We can trace the history of alliterative verse in England with tolerable certainty. The Anglo-Normans first brought in rhymes, which they employed in their own poetry. The adoption of this new system into the English language was gradual, but it appears to have commenced in the first half of the twelfth century. It was, at first, mixed with alliterative couplets: that is, in the same poem were used sometimes rhyming couplets, which were suddenly changed for alliterative couplets, and then, after awhile, rhyme was again brought in, and so on. Of this kind of poetry we have four very remarkable examples, the Proverbs of King Alfred, a poem which was certainly in existence in the first half of the twelfth century;[[12]] the Early English Bestiary;[[13]] the Poem on the Debate between the Body and the Soul;[[14]] and the grand work of Layamon.[[15]] The following lines from the Bestiary may serve as a specimen of the manner in which the two systems are intermixed; they form part of the account of the spider:—
"ðanne renneð ge rapelike,
for ge is ai redi,
nimeð anon to ðe net,
and nimeð hem ðere,
bitterlike ge hem bit
and here bane wurðeð,
drepeð and drinkeð hire blod,
doð ge hire non oðer god,
bute fret hire fille,