thing in the Northwest. In all parts of England except the North and Central West it seems to have been extinct, and even two centuries earlier in Layamon it appears badly broken down. The “Gawain” poet uses it with a sure sense of its varied rhythms. A few brief notes on the metre will, I hope, enable anyone to read it readily and with pleasure.
Alliteration. Normally there are four stresses in a line (two in each half-line or “verse”) of which three alliterate, i.e. are syllables beginning with the same letter. Occasionally there are only two alliterating syllables, one in each verse. Note that:
- words beginning with any vowel or with h alliterate, e.g. Ágravain Hárd-hand at her óther side sat.
- The first letter in words like knight, wrought, was of course pronounced by the poet, and such words alliterate on the k or w . I have sometimes retained this alliteration as a licence (like the eye-rhymes in modern verse), e.g. : Who knéw ever King such coúnsel to take?
Rhythm. In theory there is no limit to the number of unstressed syllables in a line, and we find not infrequently, especially in the first verse or half-line, four or even five such syllables between two adjacent stresses. To a reader accustomed to our modern syllabic metres such an accumulation of unstressed syllables might be strange and difficult, and in this version I have avoided any sequence of more than three.
The two chief rhythms in a verse are the “rising” × × / × × /, and the “falling” (×) / × × / ×; sometimes the same rhythm runs through a whole line, e.g. :
(rising) When the siége and the assáult | were ceásed at Tróy (falling) Dríving to the dáis | no dánger affráy’d him,
but the half-line is the unit. Occasional variants of the rhythms in the second verse are: