Forgotten Ground Regained
What causes Sir Gawain to go at a gallop
A practice-based study of accentual alliterative narrative verse
By the end of my first reading of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, in the Simon Armitage translation, I was enchanted. I was predisposed to connecting with this poem; my parents are North Staffordshire folk as were their predecessors going back several generations, and I have lived and worked in the North and West Midlands for most of my life.
However, it wasn’t primarily the location or even the tale that had enchanted me, so much as its telling – not its mythology, but its meter. My second ncounter was in reading aloud the Middle English original, in Barron’s edition. As I intoned it – in my West Midlands accent – I felt increasingly that I was riding the galloping steed of its rhythms and alliterations like some noviciate knight, clippetty-clopping and clunking and clanking in my shiny new armour, as yet unspurred, and yet spurred on by the fantastic hoofbeat of its verse.
.jpgnzi_calendar.jpg "A crusader pursuing two mounted warriors, c. 1300")
My fascination grew as I discovered the elegance of Tolkien’s translation, the measured music of Borroff’s, and the contemporary lyricism of O’Donoghue’s. With each reading I knew that I must investigate the metrical, rhythmic and phonological delights of this poem and its oeuvre. In this relatively short practice-based study, I will focus closely on the nature of accentual alliterative narrative verse. More specifically, first in Gawain, then in my own verse, I am keen to explore the alliterative tetrameter – the metrical muscle of this majestic narrative poem.
My decision to take a practice-based approach is motivated by a desire to develop my own writing with a greater consciousness of tradition. T.S. Eliot appealed for writers and critics to do this:
- This historical sense, which is a sense of the timeless as well as of the temporal and of the timeless and of the temporal together, is what makes a writer traditional. And it is at the same time what makes a writer most acutely conscious of his place in time, of his own contemporaneity.
- -- T.S. Eliot, “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” The Egoist, September 1919.
As I embarked on my alliterative writing adventure, I began to research Gawain and Middle English verse to discover what lay behind the dynamism and energy of this poem that had so captivated me. As I read, I kept writing in the belief that my study would inspire my poetry and in turn that my poetry would inform my study.
Through this simultaneous process, I began to perceive what it was about the meter and rhythm that had taken me on that galloping adventure. First, it was simply the rejection of end-rhyme and the embracing of alliteration. The force and flow of Middle English alliterative verse is hugely enhanced by its non-rhyming nature and the ease with which the telling of the tale can gallop on from one line into the next unhindered by the phonological hurdle of a rhyme scheme. Marie Borroff sees it as a straight swap: ‘Both Old French and accentual Latin verse are of course characterised by end-rhyme, which corresponds as a formal constituent to alliteration in Old English verse.’ (Marie Borroff, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: A Stylistic and Metrical Study (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1962), 145.)
I began to understand that it was the muscularity of the accentual alliterative verse that had carried me along so powerfully. In comparison, I was beginning to feel that end-rhyme could seem rather ineffectual, especially when telling a tale. If alliteration with its varying degrees of accentuated stress is muscular and sinuous, then end-rhyme is somewhat decorative and cosmetic. Alliteration works constantly within the line, dynamic and integral, running through the poem manipulating its movement. Whereas end-rhyme seems passive and peripheral, sitting at the end of the line, waiting, always confined to the poem’s outer edge.
However, there wasn’t just muscularity – there was flexibility – because whilst the accented syllables were counted there remained a lack of restriction on the numbers of unaccented syllables. This allowance, in the long line of alliterative poetry, offers a variety of metrical possibilities and of line-lengths, enabling the poet to alter the pace and rhythm of the gallop and to slow it to a canter or trot at any given point. This is especially important in a poem of over 2,500 lines in order to ‘prevent the verse from falling into a monotonous “dog-trot” rhythm’ (Borroff, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: A Stylistic and Metrical Study, 144) or conversely, to prevent it from galloping on when it doesn’t suit the nature of the narrative.
This discovery revived my interest in Hopkins’s notion of ‘sprung rhythm’ which had derived at least in part from Medieval verse. Re-reading The Wreck of the Deutschland, and a selection of his lyric poems, reminded me of the dynamism made possible when we reject the strictures of syllable-counting in favour of a measured accentual form that is sensitive to the patterns of speech.
