The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21).>br>Volume I. From the Beginnings to the Cycles of Romance.
XIII. Metrical Romances, 1200–1500: I§ 8. Forms of Verse
As regards verse, there are the two great orders, riming and blank alliterative. Of riming measures the most usual are the short couplet of octosyllabic lines and the stanza called rime couèe, rithmus caudatus.
King Horn is singular in its verse, an example of one stage in the development of modern English metres. It is closely related in prosody to Layamon’s Brut, and might be described as carrying through consistently the riming couplet, which Layamon interchanges with blank lines. The verse is not governed by the octosyllabic law; it is not of Latin origin; it has a strange resemblance to the verse of Otfried in Old High German and to the accidental riming passages in Old English, especially in the more decrepit Old English verse:
There is no other romance in this antique sort of verse. In the ordinary couplets just such differences may be found as in modern usage of the same measure. Havelok and Orfeo, King Alisaunder and Ywain have not exactly the same effect.
Havelok, though sometimes a little rough, is not unsound; the poem of Ywain and Gawain is nearly as correct as Chaucer; The Squire of Low Degree is one of the pleasantest and most fluent examples of this verse in English. There is a pause at the end of every line, and the effect is like that of some ballads:
Besides the short couplet different types of common metre are used; very vigorously, with full rimes, in Sir Ferumbras—
Sir Thopas might be taken as the standard of the rithmus caudatus, but Sir Thopas itself shows that variations are admitted and there are several kinds besides, which Chaucer does not introduce.
In later usage this stanza is merely twofold, as in Drayton’s Nymphidia or in The Baby’s Dèbut. In early days it was commonly fourfold, i.e. there are four caudae with the same rime:
Sometimes there are three lines together before each cauda, as in Sir Perceval and Sir Degrevant and others:
While as this example shows, there are different lengths of line, they are not all in eights and sixes. Sir Libeaus, particularly, makes very pretty play with a kind of short metre and a peculiar sequence of the rimes:
The cauda is usually of six syllables; but there is a variety with four, found in part of Sir Beves:
The rime couèe is a lyrical stanza, and there are other lyrical forms. One of the romances of Octavian is in the old Provençal and old French measure which, by roundabout ways, came to Scotland, and was used in the seventeenth century in honour of Habbie Simson, the piper of Kilbarchan, and, thereafter, by Allan Ramsay, Fergusson and Burns, not to speak of later poets.
The riming Mort Arthur is in a favourite eight-line stanza. Sir Tristrem, in most ways exceptional, uses a lyrical stave, like one of those in the collection of Laurence Minot, and very unlike anything that was permissible in the French schools of narrative at that time. It may be remembered, however, that the Italian romances of the fourteenth century and later used a form of verse that, at first, was lyrical, the ottava rima; there are other affinities in Italian and English popular literature, as compared with the French, common qualities which it would be interesting to study further.
The French originals of these English romances are almost universally in short couplets, the ordinary verse for all subjects, after the chansons de geste had grown old-fashioned. On the whole, and considering how well understood the short couplet was in England even in the thirteenth century, e.g. in The Owl and Nightingale, it is rather surprising that there should be such a large discrepancy between the French and the English forms. There are many anomalies; thus, the fuller version of Ipomedon, by a man who really dealt fairly and made a brave effort to get the French spirit into English rime, is in rime couèe while the shorter Ipomedon, scamped work by some poor hack of a minstrel, is in the regular French couplet. It should be noted here that rime couèe is later than couplets, though the couplets last better, finally coming to the front again and winning easily in Confessio Amantis and in The Romaunt of the Rose. There are many examples of rewriting: tales in couplets are rewritten in stanzas; Sir Beves, in the earlier part, is one, Sir Launfal is another. Horn Childe is in the Thopas verse; it is the same story as King Horn, though with other sources, and different names and incidents.
In later times, the octosyllabic verse recovers its place, and, though new forms are employed at the close of the Middle Ages, such as rime royal (e.g. in Generydes) and the heroic couplet (in Clariodus and Sir Gilbert Hay’s Alexander), still, for simple popular use, the short verse is the most convenient, as is proved by the chap-book romances, Sir Eger and Roswall and Lilian–also, one may say, Sir David Lyndsay’s Squire Meldrum. The curious riming alliterative verse of the Awntyrs of Arthure and Rauf Coilyear lasts well in Scotland; but it had never been thoroughly established as a narrative measure, and, though it is one of the forms recognised and exemplified in King James VI’s Art of Poesie, its “tumbling verse” is there regarded as most fit for “flytings,” which was indeed its usual function in the end of its days.
Alliterative blank verse came up in the middle of the fourteenth century and was chiefly used for romance, Piers Plowman being the only considerable long poem to be compared in weight with The Troy Book or The Wars of Alexander, though there are others of less compass which are still remarkable enough. Where the verse came from is not known clearly to anyone and can only be guessed. The facts are that, whereas the old verse begins to show many signs of decay before the Conquest, and reappears after the Conquest in very battered shapes, in Layamon and The Bestiary and The Proverbs of Alfred, the new order, of which William of Palerne is the earliest, has clearly ascertained some of the main principles of the ancient Teutonic line, and adheres to them without any excessive difficulty. The verse of these alliterative romances and of Langland, and of all the rest down to Dunbar and the author of Scotish Feilde, is regular, with rules of its own; not wholly the same as those of old English epic, but partly so, and never at all like the helpless medley of Layamon. It must have been hidden away somewhere underground—continuing in a purer tradition than happens to have found its way into extant manuscripts—till, at last, there is a striking revival in the reign of Edward III. There are some hints and indications in the meantime. Giraldus the untiring, the untamed, with his quick wit and his lively interest in all manner of things, has a note comparing the Welsh and the English love of alliteration—as he compares the partsinging of Wales with that of the north country. He gives English examples: