Alliteration I

By Murray Alfredson

Various definitions of alliteration are floating around in books on versification and in dictionaries. All have to do with the repetition of consonant sounds, particularly at the beginning of syllables. The broadest, and vaguest, definition I have come across is in James McAuley’s still quite a useful little book, A primer of English versification (Sydney University Press, 1966):

‘Repetition of a consonant; sometimes used to cover repetition of vowels also.’
This corresponds with the Latin root of the word, a litera. His ‘repetition of vowel sounds’, or what the Australian Macquarie dictionary calls ‘vocalic alliteration’, rests on a confusion, one that we can set aside for now.

Tennyson’s frequently cited couplet from ‘The princess’, which in its context of sweet sounds does not in my view deserve the opprobrium heaped on it by modern critics, corresponds more or less to the gist of McAuley’s first definition:

. . . sweet is every sound,
Sweeter thy voice, but every sound is sweet:
Myriads of rivulets hurrying thro’ the lawn,
The moan of doves in immemorial elms
And murmuring of innumerable bees. —
with its repetition of the liquid nasal, ‘m’, at the end of ‘elms’ and at the beginning of unstressed syllables in ‘immemorial’, ‘murmuring’ and ‘innumerable’.
Other definitions emphasise the position of the repeated consonants at the beginning of syllables, as in (again from Tennyson, ‘Maud’):
For the black bat night has flown —

where the poet has rather cleverly used the alliteration on the plosive ‘b’ to emphasise a conflict between the metre and the speech rhythm.
More specifically again, ‘alliteration’ is often taken to refer to the repetition of consonants sounds at the beginning of stressed syllables. Where this is practiced in a regular pattern, as in early Germanic poetry and its later revivals, we use the term ‘alliterative poetry’. In this usage, alliteration is a form of rhyme. Indeed, the Germans call it Stabreim, or ‘stem rhyme’, because Germanic words are generally accentuated on their first stem or root syllable, for example: god, godly, godliness, ungodly; whereas words from Romance languages, for example, German, Germanic, usually carry an accentuation on the penultimate syllable, with the stress shifting about between related word forms. Some authors call ‘alliterative verse’ ‘accentual alliterative verse’. The distinction between accentual and metrical verse is a matter for separate treatment, however.

I suspect the origins of alliteration in poetry are not specifically as an element of the sound music, but as a mnemonic in largely preliterate societies. Alliteration was used, in Germanic poetry at least, with a consistency and intensity not normally found in modern verse.

The most common pattern, to be found in Beowulf and most of the lays constituting the poetic Edda, each ‘line’ falls into two half lines, each half line comprising two stressed stem syllables and any number of more lightly stressed syllables. One stem syllable in the first half line alliterates with one in the second. These link the two half lines phonically. For example, here is a kenning I wrote after the manner of Norse wisdom sayings. The prose sagas are freely interlaced with such four-lined stanzas.

my bróther’s fáce I flénsed with wórds
full sóre he flínched then sóured agáinst me
a bróther lóst alóne I wálked
let áll be wáry against wíelding wórd-swords
Generally, the alliteration falls on the first stressed syllable of the second half-line, and most often on the first stressed syllable of the first half-line.
There were other patterns, however. For example, the famous Norse collection of wise sayings, the Hávamál, or Sayings of the High-one, within the poetic Edda, the four-stressed lines alternate with three-stressed lines, though each shorter line still contains at least two alliterating syllables.

47.

Formerly when young I fared alone;
way-wildered I wandered;
I felt myself rich as I found another —
man is man's joy.

One misunderstanding is that stem syllables seemingly beginning with vowels can alliterate. Any vowel can ‘alliterate’ with any. This is the so-called ‘vocalic alliteration’ I mentioned at the beginning of this essay. The explanation is that in Germanic languages words are not run on into each other as in Romance languages. Syllables begin with a consonant. Thus a word, or a stem syllable within a word, seemingly beginning with a vowel in fact begins with an unwritten glottal plosive, the snap produced by the sudden opening of the vocal cords. Three of the following four lines are so alliterated, for example.

