditions show one common feature which is much less common elsewhere: a proliferation of unaccented syllables. Generally these are parts of speech which would naturally be unstressed —
pronoun In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun (abbreviated ) is a word or a group of words that one may substitute for a noun or noun phrase. Pronouns have traditionally been regarded as one of the parts of speech, but some modern theorists would not c ...
s, prepositions, articles, modal auxiliaries — but in the Old Saxon works there are also
adjective In linguistics, an adjective (abbreviated ) is a word that generally modifies a noun or noun phrase or describes its referent. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun. Traditionally, adjectives were considered one of the ma ...
s and
lexical verb In linguistics a lexical verb or main verb is a member of an open class of verbs that includes all verbs except auxiliary verbs. Lexical verbs typically express action, state, or other predicate meaning. In contrast, auxiliary verbs express gramm ...
s. The unaccented syllables typically occur before the first stress in the half-line, and most often in the b-verse. The ''Hildebrandslied'', lines 4–5: The ''Heliand'', line 3062: :''Sâlig bist thu Sîmon, quað he, sunu Ionases; ni mahtes thu that selbo gehuggean'' ::Blessed are you Simon, he said, son of Jonah; for you did not see that yourself (Matthew 16, 17) This leads to a less dense style, no doubt closer to everyday language, which has been interpreted both as a sign of decadent technique from ill-tutored poets and as an artistic innovation giving scope for additional poetic effects. Either way, it signifies a break with the strict Sievers typology. In more recent times, Richard Wagner sought to evoke old German models and what he considered a more natural and less over-civilised style by writing his '' Ring'' poems in ''Stabreim''.


Relationship with ''Kalevala'' meter

The trochaic tetrametrical meter that characterises the traditional poetry of most Finnic-language cultures, known as ''Kalevala'' meter, does not deploy alliteration with the structural regularity of Germanic-language alliterative verse, but ''Kalevala'' meter does have a very strong convention that, in each line, two lexically stressed syllables should alliterate. In view of the profound influence of the Germanic languages on other aspects of the Finnic languages and the unusualness of such regular requirements for alliteration, it has been argued that ''Kalevala'' meter borrowed both its use of alliteration and possibly other metrical features from Germanic.


Notes


References


Sources

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Further reading

* * * * * * * *


External links


Carmina Scaldica
a selection of Norse and Icelandic skaldic poetry, ed.
Finnur Jónsson Finnur Jónsson (May 29, 1858 – March 30, 1934) was an Icelandic-Danish philologist and Professor of Nordic Philology at the University of Copenhagen. He made extensive contributions to the study of Old Norse literature. Finnur Jónsson was b ...
, 1929
Jörmungrund
An extensive resource for Old Norse poetry

Probably the most accessible discussion in English of alliterant placement in modern Icelandic (also mostly applicable to Old Norse).
Forgotten ground regained
A site dedicated to alliterative and accentual poetry.
An interactive guide to Old and Middle English alliterative verse by Alaric Hall.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Alliterative Verse Poetic devices Medieval poetry Old Norse poetry Icelandic literature Early Germanic literature