Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, page 22
the siege and the assault had ceased at Troy
Tirius to Tuscany and towns founded
There might be more ‘full words’ in a phrase. ‘The king and his kinsman/and courtly men served them.’ (see stanza 21, line 16) is well enough and is a sufficient line. But you might wish to say: ‘The king and his good kinsman/and quickly courtly men served them.’ As far as the second half of the line went, you restrained your wish and did not allow the language to have its head; you kept the ends of lines simple and clear. At most you would venture on ‘and courtiers at once served them’ –avoiding double alliteration and putting the adverb where in natural narration it could be subordinated in force and tone to court- and served, leaving them plainly as the beats. But in the first part of the line ‘packing’ was much practiced.
In ‘The king and his good kinsman’ good is not of much importance, and can be reduced in tone so as hardly to rise up and challenge the main beats, king and kin. But if this element joins in the alliteration, it is brought into notice, and then one has a triple type: ‘The king and his kind kinsman’. This variety, in which there is a third beat inserted before the second main beat, to which it is subordinated in tone and import, but with which it nonetheless alliterates, is very common indeed. Thus the second line of the poem:
And the fortress fell in flame to firebrands and ashes
But the added material may come at the beginning of the line. Instead of ‘In pomp and pride/he peopled it first’ (see the 9th line of the poem) you may say: ‘In great pomp and pride’. This will lead easily to another variety in which there is a third beat before the first main stress, to which it is subordinate, but with which it alliterates; so in the eighth line of the poem:
Fro riche Romulus to Rome ricchis hym swyþe
When royal Romulus to Rome his road had taken
Less commonly a full but subordinate word may be put instead of a weak syllable at the end of the first part of the line; thus in stanza 81:
Þe gordel of þe grene silke, þat gay wel bisemed
That girdle of green silk, and gallant it looked
If this is given an alliteration, one gets the type:
And far over the French flood Felix Brutus (stanza 1)
Further varieties will then develop; for example, those in which the third beat is not really subordinate, but either phonetically, or in sense and vividness, or in both, a rival to the others:
But wild weathers of the world, awake in the land
The rings rid of the rust on his rich byrnie (both from stanza 80)
It may sometimes occur that the added beat bears the alliteration and the phonetically or logically more important word does not. In the translation, this type is used in order to provide an alliteration when a main word that cannot be changed refuses to alliterate. Thus in the first line of stanza 2 the translation has:
And when fair Britain was founded by this famous lord
for the original
Ande quen þis Bretayn watz bigged bi þis burn rych(e) –
since ‘Britain’ was inescapable, but neither bigged (founded) nor burn (knight, man) have any modern counterparts to alliterate with it.
As was said earlier, alliteration was by ear, and not by letter; the spelling is not concerned.
Justed ful jolilé þise gentyle knites (stanza 3, line 6)
alliterated, despite the spelling with g and j. Quite another matter is ‘licence’. The poet allowed himself certain of these: where neither the spelling nor the sound were the same, but the sounds were at least similar. He could occasionally disregard the distinction between voiced and voiceless consonants, and thus equate s with z, or f with v, and (often) words beginning with h with words beginning with a vowel. In the translation the same licences are allowed when necessary – a translator needs even more help than one composing on his own.
Thus:
Quen Zeferus syflez hymself on sedez and erbez
When Zephyr goes sighing through seeds and herbs (stanza 23)
and:
Though you yourself be desirous to accept it in person (stanza 16)
where the second stress is the ‘zire’ or desirous, and the third is the ‘sept’ of accept.
The cases where the alliteration is borne not by the first but by the second element in a compound word (such as eyelid or daylight in lines alliterating on l) are really not different metrically from those in which a separate but subordinate word usurps the alliteration. For example:
And unlouked his ye-lyddez, and let as him wondered
He lifted his eyelids with a look as of wonder (stanza 48)
One variety is frequently used in the translation which is not often found in clear cases in the original; that is ‘crossed alliteration’. In this, a line contains two alliterative sounds, in either the arrangement abab or abba. These patterns are used in the translation because they satisfy the requirements of simple alliteration and yet add more metrical colour to make up for the cases where triple or quadruple alliteration in the original cannot be rivalled in modern English. Thus:
All of green were they made, both garments and man (stanza 8)
Towards the fairest at the table he twisted the face (stanza 20)
In the following line the pattern is f/s//f:
And since folly thou hast sought, thou deservest to find it (stanza 15)
The frequent occurrence in the translation of ‘Wawain’ for ‘Gawain’ follows the practice of the original. Both forms of the name were current; and of course the existence of an alternative form of the name of a principal character, beginning with another consonant, was a great help to an alliterative poet.
