ABSTRACT
The Rhythm of Beowulf was first published in 1942, and has been and remains a stimulus for comment and research: Pope's thesis is attractive and persuasively argued. He acknowledges the usefulness of Sievers' classification of types of syllabic sequence, and this forms an indispensable basis for his own work. But he points out that Sievers' notation cannot be taken as a set of directions for a reading. Though Sievers' symbols represent accurately certain facts about the language of the verse-number of syllables, relation of light and heavy stresses-they are not efficient in implying what the verse sounds like. For example, the notation.!. x I .!. X happens to indicate how a verse like sidra sorga may be read if it is to fit the prevailing rhythm and at the same time not do injury to the syntax of the phrase. The notation x !.. I x !.., on the other hand, is adequate for on sidne s;£ only in indicating that there are four syllables alternating light and heavy: it cannot tell us anything about the rhythm. Worse still, this notation does grave offence to both rhythm and syntax, since the bar is meaningless (it is fortuitously significant in sidra sorga), suggests a rising rhythm in a poem which is obviously in falling rhythm, and implies an erroneous phrase-structure analysis for this sequence of words. Pope claims that the imputation of strict metrical values to Sievers' symbols has led to 'many an infelicitous, clumsily rhythmized performance that could yet call itself faithful to the original' (P·7)·
Pope's proposal is that the metre of Old English poetry-or at least of the normal un expanded lines in Beowulf-is built from units one verse (half-line) long, each verse consisting of a variable number of syllables plus a silent pulse when necessary; these syllables (plus silent pulse) are gathered into two isochronous measures of quadruple time (4/8). Each measure starts with a stressed syllable or a pulse, and these 'downbeats' are spaced evenly in time, four to a
long line. Since the number of syllables in each verse (and therefore measure) varies, there are no absolute lengths for syllables. Varying lengths, number of syllables, and prominence of syllables, are shown in Pope's notation thus:
/ "- ,f" "- ,f"("-),f" "- E>a wit retsomne on sre wreron
I~ eel~ e elf I ~~I Pope explains what kind of rhythm his theory seeks to establish :
The verses of Beowulf about which there is general agreement-those of types A, D, and E-have what we might loosely describe as a marching rhythm. The primary and secondary accents alternate like left foot and right, and are in general rather strong because of the high concentration of meaning that accompanies the elaborate inflections and the frequent composition of words (p. 52).
