The Ode Less Travelled: Unlocking The Poet Within

while young three has a word with four

Here come one and two

three is there with four

Although ‘comes’, ‘along’, ‘there’, ‘hand’, ‘young’ and ‘word’ might seem to be words which ought properly to receive some stress, it is only the numbers here that take the primary accent. Try reading the three lines aloud, deliberately hitting the numbers hard.

You get the idea. Of course there will always be minor, secondary stresses on the other words, but it is those four stressed elements that matter. You could say, if you love odd words as much as most poets do, that a line of Anglo-Saxon poetry is in reality a syzygy of dipodic hemistichs. A pair of yoked two-foot half-lines, in other words. But I prefer syzygy. It really is a word, I promise you.³¹

Now for the alliterative principle, christened by Michael Alexander, Anglo-Saxon scholar and translator of Beowulf, the BANG, BANG, BANG–CRASH! rule.

ONE, TWO AND THREE ARE ALLITERATED, FOUR ISN’T

It is as simple as that. No rhyming, so syllable counting. In fact, why bother with the word hemistich at all? The line is divided into two: the first half has bang and bang, and the second half has bang and crash. That’s all you really need to know. Let us scan this kind of metre with bold for the first three beats and bold-underline for the fourth, to mark its unalliterated difference.

It embarks with a bang

sucking breath from the lungs

And rolls on directly

as rapid as lightning.

The speed and the splendour

come spilling like wine

Compellingly perfect and

appealingly clear

The most venerable invention

conveniently simple.

Important to note that it is the stressed syllables that matter: ‘compelling’ and ‘appealing’ are perfectly legitimate alliteration words, as are ‘invention’ and ‘convenient’, ‘rolls’ and ‘directly’. So long as the stress falls heavily enough on the syllable belonging to the alliterating consonant, everything’s hotsy-totsy and right as a trivet. And I say again, because it might seem unusual after all the syllabic counting of the previous section of the book, IT DOESN’T MATTER HOW MANY SYLLABLES THERE ARE, ONLY HOW MANY BEATS. Occasionally, in defiance of the b-b-b-crash rule you may see the fourth beat alliterate with the others, but usually it does not.

Although I said that it does not matter where in each half of the line the stressed elements go, it is close enough to a rule to say that the fourth stress (the CRASH) is very likely to be in the last word of the line, which may (like ‘lightning’ and ‘simple’ above) have a feminine ending.

I could give you some examples of Anglo-Saxon verse, but they involve special letters (yoghs, eths and thorns) and the language is distant enough from our own to be virtually incomprehensible to all but the initiated.

Medieval verse is not so tricky to decipher. Round about the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries English poets began to write once more in the Anglo-Saxon style: this flowering, known as the Alliterative Revival, gave rise to some magnificent works. Here is the opening to William Langland’s ‘Piers Plowman’.³²In a somer sesoun, whan softe was the sonneI shope me into shroudes, as I a shep were,In habite as an heremite, unholy of werkes,Wente forth in the world wondres to here,And saw many selles and sellcouthe thynges.

You hardly need to know what every word means, but a rough translation would be:One summer, when the sun was gentleI dressed myself in rough clothes like a shepherdIn the habit of a lazy hermit³³Went forth into the world to hear wondersAnd saw many marvels and strange things.

You will notice that Langland does open with bang, bang, bang–bang. Perhaps it is his way of beginning his poem with special hoopla. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, an anonymous work from the same period (late fourteenth century: contemporary with Chaucer) opens thus: Sithen the sege and the assaut watz sesed at TroyeThe borgh brittened and brent to brondez and askezThe tulk that the trammes of tresoun ther wroghtWatz tried for his tricherie, the trewest on erthe;

My spellcheck has just resigned, but no matter. Here is a basic translation:Since the siege and the assault ceased at TroyThe town destroyed and burned to brands and ashesThe man that the wiles of treason there wroughtWas tried for his treachery, the veriest on earth;

The Gawain Poet (as he is known in the sexy world of medieval studies–he is considered by some to be the author of three other alliterative works–Pearl, Patience and Purity) occasionally breaks the ‘rule’ and includes an extra alliterating word, and therefore, one must assume, an extra beat, as he does here in the second line.

Modern poets (by which I mean any from the last hundred years) have tried their hands at this kind of verse with varying degrees of accomplishment. This is a perfect Langlandian four-stress alliterated line in two hemistichs