(before the days of Beowulf ) by some intimation from the harp that accompanied the reading or chanting of the verse. Obviously there are difficulties, whether we adhere to a 2-beat or to a 4-beat halfline. If we are looking for an underlying pattern which includes a time-factor then we must either hurry dexterously over the light syllables of the long half-lines or else linger rather ponderously and sometimes in silence over the short half-lines; either way, the speaking voice will have to force some sort of accommodation (not indicated by the poet) if symmetry and regularity are felt to be necessary in the structure. In so far as this is felt, it seems to me much more unnatural to say that a half-line like ‘Sidra sorga’ has four stresses than to say that ‘Hyrde ic thæt he thone healsbeah’ has only two, especially since most of the lengthy half-lines are lengthy with unimportant words which would probably involve slurring and elision in Anglo-Saxon speech. It also seems clear to me that from an unbiassed reading of the poem, whether spoken or silent, an unmistakable overall stress-impression emerges, and that this impression is of four beats to the line, not eight, with a predominantly falling or trochaic rhythm. The examples of 8-beat scansion given by Leonard (Beowulf and the Nibelungen Couplet, 1918),1 with their constant stressing of unimportant syllables, are not persuasive. Should the demand for design, however, lay so much emphasis on the time-element? I think the Beowulf poet would have been puzzled by it, and I see no reason why the present-day reader should find it hard to eschew what is after all a bludgeoning of the Old English metre in the interests of the regularity of a later verse technique. My reasons for this will be indicated in a moment.

If criticism can be justly made of syllabic and rhyming versions of Beowulf, on grounds of their lightness, speed, monotony, and tendency to pad out and make use of worn or empty expressions for the sake of rhyme, the third group, of ‘imitative’ versions, stands equally under fire from its opponents. Reference has already been made to the grotesqueness of William Morris’s translation, which is in a loosely imitative metre:

The business of bales, and the boot come again. (l. 281.)

1 University of Wisconsin Studies in Language and Literature, No. 2, p. 99 f.

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