More Modern Verse in the Old English Style: Robert Skelton

In a book called The Poetry Gymnasium by Tom C. Hunley, I found a quotation from The Love Song by Robin Skelton.

I find I am framing                    My thoughts in a fashion
Long-lost and alien                   Today's language,
Yet somehow the sense of it,    Tense in each sentence,
Registers rhythms,                   Riding rough-shod...

Better Living Through Beowulf

While checking through Google's Image Search for a good illustration of Beowulf's death, I noticed that one image was on a site called "betterlivingthroughbeowulf.com". This is quirky enough to give me a quick "HAH" of pleasure and a quick check on the site.

The site's tagline is "How Great Literature Can Change Your Life." Beowulf was highlighted in the site name because the author is also promoting his book, "How Beowulf Can Save America: An Epic Hero's Guide to Defeating the Politics of Rage." Here is the list of Beowulf-related postings on the blog. As an example of the category, here is a post called "Obama's Star, Beowulf's Sword" on the subject of President Obama's second Inaugural Speech.

I've also wondered from time to time what aspects of Beowulf's story are relevant these days, so full marks to Robin R. Bates for the titles of his blog and book. Not being American, I am not as deeply immersed in the push and pull of American politics as Bates is.

As for the illustration, there's this:

Alliterative Verse Explanation

--> Here is an introduction to the rules of Alliterative verse taken from that chapter in my book on poetry. If you are interested to see more, visit my Author's Spotlight page on Lulu.com and make an order.

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Introduction

Alliterative Verse is the oldest form of poetry in English. It is sometimes called Anglo-Saxon Verse because of the people who first wrote it or Old English Verse because of the language it was first written in. After being forgotten for centuries, it found new popularity in the twentieth century. It offers poets and readers a middle path between the strictness of metrical poetry and the Wild West freedom of Free Verse. To appreciate or write it, you must understand the rules that govern its rhythm and its alliteration.

Normal Lines

The rhythm of any line of Alliterative Verse is governed by the number two. First, the line is divided into two half lines by a pause, called a caesura. Each half line, in turn, has two stressed syllables (called lifts). It also has two locations filled with unstressed syllables, called dips. You can think of the line as baskets into which the lifts and dips get tossed, like this.

 The smallest basket, the one at the beginning of a line, can hold an anacrusis, one or two unstressed syllables. Better yet, it can be left empty. Too many lines with anacrusis will weaken the strong beat of alliterative verse.

The remaining parts of a half line are the two large baskets followed by two smaller ones. Any of these baskets can take a lift or a normal, one-syllable dip. However, at least one of the big baskets must hold a lift, and a dip in one of the big baskets may hold up to five unstressed syllables instead of just one. The potential for such an extended dip is symbolized as dip(...) instead of just dip.

Let us toss the syllables of a line—“Secret meetings at the slaughterhouse”1—into the appropriate baskets to see its rhythm at work.

The caesura is between “Secret meetings” and “at the slaughterhouse.” Neither of the half lines has an anacrucis. The first half line clearly has the rhythm lift dip lift dip (SEcret MEETings), and I pronounce the second half line with the rhythm dip(...) lift lift dip (at the SLAUGH-TER house), though dip(...) lift dip lift (at the SLAUGH-ter HOUSE) is possible.

“Secret meetings,” then, has one of the three most common rhythms for a half line, the ones beginning with a lift.

• Type A: lift dip(...) lift dip
• Type D: lift lift dip dip
• Type E: lift dip(...) dip lift

“At the slaughterhouse” has one of the two rarer rhythms that begin with a dip.

• Type B: dip(...) lift dip lift
• Type C: dip(...) lift lift dip

Specifically, “Secret meetings” is Type A, and “at the slaughterhouse” is either Type B or C. These patterns are called Sievers’ Types, after Eduard Sievers, who first noticed them.

It is usual for a line to have half lines of different types, for variety’s sake.

Hypermetric Lines

A poet might choose to make some longer lines, called hypermetric lines. In them, the first half line is preceded by an extra lift and dip(...) and the second by a dip(...). These lines do not occur by themselves, but in groups a few lines long, like this one from the poem Beowulf, lines 1160-1164.

                                                                 ...Béarers óffered
wíne from | wóndrous contáiners. || And then | Wéaltheow éntered,
góing in | a gólden tórc || to where | the twó góod ones
ídled | úncle and néphew || without | émnity yét,
éach one | trúe to the óther....²

Why the old poets used hypermetric lines, I cannot say, but you might find a use for them to slow up the action, describe a setting, or just add a little variety.

Alliteration

In the following advice from Beowulf, notice that the half lines have different rhythms, as defined by Sievers’ Types, but alliterating words unite the line.

Éach óne of us || wáits for the énd  (Types D and E; one and waits)
of mórtal lífe; || mán should then stríve for (Types B and A; mortal and man)
fáme before déath! || To a fíghter, thát, (Types E and B; fame and fighter)
when lífe clóses, || lásts as a cómfort. (Types C and A; life and lasts,
closes and comfort)

As in these lines, one or both lifts in the first half line always alliterate with the third lift of the line, which is sometimes called the pivot or the rhyme-giver. Alliteration on the first three lifts of a line was probably considered more emphatic than alliteration on only two. The fight scenes of Beowulf are consistently told in three-alliteration lines. For example,

He behéld in the háll || a hóst of soldiers,
a círcled assémbly || of sléeping kin,
a hórde of héroes. || His héart laughed then.

