"Adunt apela Cordeille
qui esteit sa plus joes ne fille;
pur ce que il l'aveit plus chiere
que Ragaü ne la premiere
quida que el e cuneüst
que plus chier des al tres l'eüst.
Cordeil le out bien escuté
et bien out en sun cuer noté
cument ses deus sorurs parloënt,
cument lur pere losengoënt."
The last four verses of this passage are cited by Schipper as illustrating the regular iambic character of the French octosyllabics; but Dr. Lewis regards the measure as purely syllabic, with no regard for alternation of accents, and instances the earlier lines of the passage as being quite as nearly anapestic as iambic. (See Schipper, vol. i. p. 107, and Lewis's monograph, as cited above, pp. 73 ff. See also Crow: Zur Geschichte des Kurzen Reimpaares in Mittel Englisch.) Dr. Lewis's conclusion is: "We may therefore sum up the whole history of our octosyllabic verse in this way: we borrowed its number of accents from the Latin, but owing to the vitality of our own native traditions we at first borrowed nothing further; the syllabic character of the verse (so far as it has been imported at all), came in only gradually, against stubborn resistance; and it came not directly from the Latin, but indirectly, through the French" (pp. [97], [98]). Some of these statements are open to question; but however we may interpret the French verse of Wace and his contemporaries, it is obvious that in English the influence of the Latin and the French poetry would very naturally be fused, with no necessarily clear conception of definite verse-structure. Whether under French or Latin influence, however, the new tendency was for the more accurate counting of syllables. We may see some suggestion of this in the verses of St. Godric, quoted on p. [126], above, although they are not regularly iambic. The poem on the "Eleven Pains of Hell" (in the Old English Miscellany) shows the French influence clearly marked by the language of its opening verses:
"Ici comencent les unze peynes
De enfern, les queus seynt pool v[ist]."
Ure feder þet in heovene is,
Þet is al soþ ful iwis!
Weo moten to theor weordes iseon,
Þet to live and to saule gode beon,
Þet weo beon swa his sunes iborene,
Þet he beo feder and we him icorene,
Þet we don alle his ibeden
And his wille for to reden.
(The Pater Noster, ab. 1175. In Morris's Old English Homilies, p. 55.)
This poem is sometimes said to show the first appearance of the octosyllabic couplet in English. It suggests the struggle between native indifference to syllable-counting and imitation of the greater regularity of its models. As Dr. Morris says of the next specimen: "The essence of the system of versification which the poet has adopted is, briefly, that every line shall have four accented syllables in it, the unaccented syllables being left in some measure, as it were, to take care of themselves." But this does not altogether do justice to the new regularity. Schipper says that of the first 100 lines of the poem 20 are perfectly regular. (See his notes in vol. i. p. 109.) In the following specimens we may trace the gradual growth of skill and accuracy.
ðo herde Abraham stevene fro gode,
newe tiding and selkuð bode:
'tac ðin sune Ysaac in hond
and far wið him to siðhinges lond.
and ðor ða salt him offren me,
on an hil, ðor ic sal taunen ðe.
(Genesis and Exodus, ll. 1285-1290. ab. 1250-1300.)
"Abid! abid!" the ule seide.
"Thu gest al to mid swikelede;
All thine wordes thu bi-leist,
That hit thincth soth al that thu seist;
Alle thine wordes both i-sliked,
An so bi-semed and bi-liked,
That alle tho that hi avoth,
Hi weneth that thu segge soth."