An Introduction to Old English Edinburgh University Press

Páge’s pérfect pórk sáusages
where I have highlighted in bold the alliterating syllables.
If we examine a real piece of Old English poetry, as in the following
examples from the middle of The Battle of Maldon, it becomes immedi-
ately obvious that the situation is much more complex than I have so far
indicated:
1 Féoll
t
a to fóldan
féalohilte swúrd:
fell then to ground
yellow-hilted sword
2 ne míhte he g
.
ehéaldan
héardne méc
.
e
not could he hold
hard blade
3 wæ´pnes wéaldan.
T
a g
.
yt
t
æt wórd g
.
ecwæ´
e
weapon wield
Then yet the word spoke
4 hár hílderinc
hy´ssan by´lde
hoary battle-warrior
warriors encouraged
5 bæ´d gángan for
e
góde g
.
eféran
urged go forward
brave companions
At first sight it appears hard to make sense of the patterns which
occur here. But there is method, nevertheless. Taking each half-line as a
separate entity, it should be possible to observe that lines 1a, 2b, 3a, 4b
and 5b (where ‘a’ and ‘b’ refer to the first or second half-line respectively)
have a common structure, namely they have an initial stressed syllable
followed by one or more unstressed syllables. Let us call this the falling-
falling type, or type A.
In fact there appears to have been five types of half-line. In addition to
the falling-falling type A, there was rising-rising type B, clashing type C,
broken-fall type D and fall-and-rise type E. In the short extract above,
naturally, not all types appear. But of the other five half-lines beyond the
five mentioned above, we find the following. 1a is type E, where there is
secondary stress on the compound féalohìlte; 3b is type B with, as you can
see, several unstressed syllables preceding the first stressed syllable; 4a
is an example of D with an unstressed syllable ‘breaking’ the second
stressed syllable from the secondary stress of the compound, i.e.
hílderìnc ; the same holds for 5a, where for
´
is a separable prefix.
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AN INTRODUCTION TO OLD ENGLISH
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Before I continue, it might serve as a useful guide if I now present a
schematic representation of the above types, which were first presented
at the end of the nineteenth century by Eduard Sievers (see the recom-
mended reading). Essentially these types consist of a pattern of fully
stressed (/), partly stressed (i.e. with secondary stress) (\) and fully
unstressed (x) syllables. The number of unstressed syllables is relatively
unimportant; indeed, in Old Saxon poetry they can occur very exten-
sively indeed. To the little sketch below, therefore, you can add extra
unstressed syllables after the unstressed syllables given there. Here are
the five types of half-line:
A
/ x / x
B
x / x /
C
x / / x
D
/ / \ x
E
/ \ x /
You may have noticed that in the extract above there is still one half-
line unaccounted for, namely 2a: ne míhte he g
.
ehéaldan, and equally it
appears to be unaccounted for in the five schematic types. If I say that
this half-line is a type A (falling-falling type), the obvious problem is that
there is an initial unstressed syllable to explain. Such an initial syllable
is quite often found and indeed is a part of general metrical theory, not