ABSTRACT
Old English poetry must satisfy strict requirements of prosody, metre, and syntax, but not every part of its composition is regulated with equal strictness by these requirements. 1 The first half of the line, the a-verse, is given more prosodical and metrical freedom than the second half, the b-verse: the a-verse may take either single alliteration or double alliteration, while the b-verse can employ only single alliteration; the a-verse accommodates a greater variety of metrical types than the fr-verse; 2 and Eduard Sievers’s type A3 (a verse with its sole alliteration on the last word) is found almost exclusively in the a-verse. 3 The beginning of a clause has more syntactic flexibility than the rest. As Hans Kuhn points out, only the first half-line of the clause can accommodate Satzpartikeln, that is, metrically unstressed elements that are syntactically independent of the immediately following constituent. 4 We can infer from these observations that great flexibility is allowed to the clause-initial a-verse because, prosod- ically, it can take either single or double alliteration; metrically, it can be either A3 or any of Sievers’s five major types; 5 and syntactically, it may or may not contain Satzpartikeln. These options can be combined to constitute a great many constructions available to the clause-initial a-verse, some of which can occur only in this type of half-line. For example, the half-lines Hwæt, me þæs on eþle (Beo. 1774a) 6 Ic hit þe þonne gehate (Beo. 1671a)
