the fourteenth century there was as yet no standard literary English, and each writer wrote as he spoke, in the dialect of the district to which he was native; for all its dialect, Sir Gawain is as courtly, both in matter and style, as the best of French romances. There is nothing rustic or provincial about it.
The alliterative metre in which the poem is written had evidently come down in an unbroken tradition from Old English times, and was a living 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