But in Sir Gawain there is end-rhyme as well, in the last lines of each stanza. The author had the notion (so it may probably be said, for nothing quite like it is found elsewhere) to lighten the monotony and weight of some 2,000 long alliterating lines on end. He broke them up into groups (hardly really ‘stanzas’, as they are very variable in length), and at the end of each he put a patch of rhyme. This consists of four three-beat lines rhyming alternative (now known as the ‘wheel’) and a one-beat tag (known as the ‘bob’) to link the ‘wheel’ with the preceding stanza. The bob rhymes with the second and fourth lines of the wheel. There is no doubt of the metrical success of this device; but since the rhymed lines had also to alliterate, and there is not much room to move in the short lines of the wheel, the author set himself a severe technical test, and the translator a worse one. In the translation, the attempt to alliterate as well as rhyme has had to be abandoned a little more often than in the original. As an example of the bob and wheel both in the original and in the translation, this is the end of stanza 2:
If ze wyl lysten þis laye bot on littel quile
I schal telle hit astit, as I in toun herde,
with tonge,
As hit is stad and stoken
In stori stif and stronge,
With lei letteres loken,
In londe so hatz ben longe.
If you will listen to this lay but a little while now,
I will tell it at once as in town I have heard
it told,
as it is fixed and fettered
in story brave and bold,
thus linked and truly lettered
as was loved in this land of old.
II PEARL
In Pearl the author adopted a twelve-line rhyming stanza in which alliteration is used as well. The line in Pearl is a French line, modified primarily (a) by the difference of English from French generally, and (b) by the influence of inherited metrical practices and taste, especially in the areas where the alliterative tradition was still strong. The essential features of the ancient English alliterative practice are wholly unlike, in effect and aim, what is found in Pearl. In the old alliterative verse the ‘line’ had no repeated or constant accentual rhythm which gave it its metrical character; its units were the half-lines, each of which was independently constructed. The line was internally linked by alliteration; but this linking was deliberately used counter to the rhetorical and syntactic structure. The chief rhetorical or logical pauses were normally placed (except at the end of a verse period of several lines) in the middle of the line between the alliterations; and the second half-line was most frequently more closely connected in sense and syntax to the following line.
In complete contrast to all this, there is in Pearl a basic and model accentual rhythm of alternating strong/loud – weak/soft syllables; the poem being written to a scheme:
X / X / X / X / (x)
þay songen wyth a swete asent (line 94 of the original).
‘Model’ lines of this kind make up about a quarter of the lines in the poem; but if those lines are included in which there occurs the simple variation of allowing one of the ‘falls’ to contain two weak syllables, the proportion rises to about three-fifths, and higher still if two such two-syllable falls are allowed. In all these cases (since only those in which the metrically unstressed elements are genuinely ‘weak’ are counted) the metrical pattern of alternating strong-loud and weak-soft syllables is clearly maintained. And in spite of the ‘variations’ that are used, and of the doubt concerning the presence or absence of final -e, this pattern remains indeed so frequent and insistent as to impart to the metrical effect of the whole a certain monotony, which combined with the emphasis of alliteration can (at any rate to a modern listener) become almost soporific. This is increased by the poet’s preference for making the last beat, which is a rhyming syllable, share in the alliteration.
In Pearl the total line is the unit, and is usually ‘locked up in itself’; in the vast majority of cases, the major marks of punctuation must be placed at the line-ends. Even ‘commas’, when phonetically used (that is, when not used simply by custom, to mark off phrases which are not naturally marked off even by light pauses in speech) are infrequent within the line; while ‘run-ons’ from one line to the next are extremely rare.
And finally, alliteration in the verse-form of Pearl plays no structural part in the line at all. It may be divided among the four stresses in any order or amount from two to four, and where there is only one pair these may be placed together as AB or as CD, leaving the other half alliteratively blank. And it may be absent altogether; in the 1,212 lines of the poem, over 300 are quite blank. Moreover, unless the number of blank lines is to be made even larger, syllables may assist in alliteration that do not bear the main metrical stresses, or are in the structure of the line relatively weak. In other words, alliteration is in Pearl a mere ‘grace’ or decoration of the line, which is sufficiently defined as such, and as being ‘verse’, without it. And this decoration is provided according to the skill of the poet, or linguistic opportunity, without guiding rule or other function.