A rarer alternative is to have two pairs of alliterations binding the two half lines. For example,

Próud and déadly, || he púshed my dóor.

has lifts that begin with P and D, then P and D again: PDPD. Otherwise

Déadly and próud, || he púshed my dóor.

has lifts that begin with D and P, then P and D: DPPD. This is equally fine, but you would not usually find a line that alliterated all four lifts, like this:

And how dísmal the dáy || when I dánced with my déar.3

By the way, the Old English poets had a slightly different definition of alliteration than we do. It would look like this:

Alliteration means that the same letter sound begins the stressed syllables of two words, but all vowels alliterate with each other, and some consonant clusters (sc, sp, and st) only alliterate with identical consonant clusters.

Since all vowels alliterated, in Old English, the ea in eagle would alliterate with the ow in owl. This makes alliterating words much easier to find.

On the other hand, since some clusters of consonants alliterate only with an identical cluster, the sk in sky alliterates with the sc in score, but not the st in stop nor the sp in spot. This makes alliteration a little harder to manage.

In the end, the choice is yours: alliterate in the old way or the new, or in some mixture of the two.

1From W. H. Auden, “The Age of Anxiety.” In W.H. Auden, Collected Poems, edited by Edward Mendelson, Faber and Faber, London, 1976. pp. 345-371.

2Translations from Beowulf by Gareth Jones.

3From W. H. Auden, “The Age of Anxiety.” In W.H. Auden, Collected Poems, edited by Edward Mendelson, Faber and Faber, London, 1976. pp. 345-371.

A Milestone Worth Mentioning

At this moment, the number of page views that this site has received is 10,003. Ten thousand views is a very large number to me, especially considering the narrow focus of this site. Not only that, but the number of visitors over just the last thirty days is almost 2,000. Several days have had over a hundred visitors a day.

I am surprised and gratified by the steady increase in the number of visitors. I'd like to thank all of you for your interest. If any of you are repeat visitors or even regular visitors, an especial "thank you" goes out to you.

Certain posts receive more attention than others. The star draws over the life of this blog, defined as the posts that get about 200 page views or more, are

1. Second half of Fitt XXXVI: Beowulf gets bitten (732 page views)
2. Smaug and the Hobbit Movie (322 page views)
3. Eowyn's Lament (572 page views)
4. Beowulf's Attitude to Crises, in Youth and Age (206 page views)
5. XXV. Hrothgar's Sermon (196 page views)
6. XXIII. Beowulf Finds Grendel's Mother (507 page views)
7. The Beowulf Rap (454 page views)
8. Sutton Hoo, Beowulf, and History (392 page views)
9. Beowulf On-Line (522 page views)

As it turns out, this is also a special day for my other blog. It is just a hair away from receiving its 3,000th visit (2,983 right now) and has had over 1,000 visitors in just the last month. Given that it is a younger blog, I find these numbers equally impressive.

The Heroic Imagination

I inquired in an earlier post whether thinking about the character of Beowulf could strengthen a reader's own character. I came down on the side that it could. What brought that matter back to mind was discovering Dr. Phil Zimbardo, who has run experiments on how easily people can be induced by a situation into behaving brutally. He is now interested in how they can be induced, when the situation calls for it, to behave heroically. He says that the way is to rehearse heroic actions in one's mind. When the moment comes, the appropriate behaviour will then come with it.

If we want heroes, as I believe we do, then

it is vital for every society to have its institutions teach heroism, building into such teachings the importance of mentally rehearsing taking heroic action—thus to be ready to act when called to service for a moral cause or just to help a victim in distress.

He calls this mental rehearsing, "the heroic imagination." It needs examples of heroic behaviour, such as Beowulf, to feed on.

Part I of Fitt 40: THE NEWS COMES TO CAMP

He bid them to tell the tidings of battle
over the cliff, to the armsmen there
sitting sadly that slow morning’s day,
the spearbearers expecting both    2895
their king was killed or would come again,
the dearest man.
                                       The despatch rider
left out little that lapsed on the headlands,
but told them all the honest truth.
“Now the one who held the Weders’ hopes,    2900
“the lord of the Geats, lies on his death-bed,
“in slaughter’s sleep from the serpent’s deed.
“He lies beside his lethal foe,
“weakened by saxe-blows. No sword was able
“to make a mark on that monstrous being,    2905
“whatever he tried. Wiglaf was sitting
“beside Beowulf, Weohstan’s son,
“a living lord at the lost ones' side,
“weary in mind, watching the dead,
“the loved and the loathed. Our land now must suffer    2910
“a time of war when the truth has spread
“to Franks and Frisians, unfriendly ears,
“the king was killed. The conflict started...

Apologies for the delay, and Hobbit Trailer 2

It's been a while since I've put up a section of the translation. If anyone out there has been impatiently waiting for the ending (speak up, if you're there!), I'm sorry. I have been spending spare time on my other blog and working on getting my book about poetry ready to place on the Amazon market.

There's a new trailer for the first movie in The Hobbit trilogy (which is how Peter Jackson intends to film it). Here it is