Bídders and béggeres | fast abóute ȝéde. ib. 40.
Wénten to Wálsyngham, | and here wénches áfter. ib. 54.
Masculine endings, however (originating from the dropping of the final -e in the last words of the types A and C, as e.g. in and drédful of síght Prol. 16, cristened þe kýnge xv. 437, as þe kýng híght iii. 9), occur very rarely here. They are, on the other hand, characteristic forms in another group of alliterative poems.
§ 57. These belong to the North of England and the adjacent parts of the Midlands.
In these districts the final e had by this time become silent, or was in the course of becoming so. Thus many verses of West-Midland poems were shortened in the North by omitting the final -e, and then these forms were imitated there. Hence the middle of the line was much less modified than the end of it.
Types A, C, B C, therefore, occur not only in the ordinary forms with unaccented syllables at the end, but also, although more rarely, with accented ones, viz. corresponding to the schemes:
A1, (×)–́××–́, C1, (×)××–́–́, BC1, (×)××–́×–́.
These forms of the hemistich first occur in the Destruction of Troy, a poem written in a West-Midland dialect very like to the Northern dialect, and in the North-English poems, Morte Arthure and The Wars of Alexander (E. E. T. S., Extra-Ser. 47). Examples of these types (taken from the first-mentioned poem) are: of type A1 in the second hemistich, for lérning of ús 32, þat ónest were áy 48; with a polysyllabic thesis, and lympit of the sóthe 36; with a secondary accent,with cléne mèn of wít 790; without anacrusis,[112] lémond as góld 459, bléssid were Í 473; in the first hemistich, with disyllabic anacrusis, þat ben drépit with déth 9, þat with the Grékys was grét 40; without anacrusis, Býg y-noghe vnto béd 397, Trýed men þat were táken 258, &c.; examples for C1 (only occurring in the second hemistich), þat he fóre with 44, into your lond hóme 611, ye have sáid well 1122, þat ho bórne wás 1388, of my córs hás 1865; examples for B C1, in the second hemistich (of rare occurrence), when it destróyet wás 28, and to sórow bróght 1497, þere þe cítie wás 1534.
The same modification of types took place later in other parts of the Midlands, as appears from two works of the early sixteenth century, Scottish Field and Death and Life (Bishop Percy’s Folio MS., edited by Furnivall and Hales, i. 199 and iii. 49). The last North-English or rather Scottish poem, on the other hand, written in alliterative lines without rhyme, Dunbar’s well-known Satire, The twa mariit wemen and the wedo, has, apart from the normal types occurring in the North-English poems, many variants, chiefly in the first hemistich, which are characterized by lengthy unaccented parts both at the beginning of the line, before the second arsis, and after it; frequently too syllables forming the thesis have a secondary accent and even take part in the alliteration, as e.g. in the following examples:
Ȝaip and ȝíng, in the ȝók | ane ȝéir for to dráw. 79.