However, I was soon to make a further discovery that would transform my appreciation of accentual alliterative verse and my efforts to write it. In Borroff’s 1962 study of the meter and style of Gawain, and in the appendix that follows her 1967 translation, she explains further variations and irregularities in the metrical pattern: ‘I have spoken of four "clearly predominant" stresses as constituting the basic form of the line. There are many lines, however, which contain stressed syllables above and beyond the basic four.’ Borroff’s approach to the meter of Sir Gawain recognizes a subtlety of sound-patterning that allows for varying degrees of weight or stress on some syllables that are neither fully stressed, nor completely unstressed. It is for this reason that Borroff, in her metrical analysis of Gawain, replaces the conventional terms ‘accented’ and ‘unaccented’ – or ‘stressed/unstressed’ – in favour of ‘chief’ and ‘intermediate’ syllables.
My research, and with it my writing, was discovering an agility in the meter of Gawain to go with its muscularity and flexibility. This subtlety of accent and emphasis affects the rhythm of the whole poem. Quite appropriately, the meter of Gawain evokes a ride over rough terrain. We are crossing rivers and ridges and rocky outcrops, leaping hedges and ditches, negotiating a moral and metaphysical mire. As the hoofbeat of the tetrameter drums on, the inflections and irregularities create a suitably uneven rhythm – a metrical adventure more like Coleridge’s undulating ramble ‘over uneven ground...breaking through the struggling branches of a copse-wood’ than Wordsworth’s civilized gait ‘up and down a straight gravel-walk... where the continuity of his verse met no collateral interruption.’ [from William Hazlitt’s biography of Coleridge, quoted in: Marc Shell, Talking the Walk & Walking the Talk: A Rhetoric of Rhythm (New York: Fordham University Press. 2015), Chapter 1, Kindle.]
There is much else that my research into the form and style of this poem has uncovered which would take us beyond the constraints of this study: the bi-partite line structure, the bob-and-wheel sections, the accentuation of initial syllables, the poetic use of archaic lexis, the regional vernacular of its diction, and more besides. Yet we must leave all that now and move on to explore how reading and research have inspired and informed my practice.
I knew that the success of my own accentual alliterative verse would be in the weaving together of metrical, alliterative and other phonological features. This was what would give my poetry the kind of muscularity, flexibility and agility I had discovered in Gawain. None of these devices would be working in isolation, but all aspects of the sonic physiology of the poem must be flexing and stretching, and pushing and pulling together. I knew that if I was to attempt a long narrative poem I would need everything working in synchronicity.
In addition, I had felt from early on that the unfamiliarity of the language in Gawain had, somewhat paradoxically, enhanced my enjoyment of the verse. My detachment at times from the semantics of the language freed me to feel and appreciate the soundscapes of the poem in their own right. This suggested to me that I might attempt to write in an invented language similar enough to contemporary English to be understood, yet sufficiently different and detached to enable the reader to be carried along by its rhythms and other phonological effects.
In particular, I was fascinated by what I began to see as a combination of the visceral with the vernacular. The oral and aural effects of its somewhat Germanic diction, with its characteristically glottal and guttural register, had resonated with me as I had read the original text out loud. I was keen to emulate the Anglo-Saxon quality of the poem’s phonology. Just as Simon Armitage ‘detects an echo of his own speech rhythms within the original’ [Simon, Armitage, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (London: Faber and Faber, 2007), vii.], I likewise recognize something of the accents and dialects of my own region of the Black Country and further north into Staffordshire.
It was an existing interest in the vernacular that had attracted me to the varied and natural metrical patterns of the verse. As a poet, I am very aware of the native, and dialectal, intonations of the voice and like to play them up a little, rather than suppress them. I like my poems to have a performative or declaratory aspect, which is clearly heard in Gawain, and other alliterative poetry, and in the sprung rhythms of Hopkins, too. I had also been impressed by distinctive voices in other reading, such as Ted Hughes’s Crow, and Russell Hoban’s Riddley Walker – and I’m satisfied that these influences can be heard in the poem that I’ve begun to write and am about to share. Tha Spawnen a Scousenlish is the first section of a semi-autobiographical, semi-mythological narrative poem; its title and opening lines are references to my place-of-birth.
