Compiled by Gavin Foster
This list contains Tolkien’s scans of alliterative verses and his comments on alliterative metre, the last of which is a translation of the concluding lines of The Battle of Brunanburh, which was composed by Tolkien to exemplify the sounds of alliterative metre.
Please let us know of any omissions or corrections in the comments.
Tolkien’s Scans of Alliterative Verses
“Poems Early Abandoned.” The Lays of Beleriand, HarperCollins, 1992, pp. 140-141.
Description by Christopher Tolkien: At the end of the second text (B) of The Flight of the Noldoli my father made an analysis of the metrical forms of the first 20 and certain subsequent lines. […] The letters A, +A, B, C, D, E on the left-hand side of the table refer to the ‘types’ of Old English half-line; the letters beneath the analyses of ‘lifts’ and ‘dips’ are the alliterations employed in each line, with O used for any vowel (since all vowels ‘alliterate’ with each other) and X for a consonant beginning a lift but not forming part of the alliterative scheme of the line; the words ‘full’, ‘simple’, ‘etc. refer to the nature of the alliterative pattern in each case (140).
“On Translating Beowulf.” The Monsters and the Critics, and Other Essays, HarperCollins, 1997, pp. 49-71.
Description by Tolkien: The passage should be read slowly, but naturally: that is with the stresses and tones required solely by the sense. The lifts and dips utilized in this metre are those occurring in any given sequence of words in natural (if formal) speech, irrespective of whether the passage is regarded as verse or prose. The lines must not be strained to fit any familiar modern verse-rhythm. The reduced stresses (when their fall in force and tone approximates to value 2) are marked (‘) (63).
“Appendix: Old English Verse.” The Fall of Arthur, HarperCollins, 2013, pp. 135-141.
Tolkien’s Comments on Alliterative Metre
“Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics.” The Monsters and the Critics, and Other Essays, HarperCollins, 1997, pp.5-48.
The very nature of Old English metre is often misjudged. In it there is no single rhythmic pattern progressing from the beginning of a line to the end, and repeated with variation in other lines. The lines do not go according to a tune. They are founded on a balance; an opposition between two halves of roughly equivalent phonetic weight, and significant content, which are more often rhythmically contrasted than similar. They are more like masonry than music (29-30).
“On Translating Beowulf.” The Monsters and the Critics, and Other Essays, HarperCollins, pp. 49-71.
The Old English line was composed of two opposed word-groups or ‘halves’. Each half was an example, or variation, of one of six basic patterns. The patterns were made of strong and weak elements, which may be called ‘lifts’ and ‘dips’. The standard lift was a long stressed syllable (usually with a relatively high tone). The standard drip was an unstressed syllable, long or short, with a low tone (62).
The line was thus essentially a balance of two equivalent blocks. These blocks might be, and usually were, of different pattern and rhythm. There was in consequence no common tune or rhythm shared by lines in virtue of being ‘in the same metre’. The ear should not listen for any such thing, but should attend to the shape and balance of the halves. Thus the róaring séa rolling lándward is not metrical because it contains an ‘iambic’ or a ‘trochaic’ rhythm, but because it is a balance B + A (63).
Old English verse is called ‘alliterative’. This is a misnomer in two ways. Alliteration, though important, is not fundamental. Verse built on the plan described above, if written ‘blank’, would retain a similar metrical character. The so-called ‘alliteration’ depends not on letters but on sounds. ‘Alliteration’ or head-rhyme is, in comparison with end-rhyme, too brief, and too variable in its incidence, to allow mere letter-agreements or ‘eye-alliterations’. Alliteration in this metre is the agreement of the stressed elements in beginning with the same consonant, or in beginning with no consonant. All words beginning with a stressed vowel of any quality ‘alliterate’, as old with eager. The alliteration of dips is not observed or of metrical importance. The alliteration of subordinate stresses (in A +, D, E) was avoided (66).
The main metrical function of alliteration is to link the two separate and balanced patterns together into a complete line. For this reason it is placed as near the beginning of the second half was possible, and is never repeated on the last lift (rule 2 above). Delay would obscure this main linking function; repetition by separating off the last word-group and making it self-sufficient would have a similar effect (67).
“Appendix: The Verse-Forms of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Pearl,” Sir Gawain and the Green Knight with Pearl and Sir Orfeo, Translated by J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by Christopher Tolkien, 1975, revised edition HarperCollins 2020, pp. 212-219.
“Appendix: Old English Verse.” The Fall of Arthur, HarperCollins, 2013, pp. 135-141.
Description (by Christopher Tolkien): On 14 January 1938 there was broadcast by the BBC a brief recorded talk by my father entitled ‘Anglo-Saxon Verse’. On this he expended much thought and labour, as is attested by a great deal of preliminary drafting, but here all that need be said is that there is also a later and much longer lecture on the subject, addressed to some audience actually present, clearly related to the broadcast talk but very distinct. […] For exemplification my father took the concluding lines of the Old English poem The Battle of Brunanburh, and gave an alliterative translation (135).
Tolkien and Alliterative Verse 