(Scotishe Ffielde, from Percy's Folio MS. In Flügel's Neuenglisches Lesebuch, vol. i. p. 156.)
iii. Rime (i.e. end-rime)
Full rime, or end-rime, involves the principally stressed vowel in the riming word, and all that follows that vowel. When there is an entire unstressed syllable following, the rime is called double, or feminine. Triple rime is also recognized, though rare.[11] End-rime being a stranger to the early Germanic languages, its appearance in any of them may commonly be taken as a sign of foreign influence. In general, of course, rime and the stanza were introduced together into English verse, under the influence of Latin hymns and French lyrics.
The functions of rime in English verse may perhaps be grouped under three heads: the function of emphasis, the function of forming beautiful or pleasurable sounds, and the function of combining or organizing the verses. It is with reference to the first of these that Professor Corson speaks of rime as "an enforcing agency of the individual verse." Under the second head rime is considered simply as a form of tone-color, and as furnishing a part of the melody of verse. The third function, by which individual verses are bound into stanzas, is, in a sense, the most important.
On the subject of the æsthetic values of rime, see the chapter on "poetic unities" in Corson's Primer of English Verse, and Ehrenfeld's Studien zur Theorie des Reims (Zürich, 1897). The problem of the relative values of rimed and unrimed verse will come up in connection with the history of the heroic couplet and of blank verse. The objection always urged against rime is that its demands are likely to turn the poet aside from the normal order of his ideas. Herder, as Ehrenfeld points out, thought that this was particularly true of English verse, the uninflected language not providing so naturally for cases where thought and sound are parallel. A recent protest against the tyranny of rime is found in the article by Mr. Larminie, cited on page 115, where it is claimed that undue attention to form is thinning out the substance of modern poetry, and that the demands of rime should be relaxed. See also Ben Jonson's "Fit of Rhyme against Rhyme," for a humorous complaint against the requirements of rime upon the poet.
The origin of rime has been a subject of prolonged controversy. See the monograph by Ehrenfeld already cited; Meyer's Anfang und Ursprung der rythmischen Dichtung (Munich, 1884); W. Grimm's Geschichte des Reims (1851); Norden's Antike Kunstprosa (Leipzig, 1898; Anhang ueber die Geschichte des Reims); Kluge's article, Zur Geschichte des Reimes im Altgermanischen, in Paul u. Braune's Beiträge, vol. ix. p. 422; and Schipper, vol. i. pp. 34 ff. Meyer's work is an exposition of the theory that rime was an importation from the Orient. In like manner, it has been held by many that the poetry of Otfried (the first regularly rimed German verse) was produced under Latin influence wholly, and that rime was introduced by him to the Germans (see the work by Kawczynski, cited p. [117]). Herder (see Ehrenfeld's monograph) regarded rime as a natural growth of the instinct for symmetry in all human taste, closely connected with dance-rhythms, all forms of parallelism, and the like. Similarity of inflectional endings in similar clauses, he pointed out, would naturally develop rime in any inflected language. This view is in line with the tendency of recent opinion. Schipper says, in effect: "Is rime to be regarded as the invention of a special people, like the Arabian, or is it a form of art which developed in the poetic language of the Aryan peoples, separately in the several nations? In the opinion of the principal scholars the latter opinion is the correct one. The chief support of this opinion is the fact that traces of rime, in greater or less number, appear in the oldest poetry of almost all the partially civilized peoples. 'It is,' says C. F. Meyer, 'something inborn, original, universally human, like poetry and music, and no more than these the special invention of a single people or a particular time.' In fact, traces of rime may be noticed in the poetry of the Greeks, in Homer, Æschylus, Sophocles, Aristophanes, as also in the poetry of the Romans; in a more developed form it appears in the late middle Latin clerical poetry. In the Celtic languages, moreover, rime is the indispensable mark of the poetic form, even in the oldest extant specimens. The Latin poetry just referred to gives interesting evidence that rime is a characteristic sign of popular poetry. While the quantitative system became dominant, with the artistic verse-forms of the Greeks, in the Golden Age of Roman literature, the early Saturnian verses, written in free rhythms, already showed the popular taste for similarity of sound in the form of alliteration; and in the post-classical time, with the fall of the quantitative metres, rime again came to the front in songs intended for the people. The same element was made so essential a characteristic in the organization of verse in the mediæval Latin, that 'carmen rhythmicum' came to signify a rimed poem, and the later Latinists used the word 'rhythmus' precisely in the sense of 'rime.'"
