He put on his back a good plate-jack,
And on his head a cap of steel,
With sword and buckler by his side;
O gin he did not become them weel!
(Ballad of Bewick and Grahame. In Gummere's English Ballads, p. 176.)
The regular stanza of the old ballads was of this four-stress type, with extra light syllables admitted anywhere yet not in great numbers. More commonly, however, the fourth stress was lost from the second and fourth lines. (See p. [264], below.)
I thanke hym full thraly, and sir, I saie hym the same,
But what marvelous materes dyd this myron ther mell?
For all the lordis langage his lipps, sir, wer lame,
For any spirringes in that space no speche walde he spell.
(York Mystery Plays: The Trial before Pilate. Ed. L. T. Smith, p. 322.)
As Gammer Gurton, with manye a wyde styche,
Sat pesynge and patching of Hodg her mans briche,
By chance or misfortune, as shee her geare tost,
In Hodge lether bryches her needle shee lost.
(Gammer Gurton's Needle, Prologue. 1566.)
In these specimens we have the later descendant of the long line as used in the early drama of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries,—the "tumbling verse," regular in rhythm and rime, but indifferent to the number of syllables.[17] Sometimes, where most regular, as in lines 2-4 of the second specimen, the measure approximates closely to regular four-stress anapestic.