Each stanza of Pearl has twelve lines, containing only three rhymes, always arranged ab in the first eight and then bcbc in the last four. The whole poem would contain 100 stanzas in twenty groups of five, if the fifteenth group (which begins with stanza 71) did not contain six. It has been argued that a stanza has been included in the manuscript which the author meant to strike out; but against this is the fact that the extra stanza in Pearl gives the poem a total of 101, and there are 101 stanzas in Sir Gawain.
The groups of five stanzas (which are indicated in the manuscript by an ornamental coloured initial at the beginning of each group) are constituted in this way. The last word in each stanza reappears in the first line of the following one (so stanza 1 ends in the original Of þat pryuy perle wythouten spot’, and stanza 2 begins ‘Syþen in þat spote hit fro me sprange’). This link-word reappears in the first line of the first stanza of the following group (so stanza 6 begins Tro spot my spyryt þer sprang in space’), and the new link-word appears at the end of that stanza (so stanza 6 ends Of half so dere adubbemente’, and stanza 7 begins ‘Dubbed wern alle þo downez sydez’). As this last instance shows, the link need not be precisely the same, but may be constituted from different parts of the same verb, from noun and adjective with the same stem, and so on. The linkage fails in the original at the beginning of stanza 61, as it does in the translation.
Thus not only are the stanzas linked together internally as groups, but the groups are linked to each other; and the last line of the poem, ‘And precious perlez vnto his pay’ (where pay means ‘pleasure’) echoes the first, ‘Perle, plesaunte to prynces paye.’ This echoing of the beginning of the poem in its end is found also in Sir Gawain, and in Patience.
This form was not easy to compose in, but very much more difficult to translate in; since the rhyme-words used by the poet rarely still fit in modern English, and the alliterating words fit as seldom. In the translation, satisfaction of the rhyme-scheme is of course given the primacy, and the alliteration is less rich than in the original. But the effect of the translation on the modern ear is probably that of its original on a contemporary ear in this respect, since we no longer habitually expect alliteration as an essential ingredient in verse, as the people of the North and West of England once did.
GAWAIN’S LEAVE-TAKING
Now Lords and Ladies blithe and bold,
To bless you here now am I bound:
I thank you all a thousand-fold,
And pray God save you whole and sound;
Wherever you go on grass or ground,
May he you guide that nought you grieve,
For friendship that I here have found
Against my will I take my leave.
For friendship and for favours good,
For meat and drink you heaped on me,
The Lord that raised was on the Rood
Now keep you comely company.
On sea or land where’er you be,
May he you guide that nought you grieve.
Such fair delight you laid on me
Against my will I take my leave.
Against my will although I wend,
I may not always tarry here;
For everything must have an end,
And even friends must part, I fear;
Be we beloved however dear
Out of this world death will us reave,
And when we brought are to our bier
Against our will we take our leave.
Now good day to you, goodmen all,
And good day to you, young and old,
And good day to you, great and small,
And gramercy a thousand-fold!
If ought there were that dear ye hold,
Full fain I would the deed achieve –
Now Christ you keep from sorrows cold
For now at last I take my leave.
1 Ek oother seyn that thorugh impressiouns, As if a wight hath faste a thyng in mynde, That thereof comen swiche avysiouns. (Troilus and Criseyde, v. 372–4)
1 Edition of Pearl, p. xliii: ‘He perhaps named the child “Margery” or “Marguerite”.’ The form Marguerite would not have been used; it is a modern French form.
1 Pearl, edited by E. V. Gordon, Oxford 1953, pages xi–xix: ‘Form and Purpose’.
1 Cited above in translation, p. 130.
1 Ek oother seyn that thorugh impressiouns,
As if a wight hath faste a thyng in mynde,
That thereof comen swiche avysiouns.
(Troilus and Criseyde, v. 372–4)
1 Edition of Pearl, p. xliii: ‘He perhaps named the child “Margery” or “Marguerite”.’ The form Marguerite would not have been used; it is a modern French form.
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