Poems, perhaps narrative ones especially, are to be spoken and heard – and heeded. As a poet and teacher I am often conscious, like the Gawain-Poet, of addressing an audience who must be reminded to listen:
If ȝe wyl lysten þis laye bot on littel quile, I schal telle hit… (lines 30-1)
[W.R.J. Barron, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1974), 32 ]
- Note: Please read the poem below, aloud. In verse, the realizing of sounds often accompanies the recognizing of meanings. In
- addition, you will find it helpful to listen to the rhythms and intonations in my reading of the poem:
Tha Spawnen a Scousenlish
A wa bornt on tha browen banken ov a browen rivern where tyd im turnen an curven lyk turd as im slyden slownish owt ta sea an wherevern / Tha fust nyt wa frittful fistyt an curl-clenchen slep badlish in watty bed ov bent reeden dremt badlish dreamen of badden diayen to cummen / Wen a woken a wa chimdley-choken an chuffin in smokelish stench ov chemic-clouden tha cud stunt an stilt th shapin ov tung an lungen an a lossen langwij anaull / A cunner lern no worden jus chirp lyk bird mewlen lyk gull on miserish mornen howlen an honken lyk ferry in hawfog / Wen a tryd ta spake a cryd lyk crake ka-ka Kaa ka-ka Kee a screechen ka-ka Ky an a flappen ma fledglish armen frantik as fuken on tha browen banken dowen by tha wattern wer tha sky surgen an tha salt-sea swellen / An ooh tha fust feel on ma feet o tha watter a winch an a wep as them waven wasshen over an em slobbern an sucken so am sinken in mudlish / Slownish an shurlish am slidden enta shinglen deeplisher dowen to myn ankln ma neezen ma thyzen /
then tha cold kynda cauten me im tek me by suppryzen / an tha salt-watter tauten me im opn myn eyzen //
“Tha Spawnen a Scousenlish” was first published in Butcher’s Dog, issue 17, Sept 2022.
* * * *
In the metrical and phonological analysis that follows, I will be exploring in the context of my own practice the kind of muscle, flex and agility that I had been learning from Gawain.
I am working through Tha Spawnen a Scousenlish in complete units of meaning – rather than considering lines in isolation. This allows the natural intonation of speech to be considered across whole sentences. These sentences, or utterances to be precise, are delineated in the poem by forward-slashes rather than full stops and there is no other punctuation or demarcation. This requires the reader to use line-breaks, meter, alliteration and the natural patterns of speech to regulate and phrase their reading and voicing of the poem.
Each section of the poem is accompanied by metrical notation in the style of Marie Borroff, rather than in traditional feet, for reasons already discussed.
Immediately, the title, of the poem confronts the reader – or listener – with its odd language, and the somewhat Germanic nature of its phonology. Straightaway there is a favouring of harsh consonants, short vowels, and phonemes such as ‘-en’ and ‘-lish’. Already, there is a distance between sound and meaning; we are being drawn into the poem’s Anglo-Saxon sound-world. The two alliterated beats set up the relationship between the alliteration and meter of the poem. Its four sibilant consonants, two stressed and two unstressed, spit the poem into life.
The four heavy plosives of first line pick up the rhythm. The weighting of these heavy ‘b’ consonants reduces the stress of ‘rivern’ to a slightly subordinate position as the cadence falls at the end of the line. The disyllabic representation of ‘browen’ comes straight from Black Country and other Midland dialect forms. In the second line the alliteration is more nuanced by its interplay with various aural effects. The echo of ‘tyd turnen’ in ‘lyk turd’ suggests the ebb of the tide in the estuary setting of the poem. This musicality is supported by the assonance of the ‘ur’ vowel, in ‘turnen’, ‘curven’ and ‘turd’ which slides fluidly through the line between the sharper consonants of these words. The onomatopoeic effect of these long slow vowels is supplemented by the watery sibilance of ‘slyden slownish’ in line 3.
The second grammatical unit of the poem begins in line 4 with a more disturbed meter and phonological pattern. The sense of agitation is evoked, quite appropriately, by a lot of stress; there are as many as four intermediate stresses in this line, along with the four chiefs. The anxious alliteration here is created by the fricatives of ‘fust’, ‘frittful’ and ‘fistyt’, along with an equally uncomfortable alliterative effect embedded with ‘curlclenchen’. The discomfort and discordance of the night continues through lines 5 and 6 with the heavy consonantal drumbeat of ‘b’ and ‘d’ alliteration and the insistent assonance of ‘a’, ‘e’ and ‘ee’ vowels.
