An Introduction to Old English Edinburgh University Press

reduced, or schwa, vowel of present-day. Even from a reasonably
early date, for example, we can find the plural indicative ending -on and
the subjunctive ending -en falling together as -en. This, of course, will
promote the loss of a distinctive subjunctive system.
9.3 Prose
The very earliest texts, a mixture of charters, interlinear glosses, that
is to say, Latin manuscripts with Old English forms written above the
original Latin, and Latin-Old English glossaries, give no real indication
of how Old English prose was to develop. Once again we have to wait
until the time of Alfred before we find continuous lengthy prose.
The writings of Alfred, or of those who worked beside him, can often
seem clumsy to us. The structure of his sentences often consists of a
more additive style, clause added to clause without much further sub-
ordinate or rhetorical structure. This is undoubtedly unfair, but never-
theless it has more than a grain of truth to it and deserves explanation. It
must always be remembered that at that time there was no inherited
tradition of formal prose in English. The only models available were
Latin prose and, as I shall show shortly, native poetry. The scarcity of
stylistic resources accounts for such awkward passages as the following
from the earliest, Alfredian, version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle:
Ond
t
a¯ ong
.
eat se cyning 
t
æt ond he¯ on 
t
a¯ duru e¯ode, ond 
t
a¯
unhe¯anlic
.
e hine werede o
t
he¯ on 
t
one æ
t
eling lo¯cude, ond 
t
a¯ u¯t
ræ¯sde on hine ond hine mic
.
lum g
.
ewundode. Ond hı¯e alle on 
t
one
cyning wæ¯run feohtende o
t t
æt hı¯e hine ofslæg
.
enne hæfdon.
And then the king realised that and went to the door, and then bravely
defended himself until he caught sight of the prince, and then he
rushed out at him and wounded him severely. And they all started
fighting the king until they had slain him
Within a century, however, the situation had changed dramatically.
Much of this is due to Ælfric and Wulfstan, both of whose works you
have already seen. No doubt both writers brought their own, very differ-
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ent, skills to bear. On the other hand, it is surely noteworthy that they
were near contemporaries and, equally, significant players in the
Benedictine Monastic Revival which was prominent throughout the
second half of the tenth century. It is of little use having skilled writers
if there is no educational infrastructure available to permit the exercise
of their skills.
I have implied that these writers were different from each other.
Indeed, Ælfric was above all a teacher, a private man, whilst Wulfstan was
as much a statesman as a monk. This need not detain us here, but it is
reflected directly in the type of language they use. As might be expected,
both authors are fully acquainted with Latin rhetoric, for example
Wulfstan appears to depend greatly on Ciceronian models. But both
writers are able to exploit the native structures and vocabulary to permit
variation and to leave aside or adjust the Ciceronian style to their own
purposes. In the Sermo Lupi, for example, you have already seen how
native structures, especially, of course, of word formation, are used for
rhetorical effect.
There is no space here to examine further the stylistic structures
of these writers, except in one particular respect, which will lead us
naturally on to the next topic. This is that both writers exploit the struc-
tural features most closely identified with Old English poetry. As far as
can be determined, this stylistic usage was first invented by Ælfric. The
essential features are the use of alliteration and the use of two-stress
phrases. Let me give a short example, where I have set the passage out as
if it were in lines of Old English poetry so that it appears with two pairs
of stress in each line and alliterative syllables in italics (I have, however,
removed the normal length marks to avoid clutter):
Mártinus 
t
a férde to 
t
am fy´rlenan lánde
and
t
a
t
a he cóm to múntum
t
a g
.
emétte he sc
.
éa
e
an
and heora án sóna his éxe up abræ´d
wólde hine sléan ac him forwy´rnde sum ó
t
er
swa 
t
æt he 
t
æt hy´lfe g
.
elæ´hte and wi
e
hæ´fde
t
æt slég
.
e
Then Martin travelled to a distant land
and when he came to the mountains he met some robbers
and one of them immediately raised up his axe
in order to slay him. But another forewarned him
so that he caught the handle and restrained the blow
9.4 Poetry
Much more could be said about the prose writers of Old English and
especially all three mentioned in the section above, but that would be
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a distraction here. Yet, as I have said, Ælfric’s rhythmical prose is a
natural entry point to Old English poetry, itself so linguistically differ-
ent from the present-day tradition, which owes its origins to the time of
Chaucer.
We are used to a metrical system in which the two principal features
are a regular pattern of stress and rhyme associated with the final word
in a line. The most dominant system is the iambic pentameter with
its rhyming schemes of the type AABB or ABAB. Obviously there are
many variations of this, as, for example, in blank verse, where there is
no regular rhyming scheme. Nevertheless we all have the sense that the
above principles are the norm.
Therefore it will probably come as a considerable surprise to discover
that the iambic pentameter is never used in Old English poetry and
that rhyme is sufficiently rare for one poem which does use rhyme to be
known today, quite simply, as The Rhyming Poem. Since the principles
governing Old English poetry are so different from those of the modern
tradition, it is worth spending a little time on them.
There were two such guiding principles in Old English: the first
concerns stress, as in modern poetry, but the second concerns not rhyme,
but rather alliteration. I shall discuss the issue of stress first, but even
before I do that, it is necessary to consider what a line of poetry might
be. We are so used today to considering poetry as a written medium that
it is easy to forget that it is above all an oral medium. To forget that is to
forget that it is phonological features such as stress which determine the
basic structure or template of the line. Thus an iambic line consists of
five feet, in which each foot consists of an unstressed syllable followed by
a stressed syllable. Of course poets alter this basic structure (which if it
were followed slavishly would be unbearably monotonous), but these
deviations are only possible because the template exists.
There was a template in Old English too, of course. It was, however, a
very different one. It had two basic features. Firstly, the line consisted
of two equal but partially independent parts. We talk of two half-lines
forming one long line. Within each half-line there are exactly two fully
stressed syllables. It is important to note that the number and position of
unstressed syllables is relatively free, the main restriction being that the
unstressed syllables should be completely unstressed. This system has
not been totally lost from English, for it accords with many traditional
nursery-rhymes, for example:
Húmpty Dúmpty sát on a wáll
Húmpty Dúmpty hád a great fáll
Not that Old English poetry is similar to nursery-rhymes, rather it
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proves that the Old English metrical structures are based on a still-active
general template.
I have, in effect, presented in the previous paragraph the stress pattern
of Old English poetry. Now I have to add to that the system of allit-
eration. Alliteration consists of the repetition of the initial sound in
either two or three of the stressed syllables of the long line, which we can
replicate in present-day English as follows: