[108] This line is inaccurately quoted by King James from the poet Alexander Montgomerie, who lived at his court. It should read as follows:--
_Syne fetcht food for to feid it, | foorth fra the Pharie._ Flyting 476.
[109] Cf. the writer's paper 'Zur Zweihebungstheorie der alliterierenden Halbzeile' in _Englische Studien_ v. 488-93.
[110] Cf. _Chapters on Alliterative Verse_ by John Lawrence, D. Litt. London: H. Frowde. 1893. 8º (chapter iii).
[111] 'Die englische Stabreimzeile im 14., 15., 16. Jahrhundert' (_Anglia_, xi. 392-443, 553-618).
[112] Prof. Luick, in his longer treatise on the subject (_Anglia_, xi. 404), distinguishes between two forms of this type with anacrusis (× -´ × × -´) and without (-´ × × -´), which he calls A1 and A2, a distinction he has rightly now abandoned (Paul's _Grundriss_, ed. 2, II. ii. p. 165).
[113] Also printed in Ritson's _Ancient Songs_, i, p. 12; Wright's _Pol. Songs_, p. 69; Mätzner's _Altenglische Sprachproben_, i, p. 152; Böddeker's _Altenglische Dichtungen, Pol. Lieder_, no. i.
[114] Paul's _Grundriss_, ed. 2, II. ii, p. 158.
[115] Cf. _Metrik_, ii. 146; and Luick, _Anglia_, xii. 450, 451.
[116] See G. Gascoigne, _Certayne Notes of Instruction concerning the making of verse or ryme in English_, 1575, in Arber's _Reprints_, together with _The Steele Glas_, &c., London, 1868, 8vo, p. 34.
[117] Bürger's version _Der Kaiser und der Abt_ introduces a regular alternation of masculine and feminine couplets not observed in the original metre which he is copying.
[118] Cf. the chapter on the four-foot iambic verse.
[119] Recognized by Bishop Percy (1765) as rhythmically equivalent to
_In a sómer séason, | when sóft was the sónne I shópe me into shróudes, | as I a shépe wére_ (Piers Plowman). and
_H[=á]m and h[=é]ahsetl | héofena r[=í]ces_ (Gen. 33).
_Sc[=é]op þ[=a] and scýrede | scýppend [=ù]re_ (ibid. 65).
[120] This alliterative-rhyming long line is scanned by the contemporary metrist King James VI in the manner indicated by the accents.
[121] The second of these lines is thus marked by Gascoigne as having four stresses.
[122] We retain the MS. reading; see Sievers, _Altgerm. Metrik_, p. 17.
DIVISION I. THE FOREIGN METRES IN GENERAL
§ =76.= It was not till about 150 years after the Norman Conquest that foreign metres were introduced in English literature under the influence of French and Low Latin versification. For these, too, the general law observed in all accentual poetry holds good, viz. that the word-accent and the syntactical accent must coincide with the rhythmical accent. This rule, however, was easier to observe in the old native four-beat alliterative metre, in which the proportion and order of accented and unaccented syllables admit of many variations, than in metres consisting of equal measures, which follow stricter rules in that respect. In the older native verse accordingly we seldom find deviations from this fundamental rule, whereas in the newer foreign metres they are more frequent and striking.