In lines 7 to 10, the alliterative pattern is simpler and quicker with virtually no intermediate stresses to complicate the flow. Here, appropriately, the poem wakes up with a number of lively internal rhymes within lines and between lines, too: ‘woken’ and ‘choken’ in line 7 connect with ‘smokelish’ in line 8; ‘tung’ in line 9 links up with ‘lungen’ in line 10; and there is an onomatopoeic cough running through ‘chimdleychoken’, to ‘chuffin’, and on to ‘chemic-clouden’. This enjambment, enhanced by a layering of phonological effects, energises these lines as the four-beat time-signature begins to pick up pace.
This pace continues into line 11, as the use of assonance rather than consonance creates a comparative lightness. Like the Gawain-Poet’s use of regional diction, line 11 features the Potteries’ ‘cunner’ for ‘couldn’t’. This line illustrates well the importance of performative considerations in our reading of a narrative poem where the telling is crucial. In my notation ‘cunner’ is subordinated in favour of the assonantal weight of ‘lern’. A different reading might swap these stresses to make ‘cunner’ feel more frustrated and emphatic. Alternatively, we might give this line five chief stresses – making it iambic – but, for me, losing some of the performative impact of varying the stress. In lines 12 and 13, the alliteration is made flexible by the sinew of unstressed alliterative effects: in line 12 three ‘l’ consonants limber up in the first three syllables of the line; and in line 13, the onomatopoeic alliterations of ‘howl’, ‘honk’ and ‘haw’ are complemented at the end of the line by the more rasping fricatives of ‘ferry’ and ‘fog’. The accentuation of ‘Hawfog’ also has performative value – its onomatopoeia offers a sonic correlative of ‘fog-horn’
The varied intonation of this next sentence is evoked by a range of accents and stresses, and illustrates the importance of unstressed syllables in varying pace. Supporting the need for a more precise way of accounting for meter than a somewhat binary, stressed/unstressed approach will allow. For instance, in line 14, ‘lyk’ is clearly to be accented more than some of the unstressed syllables, but is not as heavily accented at the ‘chief’ stresses. This is also true of the previous uses of ‘lyk’ in lines 2 and 11. However, here ‘lyk’ is given a little more accentual weight by its assonantal connection to ‘tryd’ and ‘cryd’. Furthermore, line 15 illustrates the way in which accentual stress can be governed by the syllable length: ‘Kaa’, ‘Kee’ and ‘Ky’ are naturally accented by the length of their vowels in comparison with the shorter ones in ‘ka-ka’. Of course, some of the additional emphatic weight also derives from the performative value of these sounds – they are being screeched. A further element musicality is created as Scousenlish’s repeated attempts to find a voice are suggested by the echoes and repetitions in these lines: in line 14 ‘tryd ta spake’ is echoed by ‘cryd lyk crake’.
In lines 19 to 21, the undulating musicality of the rhythm is increased by the simplified tetrameter with its lack of intermediate syllables. As elsewhere, the number of unstressed syllables – often two or three between the chiefs – gives the verse its pace, its canter or gallop. The alliterating sounds in this section are distinctly onomatopoeic, and increasingly sensuous, too. The ‘w’, ‘s’ and ‘sh’ consonants, combined with the wave-like rhythm evoke the ebb and flow of the sea: the watery w’s of lines 19 and 20, are overwhelmed by the incoming tide of surging sibilances in lines 21, which continues into the following sentence, too.
* * * *
My title being a dependent clause, not a question, meant this was always an enquiry not an inquiry. In this practice-based piece, the poetry and analysis are both the outworking and outcome of my research – the knowing and the knowledge.
This creative critical journey will continue with further work to complete further alliterative poems, with a sustained focus on meter, intonation and phonological effects. Alongside this, having paddled in the shallows of cognitive poetics, I intend to explore more deeply and extensively aspects of rhythm, musicality and performance in our writing and reading of poetry.
I have begun to ride the rhythms of Gawain’s galloping Gringolet, and as I close I’m wading with Scousenlish deeper into the eye-opening waters of accentual alliterative narrative verse. Scousenlish’s adventures have only just begun, more poems will follow, as I continue this mytho-poetic journey to its, as yet unknown, conclusion.
- Martin Yates, May 2020.
Footnote: True to his final paragraph, the poet went on to explore Scousenlish’s adventures in three further alliterative poems, which are printed below. He assures us that there is more of Scousenlish to come; with a fifth poem in the pipeline and plans for this to be an ongoing project resulting in a set of around twenty pieces – all in the same accentual-alliterative, Gawain-inspired form – over the next few years.
First Published in Forgotten Ground Regained, New Series, Issue 4, Fall, 2024
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