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by a caesura into two half-verses, each of which contains three bars. An unstressed syllable may be present at the end of each half-verse, and an anacrusis may precede the first beat of each halfverse. The scheme of the ME. alexandrine with equal bars is therefore (x)××1××1×(×)11(×)|××lý×1 x(x), e.g.

Messengers he sent thorghout | Inge lond

Un to be | Inglis | kinges pat | had it | in þer | hond And teld how | pe Bretons, men of mykelle | myght, be lond wild wynne algeyn borh | force | and borh | fyght. Hastily ilk one be | kynges | com fulle | suythe,

ber þei | samned | alle,

Bolde | men and | stoute, per | hardi nesse to | kipe, In a grete | Daneis | felde bat ever sipen | hider ward Kampe dene men | kalle. (Alden, Engl. Verse p. 254.)

Two long lines are here united by rime to form a couplet. In addition the caesurae may also be connected by rime (cp. § 150. 3.), e.g.

po

porgh þat | he had | suorn. þat | were next | born, 'Sir, we | se pin | ille, and led at oper | wille. nouht pou | vnder stode:

The | kyng was holden | hard
His | frendes | after ward,
be com to him and | said:
bi | lordschip is doun | laid
We se pis ilk er roure

It is a dishonoure to be and | to bi | blode.

(Schipper's Übungsbuch, 8th ed. p. 143).

From the above examples we see that the rhythm is one of equal bars. The three beats of each half-verse are of about the same strength and occur at equal intervals. The thesis between two beats is never absent and is generally monosyllabic; where the thesis is disyllabic one of the syllables

may be weakened by slurring. The anacrusis and extra syllable at the end of each half-verse may be present or absent, yet the rhythm is monotonous owing to the equal number of beats in the two half-lines.

$ 156. The ME. Alliterative Verse.

By the side of these short or long rimed verses there appears about the middle of the fourteenth century, i.e. towards the end of the central ME. period, an alliterative verse without rime. Its rhythmical structure has a clear connection with the various forms of OE. and early ME. verse, since two members of the verse may be united to form a foot. The ME. alliterative verse without rime was used especially in the North and North West of England and in the South of Scotland in a large number of narrative poems (William of Palerne, Alexander A und B, The Wars of Alexander, Morte Arthure, Sir Gawayn and the Green Knight, Cleanness, Patience, The Destruction of Troy, The Sege of Jerusalem etc. It is also used in the Vision concerning Piers the Plowman and in some shorter poems connected with this work.

But this alliterative long line was soon provided with rime and was generally used in the first part (Aufgesang) of a thirteen-line stanza (§ 175) (Rauf Coilgear, Golagrus and Gawain, The Aunters of Arthur at the Tarnewathelan, The Pistil of Swete Susanne etc.). The sixteen-line tail-rime stanza of

Sir Perceval and Sir Degrevant (§ 179), too, is in alliterative verse.

§ 157. Views concerning the Middle English Alliterative Verse: a) Skeat, Schipper, Luick.

With regard to the rhythmical structure of ME. alliterative verse, especially with regard to the number of beats, the same diversity of opinions exists as in the case of OE. alliterative verse.

W. Skeat, who was the first to put forward a view of ME. alliterative verse (An Essay on Alliterative Poetry, Bishop Percy's Folio MS. ed. by Hales and Furnivall, London 1867, III, pp. XI to XXXIX) assumes for each half-verse two strongly stressed words. He holds, therefore, the two-beat theory; so too Schipper (EM. 1, 201 ff.; Grdr. p. 75 ff.), who moreover in the utterances of Gascoigne (1575) and of King James I finds a confirmation of the correctness of the two-beat theory. Luick, too, (Die englische Stabzeile im 14., 15. und 16. Jahrhundert, Anglia 11, 392-443, 553-618; Zur Metrik der reimend-alliterierenden Dichtung, Anglia 12, 437-453 and Der mittelenglische Stabreimvers, Pauls Grundriss, Metrik pp. 160—180) scans the ME. alliterative verse with two beats and attempts to find Sievers' types A, B, C. He is followed by Köster (Huchowns Pistel of Swete Susan. QF 76, Strassburg 1895), Deutschbein (Zur Entwickelung des englischen Alliterationsverses, Halle 1902) and others.

Trautmann (Anglia 18, 94 f.) and Kuhnke (Die alliterierende Langzeile in der mittelenglischen Romanze Sir Gawayn and the Green Knight, Berlin 1900, p. 8 ff.) have given sufficient reasons to show that the utterances of Gascoigne and King James I, which belong to the end of the sixteenth century, can have no value for our view of the alliterative verse of the fourteenth century. And if Luick (Anglia Beiblatt, 12, 35 f.) cannot "disregard this testimony of the sixteenth century", he must also accept the 'testimony' of Dryden (Preface to Fables), and accept Dryden's views on Chaucer's verse in spite of information which has been obtained since Dryden's time.

Against the application of the two-beat theory to the ME. alliterative verse is the fact that in many first half-lines not only three strongly stressed words are found, but three alliterating sounds (see Kuhnke p. 12 ff.); in Sir Gawayn and the Green Knight in 17% of all first half-lines, e.g.

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If we scan these verses with two beats one of the alliterating syllables must become unstressed. Which shall it be? Are we to read: pe bórz bríttened and brent or pe bórz brittened and brént or be borg brittened and brént? A scansion with four beats alone makes a regular distribution of beats possible without neglecting the natural word stress: be bórz brittenèd and brént.

But those first half-lines, too, which contain only two alliterating syllables are generally little or not at all different in their compass and in the grouping of the syllables from those with three alliterating syllables. Thus if we read Gáwayn quóth þat gréne góme 2239 with four beats, then we must read Gáwayn ánd þe góde món 1955 (Kuhnke p. 15), Gáuan gripped to his áx 421, and þát I swére þé for sóþe 403, þe kýng ánd þe góde knýzt 482, with all pe wéle óf þe worlde 50, Í schal telle pé as tít 31, also with four beats. There are many such verses, which are in no way different from the rimed verses with four bars of the same period.

The two-beat theory does not explain the ME. alliterative verse, and Mennicken is right when he says (Bonner Beitr. 5, 34): "If we follow Schipper

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