Alliterative verse
[8][9][10][11] The extensive use of alliteration in the so-called Kalevala meter, or runic song, of the Finnic languages provides a close comparison, and may derive directly from Germanic-language alliterative verse.
Alliterative poets drew on a specialized vocabulary of poetic synonyms rarely used in prose texts[49][15] and used standard images and metaphors called kennings.
In more recent times, Richard Wagner sought to evoke these old German models and what he considered a more natural and less over-civilised style by writing his Ring poems in Stabreim.
Generally these are parts of speech which would naturally be unstressed — pronouns, prepositions, articles, modal auxiliaries — but in the Old Saxon works there are also adjectives and lexical verbs.
The Heliand, line 3062: Sâlig bist thu Sîmon, quað he, sunu Ionases; ni mahtes thu that selbo gehuggean blessed are you Simon, he said, son of Jonah; for you did not see that yourself (Matthew 16, 17) This leads to a less dense style, no doubt closer to everyday language, which has been interpreted both as a sign of decadent technique from ill-tutored poets and as an artistic innovation giving scope for additional poetic effects.
Nús hersis hefnd við hilmi efnd; gengr ulfr ok örn of ynglings börn; flugu höggvin hræ Hallvarðs á sæ; grár slítr undir ari Snarfara.
[67] 'For a noble warrior slain Vengeance now on king is ta'en: Wolf and eagle tread as prey Princes born to sovereign sway.
Hallvard's body cloven through Headlong in the billows flew; Wounds of wight once swift to fare Swooping vulture's beak doth tear.
[76] Traditional poetic synonyms and kennings persisted in Icelandic rimur as late as the 18th Century, but were criticized by modernizing poets such as Jonas Hallgrimsson, and dropped out of later usage.
[77] The following poem in kviðuhattr meter by Jónas Hallgrímsson with translation by Dick Ringler[78] illustrates how the rules for Icelandic alliterative verse work.
[88] For instance, the Old English poet could deploy a wide array of synonyms and kennings to refer to the sea: sæ, mere, deop wæter, seat wæter, hæf, geofon, windgeard, yða ful, wæteres hrycg, garsecg, holm, wægholm, brim, sund, floð, ganotes bæð, swanrad, seglrad, among others.
This ranges from synonyms surviving in English, like sea and mere, to rarer poetic words and compounds, to full-on kennings like "gannet's bath", "whale-road", or "seal-road".
The Rhyming Poem, and, to some degree, The Proverbs of Alfred), the use of alliterative verse continued (or was revived) in Middle English, though which it was—continuation, or revival—is a matter of some debate.
[97][94] Alliterative verse in post-Conquest England had to compete with imported, often French-derived forms in rhyming stanzas, reflecting what must have seemed like the common practice of the rest of Christendom.
And there were a variety of poems falling in a space that ranged from allegory to satire to political commentary, including Piers Plowman, Winnere and Wastoure, Mum and the Sothsegger, The Parlement of Three Ages, The Buke of the Howlat, Richard the Redeless, Jack Upland, Friar Daw's Reply, Jack Uplands Rejoinder, The Blacksmiths, The Tournament of Tottenham, Sum Practysis of Medecyne, and The Tretis of the Twa Mariit Women and the Wedo.
In modern spelling: A fair field full of folk found I there between, Of all manner of men the mean and the rich, Working and wandering as the world asketh.
In modern translation: Among them I found a fair field full of people All manner of men, the poor and the rich Working and wandering as the world requires.
[113] For example, a Middle English alliterative poem could refer to men by such a variety of terms as were, churl, shalk, gome, here, rink, segge, freke, man, carman, mother's son, heme, hind, piece, buck, bourne, groom, sire, harlot, guest, tailard, tulk, sergeant, fellow, or horse.
[114] After the fifteenth century, alliterative verse became fairly uncommon; possibly the last major poem in the tradition is William Dunbar's Tretis of the Tua Marriit Wemen and the Wedo (c. 1500).
[115] Between 1780 and 1840, scholars rediscovered long-forgotten manuscripts in monasteries and private libraries, leading to the rediscovery of forgotten literatures and the worlds they were associated with—for example, Beowulf, the Poetic Edda, the Nibelungenlied, and the oral traditions compiled in the Kalevala.
[117] This led, in turn, to the self-conscious revival of ancient forms, most notably in William Morris' romantic fantasies and Wagner's use of stabreim, or alliterative verse, in the libretto for his opera series, the Ring of the Nibelungs.
[126] For instance, many of the following lines from The Age of Anxiety violate basic principles of alliterative meter, such as placing stress and alliteration on grammatical function words like "yes" and "you":Deep in my dark.
Mild rose the moon, moving through our Naked nights: tonight it rains; Black umbrellas: blossom out; Gone the gold, my golden ball.
... Richard Wilbur's Junk comes closer to matching alliterative rhythms, but freely alliterates on the fourth stress, sometimes alliterating all four stresses in the same line (which an Old English poet would not, and a Middle English poet only rarely do), as in the poem's opening lines:An axe angles from my neighbor's ashcan; It is hell's handiwork, the wood not hickory.
In his 1978 article on the potential of alliterative meter as a form in modern English, John D. Niles characterizes these experiments as essentially one-offs, rather than as part of an ongoing tradition.
[158] Their work largely circulated in fanzines and small speculative poetry journals like Star*Line, though after the foundation of the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA) in the 1960s, it found a new home in occasional verse written for SCA events,[25][159] where fantasy and science fiction authors and fans were likely to rub shoulders with medievalist scholars and neopagan devotees of the old Germanic gods.
[160] Alliterative verse can be found wherever speculative fiction fans gather, including fanfiction sites[161] and even in materials written for roleplaying games (RPGs).
[162] During the 21st century there has also been an increase in the number of original English poems in alliterative verse included in poetry journals and in collections published by practicing poets.
[165] A recent book on the subject by Dennis Wilson Wise, Speculative Poetry and the Modern Alliterative Revival: A Critical Anthology, includes one hundred and fifty poems by fifty-five poets, more original (as opposed to translated) English alliterative verse by more poets between two covers than anything that has been published since before Gutenberg invented the printing press.
[b] The index of published authors in a website devoted to tracking modern English alliterative verse, Forgotten Ground Regained, includes more than one hundred forty individual poets, and links to works by more than one hundred and twenty five other individuals posted on blogs, social media posts, fan fiction sites, and other online channels for informal communication.