Óðinn long-brooding the Æsir’s High-One
Ásgarð’s skald ever sought knowledge
counted not high the cost of casting
his plucked out eye into the well
‘Ásgarð’s doom’ from my ‘Twilight of the gods’.

I do not know whether this phenomenon of the initial glottal plosive still holds throughout the English speaking world. Since language is always changing, I very much doubt also whether it will remain the case in English. Two respected dictionaries I consulted, the Australian Macquarie dictionary and the Oxford English dictionary, missed this point of the unwritten opening glottal plosive.
My general observation (a mere impression, without following proper random sampling procedures) is that in the older Germanic use of alliteration, only two stressed syllables in each line were alliterated, most often the first stressed syllable in each half line, with occasional alliteration of a third stressed syllable, this most frequently being the second in the first half line. However, in the later Middle Ages in England, when alliterative verse was revived, it became general to alliterate three (and occasionally even four) stressed syllables in a line. This is virtuosic, but I have a personal preference for a more relaxed pattern, and in my own verse, I often content myself with alliterating on any one stressed syllable in each half-line. If a third syllable alliterates in the line, I allow this to fall in either half-line. I do not expect purists to approve, however.

I believe it a worthwhile practice to familiarise oneself with the early Germanic verse forms, and to experiment with them in one’s own writing. If one can at least crawl through Old English or Old Norse, translating a few passages or poems into equivalent modern English verse is worth the effort. Translating does bring one very close to the original. One can also read those poems in modern translations, so long as they respect the stem rhyme rather than use a more modern form such as blank verse. But we can also try writing poems in those forms. These do not have to be long narrative poems like the heroic epic, Beowulf. Norse writers often had a wry sense of humour, an eye for the absurd and a fondness for understatement. Here is a kenning I have translated, that was worked into a prose saga:

All the girls wanted to go with Ingolf,
those grown up — I am always too little!
I also want, quoth Crone, to go with Ingolf
while two still cling here — teeth in my top gum.
from the Hallfreðar saga

Such practice will sensitise us to using alliteration more freely in our less formally alliterated poetry, but placing it where it will carry most effect, on stressed syllables, particularly near the beginnings of lines and phrases.
And if thinking in four-stressed lines divided into two-stressed half lines feels too complicated, simply write in short lines of two stresses, linking the members each pair of lines with alliteration. This is a common mode of presentation for Old Norse poetry. For example, another saying from the Hávamál, with the longer lines split:

35.

Let him leave
who’d linger as guest
ever on in one place;
the loved becomes loathed
from long-sitting
by another’s home-hearth.

This practice might teach you to unfold a poem in a series of short statements. More of that in another essay.

Exercises:

1. Here are four stanzas from the Hávamál, tanslated by W.H. Auden and P.B.Taylor. a) Identify the syllables on which the natural stress falls, and position for the caesura (pause) between each half line. Note that the translators have de-emphasised the break into half lines. b) Pick out the alliterated consonants. These stanzas all conform to the pattern I sketched out above.

19

Drink your mead, but in moderation,
Talk sense or be silent:
No man is called discourteous who goes
To bed at an early hour.

20

A gluttonous man who guzzles away
Brings sorrow on himself:
At the table of the wise he is taunted often,
Mocked for his bloated belly,

35

The tactful guest will take his leave
Early, not linger long:
He starts to stink who outstays his welcome
In a hall that is not his own.

38

A wayfarer should not walk unarmed,
But have his weapons to hand:
He knows not when he may need a spear,
Or what menace meet on the road.

2. Try writing or adapting (perhaps from English proverbial sayings, or from a source such as the Book of proverbs in the Bible) a few wise saws after the manner of Norse kennings.

3. Try writing a short narrative poem in four-stressed alliterative lines. Then break the lines into two stressed lines. Write so the caesura falling somewhere between the second and third stresses falls naturally between phrases. Notice how your poem unfolds phrase by phrase.