4. Four-beat verses without either rhyme or alliteration, occurring comparatively rarely, and in most cases probably to be attributed to corruption of the text. Examples:
he may béon on élde | wénliche lórþeu.Prov. vi. 101–2.
we habbeð séoue þúsund | of góde cníhten.Lay. 365–6.
It is certain that these four different forms of verse cannot have been felt by the poets themselves as rhythmically unlike; their rhythmic movement must have been apprehended as essentially one and the same.
§ 44. Nature and origin of this metre. Theories of Trautmann and Luick. We need not here discuss the theory of Prof. Trautmann, who endeavours to show that the hemistichs of Layamon’s verse were composed in imitation of the four-beat short-lined metre in which the Old High German poet Otfrid had written his religious poem Krist, a form which, according to Trautmann and his followers, had been frequently employed in late Old English and early Middle English poetry. References to the criticisms of this hypothesis, by the present writer and others, are given by G. Körting in his Encyklopädie der Englischen Philologie, p. 388, and by K. Luick in Paul’s Grundriss der Germanischen Philologie, ed. 2, II. ii. 152. The author of this book, in his larger work on the subject (Englische Metrik, i. §§ 67–73), has shown, as English and German scholars had done before him, that Layamon’s verse has its roots in the Old English alliterative line. Twelve years after the publication of that work this theory received further confirmation at the hands of Prof. Luick, who has shown in Paul’s Grundriss (l.c.) that the five types of the Old English alliterative line, discovered by Prof. Sievers, reappear (although in a modified form) in the lines of Layamon’s Brut. But we are unable wholly to agree with Prof. Luick’s view on the origin and nature of this metre.
In order to explain the origin of Layamon’s verse he starts from the hypothesis of Prof. Sievers[99] that the Old Germanic alliterative verse, as historically known, which was intended to be recited, and therefore not restricted to uniformity of rhythm, originated from a primitive Old Germanic verse meant to be sung, and therefore characterized by rhythmic regularity. According to Prof. Luick this primitive metre, although not represented by any extant example in Old English, had never quite died out, and forms the basis of the metre of Layamon and his predecessors in early Middle English. For this ingenious hypothesis, however, no real evidence exists. On the contrary, the fact that the beginnings of the peculiar kind of metre used by Layamon can be traced back to purely alliterative Old English poems, where they occur amongst regular alliterative lines, and therefore undoubtedly must be of the same rhythmical structure, seems to be decisive against Prof. Luick’s theory.
For the same reason it is impossible to follow Prof. Luick in regarding Layamon’s line as having an even-beat rhythm, and containing not only two primary accents, but two secondary accents as well. A further strong objection to this view is to be found in the circumstance, that in the early part of Layamon’s Brut, although rhyme already occurs not unfrequently, alliterative lines decidedly predominate; in the passage consisting of forty long lines (ll. 106–185, quoted in our Altenglische Metrik, pp. 152–3), we have thirty-three regular alliterative lines and only five rhymed lines, two of which are alliterative at the same time. Even in the middle portion of Layamon’s Chronicle, where the poet, as Prof. Luick thinks, must have attained to a certain skill in handling his metre, alliterative lines are in some passages quite as numerous as rhymed ones. In the passage quoted above (p. 68), for example, which consists of twenty-one long lines, eleven of them are alliterative and ten are rhymed. On the other hand, in the continuation of this passage (quoted Altengl. Metrik, p. 156), containing twenty-nine long lines, the reverse is the case, the number of alliterative lines being only seven, and that of rhymed and assonant lines twenty-two in all; of the latter, however, eleven are alliterative at the same time.
While then it might be admissible to speak of progressive neglect of alliteration and of increasing predilection for end-rhyme on the part of the poet, as he advances with his work, it is not in accordance with the facts to assert that ‘alliteration had ceased to play its former part, and had been reduced to the level of a mere ornament of the verse’. On the contrary, in the first part of the Chronicle alliteration is the predominant form, and, as the work advances, it is still used to a considerable extent as a means to connect the two hemistichs or short lines so as to form one long line. The strict laws formerly observed in the use of alliteration, it is true, are not unfrequently disregarded, chiefly with respect to the head-stave, which often falls on the fourth accented syllable of the long line; and other licences (first occurring in Ælfric’s Metrical Homilies) may be met with. Nevertheless both Alfred’s Proverbs and Layamon’s Brut (as is sufficiently shown by the many specimens quoted in our Altenglische Metrik, pp. 150 ff.), contain a great number of perfectly regular alliterative lines. The fact that, in the second half of Layamon’s Chronicle, end-rhyme is used more and more frequently as a means to connect the two hemistichs, is with much more probability to be explained by the continual occupation of the poet with the Norman-French original poem, and by the increasing influence which its short octosyllabic couplets must naturally have exercised upon his own rhythms, than by a supposed intention of the poet to write in ‘primitive Germanic four-beat song-metre’, the very existence of which is hypothetical. Furthermore, the fact that in some (not all or even most) of the passages, where end-rhyme is used almost exclusively, e.g. in the passage quoted above (ll. 13883–940), an even-beat rhythm is distinctly noticeable, can be explained quite naturally by the influence of the Norman-French original, the even-measured verses of which the poet was translating.
But even supposing that Layamon intended to use the primitive Germanic four-beat song-metre in his translation of Wace’s Chronicle, although it certainly was not intended for singing, what can have been his reason for composing the first half of his work, and a very considerable portion of the rest, in a rhythmical form which only to a small extent shows the peculiarities of a rhyming even-beat metre, whereas the main part of it consists of the native unevenly stressed alliterative verse? It is quite incorrect to say that the author in the course of his work not unfrequently fell back into the alliterative verse. The fact is just the opposite: the author started by using the native alliterative verse to which he was accustomed, and gradually came to adopt the rhymed verse of the Norman-French chronicle which he was translating, without, however, entirely giving up the former metre. Alliteration and end-rhyme, which he used sometimes separately and sometimes in combination, were evidently looked upon by Layamon as equally legitimate means for connecting his hemistichs or short lines.