A Field Guide to Alliterative Verse
Being Like Beowulf: the Sievers Types
When people talk about alliterative verse, they usually mean Beowulf. It is the most familiar piece of alliterative poetry, at least for speakers of English, who often encounter it in school (at least for a week or so during a quick survey of British literature.) So that is what we will start with.
A 19th Century scholar, Eduard Sievers, came up with the classical description of the rhythm of Beowulf and other Anglo-Saxon poems. He observed that the half-lines of Old English poetry come in five basic rhythms.
The following proverb-like little poem illustrates the five types:
Pride and anger brought pain and loss,and hate festered. Hell's masterpieceoverwhelmed all.
Type A: Lift-Dip, Lift-Dip
For example: pride and anger
Type B: Dip-Lift, Dip-Lift
For example: brought pain and loss,
Type C: Dip-Lift, Lift-Dip
For example: and hate festered.
Type D: Lift, Lift-Dip-Dip (with a secondary stress distinguishing the first dip from the second)
For example: Hell's masterpiece
Type E: Lift-Dip-Dip-Lift (with a secondary stress distinguishing the first dip from the second)
For example: overwhelmed all.
Note that types D and E are analyzed as having two dips in sequence, NOT as having one long dip. There are many reasons for this that I can’t go into here, but basically, each Old English half line MUST have four syllables, two stressed (to fill the lift positions) and two unstressed or weakly stressed (to fill the dip positions) In types D and E, the only way we know the two syllables are filling different metrical positions, is if one of the is unstressed, and the other one carries secondary stress.
These are the basic rhythms; there are variations on them, but nearly every line of Beowulf fits into these five types and a small set of normal variations.
Copyright Paul Deane, ©2000
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