Schipper goes on to inquire whether this mediæval Latin poetry was the means of introducing rime to the Germanic peoples. Wackernagel held it as certain that Otfried learned his rimes from Latin poems; but as Otfried declares that his poetry is intended to take the place of useless popular songs, it seems probable that he was not using an innovation, and that rime was already popular in Old High German. Indeed, it appears sporadically in the Hildebrandslied and the Heliand. Grimm observes that it is theoretically unlikely that alliteration should have vanished suddenly and rime as suddenly have taken its place. The gradual development of rime from assonance among the Romance peoples suggests the same thing. The early appearance of rime by the side of alliteration is illustrated by C. F. Meyer (Historische Studien, Leipzig, 1851) from the Norse Edda, from Beowulf, Cædmon, etc. In the later Anglo-Saxon period rime was evidently securing a considerable though uncertain hold. The Riming Poem suggests what development rime might have had in English without the incoming of Romance influences. Grimm observes that, while to his mind alliteration was a finer and nobler quality than rime, there was need of a stronger sound-likeness which should hold the attention more firmly by its unchanging place at the end of the line. Schipper remarks, finally, that the fact that the use of rime in connection with alliteration was especially popular in the southern half of England, where the Romance influence was strongest, may suggest why in the more purely Germanic northern half alliteration remained the single support of the poetic form well into the fifteenth century.
The appendix to the work of Norden, cited above, is a fuller development of ideas frequently suggested by the sporadic appearance of rime in early Greek and Latin literature. Norden gives many examples of this "rhetorical rime," as well as of rime arising naturally from parallelism of sentence structure found in primitive charms, incantations, and the like. In particular he emphasizes the influence of the figure of homœoteleuton as used in the literary prose of the classical languages. His conclusion is as follows: "Rime, then, was potentially as truly present in the Greek and Latin languages, from the earliest times, as in every other language; but in the metrical (quantitative) poetry it had no regular place, and appeared there in general only sporadically and by chance, being used by only a few poets as a rhetorical ornament. It became actual by the transition from the metrical poetry to the rhythmical (that is, the syllable-counting, in which—in the Latin—the chief consideration is still for the word-accent); and this transition was consummated by the aid of the highly poetic prose, already used for centuries, which was constructed according to the laws of rhythm, and in which the rhetorical homœoteleuton had gained an ever-increasing significance. In particular, rime found an entrance through sermons composed in such prose, and delivered in a voice closely approaching that of singing, into the hymn-poetry which was intimately related to such sermons. From the Latin hymn-poetry it was carried into other languages, from the ninth century onward. It is self-evident that in these languages also rime was potentially present before it became actual through the influence of foreign poetry; for in this region also there operates the highest immanent law of every being and every form of development,—that in the whole field of life nothing absolutely new is invented, but merely slumbering germs are awakened to active life." (Antike Kunstprosa, vol. ii. pp. 867 ff.)
Me lifes onlah. se þis leoht onwrah.
and þæt torhte geteoh. tillice onwrah.
glæd wæs ic gliwum. glenged hiwum.
blissa bleoum. blostma hiwum.
Secgas mec segon. symbel ne alegon.
feorh-gife gefegon. frætwed wægon.
wic ofer wongum. wennan gongum.
lisse mid longum. leoma getongum.