Imatges de pàgina
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§ 55. Derivation from a common Indo-
Germanic original verse.

Just as Sievers derives his types of four members we can derive ours of four beats from a common Indo-Germanic original verse of the form ××××××××. As the four beats were variously graduated in stress, in accordance with the Old Germanic speech-material, and two or three of them were united to form 'feet'1) of two or three beats, the following various types resulted from the uniform original verse:

I. (2+2) Type A: xlxxxxlxxx geuất him bà to

II. (1+2+1).

wárođè

a) Type B: ×××××××× mid mìnra | éorlà ge|driht, ofer | géofenès be gang b) Type D2: ×××××××1× átol|ýđà ge| suing, oferswám pā | soleđà be gang III. (3+1) Type E: ×××××××× Héađo-beardnà ge\ stréon

1) I purposely avoid the word 'bar', used earlier by me (Studien zum germ. Alliterationsvers I. II), in order to avoid the conception of the OE. ‘bars' as like units of time, which conception would be a wrong one. 'Foot' is here used.

(a) Type C: xx×××××× on pìsse | méoduhealle, to brímes fàrođè,

IV. (1+3)

b) Type D1: x*x*x*x*

lócene | léotosyrcàn.

I have here chosen examples, number of syllables are like the

which in the

original verse

and can be scanned with four beats without difficulty. Generally in OE. verse the syllables are reduced to five or four. The first more of the original verse (the anacrusis) and the last unstressed more before the beginning of a new foot may be omitted (shown by brackets in the verse scheme). One long syllable may be used for two short ones,

for (shown by xx in the verse scheme). In the feet of three beats the middle member, originally of two moren, can be contracted to one more; this can be represented by a long or a short syllable. We thus get the following schemes for the historical OE. verse:

I. (2+2) Type A: (×)1×××(×)1××× lángè | hwílè a) Type B: (x)*(×)|×××(×)|× þùrh | minè hánd

II. (1+2+1)

b) Type D2: (×)×××××(×)|× blæd|widè| spráng

III. (3+1) Type E: (×)|××××(×)|×wéorð-mỳndùm|þáh

IV. (1+3)

(shortened: béag-hròdèn | cwén)

a) Type C: (×)x(x)Ixxxx hìm sẽ | ýlđềsta
(èn | geårdà gùm, òn béarm sẽ pès)
b) Type D1: (×)××××** féond | mán-
cynnès (léof | lánd-frùmà).

But even these shortest forms of the alliterative verse, which have only four syllables, do not at all differ in the grouping of the beats, i.e. in their rhythm, from the longer verses quoted above. We must, therefore, scan all OE. alliterative verses, the long ones and the short ones, with four beats. By this we avoid the inconsistency, of which Saran, Sievers and Luick are guilty. They assume that an Indo-Germanic original verse with four beats became an alliterative verse with two beats. From this they must derive a German and English rimed verse with four beats since the 'sung verse' ('Gesangsvers'), which they assume to have retained four beats at the time of the alliterative poetry (§ 36), is not very substantial. No one has seen

it, and it is difficult to say how the old poets can have filled it differently from the alliterative verse, which we have in the texts handed down to us. We must, therefore, hold fast to the proposition: From the beginning till the Middle High German and Middle English period the only measure of Germanic verse was one of four beats.

§ 56. Kögel.

Very much the same position with regard to Sievers' system was taken up by Kögel, Geschichte der deutschen Literatur bis zum Ausgange des Mittelalters, Strassburg 1894, I, 288m-316: Der epische Vers and Die altsächsische Genesis. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der altdeutschen Dichtung

und Verskunst. Strassburg 1895, pp. 28-70. He keeps Sievers' types with a different grouping: a) Types with feminine ending (A, C, D1), b) Types with masculine ending (B, D, E). He assumes, however, four beats for all verses, since, "convinced that there is freedom in the use of anacrusis and theses", he looks on "those members which Sievers calls 'necessary senkungen' as 'weaker hebungen'." In certain details and in the division of the verses in Sievers' types Kögel frequently differs from me; later in a review of Heusler's essay Über germanischen Versbau (ZfdA. 39, 318-328; cp. p. 325) he has altered his view of the shortened A2k, C and D1 verses. Like Trautman (§ 58) he counts the two final short syllables not as two but as one beat, and gives the preceding long syllable two beats. Since Kögel takes his examples from ON., OHG. and OS. verse, there is no need to discuss his system here in detail.

$57. Trautmann.

Trautmann, who earlier had scanned the verse of Lagamon and Otfrid with four beats, but the older English and German alliterative verse with two beats, declared himself in favour of the fourbeat theory in his Zur Kenntnis des altgermanischen Verses, vornehmlich des Altenglischen, Anglia, Beiblatt 5, 87-96.

Unfortunately, however, he does not see the chief characteristic of OE. verse in the various

grouping of various stresses, in fact he thinks that he can get rid of Sievers' types by simply calling them 'Silbenhaufenlehre' (syllable-piling doctrine). In arranging his system he pays attention only to the different 'filling' of the two 'Weilen' of his four bars by two short syllables or one long one, and the contraction of two bars in one long syllable.

Trautmann's system in its later formulation, Die neueste Beowulfausgabe und die altenglische Verslehre, Bonner Beiträge zur Anglistik 17, 175–191 (1905) is somewhat as follows:

The OE. long line consists of two half-verses, each of which has four bars. Each of the bars has two 'Weilen' (hebung and senkung). These two 'Weilen' are represented by two syllables or by one. If a bar has two syllables, both must be short; if it has one syllable, the syllable must be long. Only the first bar of a half-verse can have instead of , which is shown in the

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scheme by x.

NOTE. We must notice that Trautmann counts under, swā hē etc. not as two long, but as two metrically short syllables. He says (p. 182, Anm.): "In the verse weox under wolcnum, under has the form for the observer

of the language, but in verse it counts as ; in the verse swā he selfa bæd, swā and hẽ, which in ordinary speech have or can have a long vowel, make up the first bar and are= = ." On page 187 he states that "all weak syllables, also the root-syllables of words of little meaning, are long or short according to the requirement of the verse". But when in a metrical system, which is entirely built up on

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