That a thesis in Layamon’s Brut and in Alfred’s Proverbs may be disyllabic or even trisyllabic both in the beginning and the middle of a line is evident from the many examples quoted above.
In King Horn, where the division of the original long lines into two short ones has been carried out completely, and where the rhythm of the verse has consequently become more regular, the thesis, if not wanting entirely, as usually the case, in the types C, D, E, is generally monosyllabic. But, as the following examples, faírer ne mìȝte 8, þe paíns còme to lónde 58, þanne schólde withùten óþe 347, will show, disyllabic theses do also occur, both after the first and second arsis, and in the beginning of the line.
CHAPTER IV
THE ALLITERATIVE LINE IN ITS CONSERVATIVE
FORM DURING THE FOURTEENTH AND FIFTEENTH CENTURIES
A. The alliterative verse without rhyme.
§ 52. The progressive or free form of the alliterative line came to an end as early as the middle of the thirteenth century, when it broke up into short rhyming couplets. The stricter form was for nearly three centuries longer a very popular metre in English poetry, especially in the North-Western and Northern districts of England and in the adjacent lowlands of Scotland. The first traces, however, of its existence after the Norman Conquest are to be found in the South of England, where some poetical homilies and lives of saints were written at the end of the twelfth and in the beginning of the thirteenth century which are of the same character, both as to their subjects and to their metre, as the poetical paraphrases and homilies written by Ælfric. These poems are Hali Meidenhad (a poetical homily), the legends of St. Marharete, St. Juliana, and St. Katherine. These poems have been edited for the Early English Text Society, Nos. 18, 13, 51, 80; the first three by Cockayne as prose-texts, the last by Dr. Einenkel, who printed it in short couplets regarded by him as having the same four-beat rhythm (Otfrid’s metre) which he and his teacher, Prof. Trautmann, suppose to exist in Layamon and King Horn.[107] The Homilies have no rhymes.
The form of these homilies and legends occasionally exhibits real alliterative lines, but for the most part is nothing but rhythmical prose, altogether too irregular to call for an investigation here. Some remarks on passages written in a form more or less resembling alliterative verse may be found in our Englische Metrik, vol. i, § 94.
It is quite out of the question to suppose these Southern works, with their very irregular use of alliteration and metre, to have had any influence on the metrical form of the very numerous alliterative poems written in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in the Midland and Northern districts of England. It is, however, not at all likely that alliterative poetry should have sprung up there without any medium of tradition, and that it should have returned to the strict forms of the Old English models. Nor can we assume that it was handed down by means of oral tradition only on the part of the minstrels from Old English times down to the fourteenth century. The channel of tradition of the genuine alliterative line must be sought for in documents which for the most part have been lost.
A few small remnants, however, have been preserved, viz. a charm in a MS. of the twelfth century (cf. Zupitza, Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum, xxxi. 49), a short poem, entitled ‘Ten Abuses’, belonging to the same period (E. E. T. S. 49, p. 184), a prophecy of five lines contained in the chronicle of Benedict of Peterborough (Rerum Britannicarum Scriptores, 49, ii. 139), finally a prophecy ascribed to Thomas of Erceldoune (E.E. T. S., vol. 61, xviii, Thom. of Erc., ed. by A. Brandl, p. 26). But these pieces, treated by Prof. Luick in Paul’s Grundriss, ed. 2, II. ii, p. 160, are either too short or are too uncertain in text to admit of our making definite conclusions from them.