(Arber Reprint, pp. 68, 63, 64.)
See further on the persistent use of this rough measure in English, side by side with the more regular syllable-counting verse, Schipper's observations and examples in the Grundriss der Englische Metrik, pp. 109 ff. As a modern example Schipper cites one of Thackeray's ballads:
"This Mary was pore and in misery once,
And she came to Mrs. Roney it's more than twelve monce.
She adn't got no bed, nor no dinner nor no tea,
And kind Mrs. Roney gave Mary all three."
[18] This poem of Robert Manning's was a translation of a Norman French work, Waddington's Manuel des Pechiez. The following is the original of the passage here reproduced:
"Si vus unques par folye
Entremeissez de nigremancie,
Ou feites al deable sacrifise,
Ou enchantement par fol aprise;
Ou, a gent de tiel mester
Ren donastes pur lur jugler,
Ou pur demander la verite
De chose qe vous fut a dire,—
Fet avez apertement
Encuntre ceo commandement;
Ceo est grant mescreaunceie,
Duter de ceo, ne devez mie."
(Furnivall ed. of Manning, p. 12. ll. 1078-1089.)
II. FIVE-STRESS VERSE
The five-stress or decasyllabic verse (iambic pentameter) is so much more widely used in modern English poetry than any other verse-form, that its history is of special interest. It is curious that a form so completely adopted as the favorite of English verse should be borrowed rather than native; but, the syllable-counting principle once being admitted, there is nothing in five-stress verse inconsistent with native English tendencies. A very great part of such verse has really only four full accents, and this we have seen to be the number of accents in the native English verse. On this point, see further remarks in connection with the specimen from Spenser, p. [180] below.