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Auxiliary and verbal in Beowulf

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Alan Bliss
Alan Bliss
Affiliation:
University College, Dublin
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Extract

The principles of Old English prose syntax are on the whole well understood, but there is no general agreement about verse syntax. There are many reasons why verse syntax should differ, at least in some respects, from the syntax of prose. The Old English poetic tradition is known to have been conservative, and it is therefore possible that certain ancient syntactic patterns, obsolete in prose, might have survived in verse. The more ‘rhetorical’ purposes of verse might have made it necessary to call extensively on usages either rare or unknown in prose. Above all, the metre might have exercised such a constraint on the syntax that certain syntactic patterns could not be used at all, or could be used only in favourable circumstances. Such general considerations would no doubt be accepted as plausible by all students of Old English poetry, but there is still no agreement about how they may have operated in detail: the result is that any attempt to judge the style of an Anglo-Saxon poet is frustrated at every turn. It is impossible to tell how far his usage is the result of choice, how far the result of constraint; there is no way of judging how skilful he is in avoiding such constraint, or of assessing the ingenuity he exercises in saying what he wants to say in spite of the difficulties imposed by the metrical form; there is no way to tell how far his variations from prose usage are dictated by ‘rhetorical’ motives. Judgement is necessarily limited in this way until there is an agreed analysis of verse syntax.

Type
Research Article
Information
Anglo-Saxon England , Volume 9 , December 1980 , pp. 157 - 182
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1980

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References

1 I use the term ‘dependent’ to include both subordinate and co-ordinate clauses.

2 In these and in all subsequent clauses quoted in this paper, the auxiliary is italicized and the verbal is in spaced type.

3 All quotations from Beowulf are from the edition by E. V. K. Dobbie, Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records 4 (New York, 1953Google Scholar).

4 When quoting clauses of this type I have often saved space by omitting the additional material.

5 I am grateful to Dr Bruce Mitchell for the many improvements which resulted from his criticism of earlier drafts.

6 1 have not considered the small number of instances in which an auxiliary is construed with a present participle or with an inflected infinitive preceded by to.

7 ‘Zur Wortstellung und -betonung im Altgermanischen’, BGDSL 57 (1953), 1–109Google Scholar.

8 His ‘Satzpartikelgesetz’, Ibid. pp. 8–10.

9 His ‘Satzspitzengesetz’, Ibid. pp. 43–5.

10 See below, p. 165.

11 For convenience I have treated a single trisyllabic auxiliary, fundiap (1819b), as if it were disyllabic.

12 Resolution fails in 1179b, but scyle is not an auxiliary in this line.

13 There are also many auxiliaries in unstressed positions, where it is impossible to determine whether resolution takes place or not.

14 The term ‘first half-line’ is ambiguous. I use it exclusively to refer to the first half-line of the clause, not to the first half-line of the verse line; I distinguish the two halves of the verse line as ‘a verse‘and ‘b verse’ respectively. In the two exceptions mentioned above the auxiliary stands at the end of the second half-line of the clause: Gif ic þonne on eorþan owihte mag þinre modlufan maran tilian (1822–3) Æfter ðam wordum wyrm yrre cwom, atol inwitgæst, oðrc siðe fyrwylmum fah fionda niosian (2669–71). The second of these exceptions is also an exception to Kuhn's Second Law.

15 See below, pp. 172–3.

16 There are only twenty-two instances of this position.

17 The verbal and the auxiliary may be separated by the negative particle ne, which is inseparable from the auxiliary and behaves as if it were a prefix; throughout this study I have treated it as if it were in fact a prefix.

18 One exception, notoriously anomalous, represents a breach of Sicvers's Rule of Precedence, by which a finite verb does not take precedence in alliteration over a noun: Hwilum he on lufan lœteð hworfan monnes modgeþonc mæran cynnes (1728–9). In another instance the auxiliary is separated from a preceding verbal by three words: hwam pæt sweord geworht, irena cyst, ærest ware, wreoþenhilt ond wyrmfah (1696b–8a). The remaining instances are 932b–4a, 946b–8a, 1967b–70a and 3127–8.

19 For a peculiarity in the use of past participles, see below, appendix, pp. 180–2.

20 See the judicious discussion by Pope, J. C. (The Rhythm of Beowulf (New Haven, 1966), pp. 79–88Google Scholar). The same considerations apply to certain other particles, stressed by some metrists and not by others.

21 Initial verbals are found mainly in Maxims I (40a, 45b, 50a and 113a) and Genesis (B) (252a, 257a and 438a); the only other instance is The Seafarer 109a.

22 An initial auxiliary is always unstressed, except in geong sona to (1785b), where it must be stressed, since it carries the alliteration.

23 It is sometimes difficult to determine whether the subject is expressed or not, especially when there is an adjective which is probably predicative but which might perhaps be taken as the subject. The number of such instances is too small to affect my conclusions.

24 Campbell, Alistair, ‘Verse Influences in Old English Prose’, Philological Essays: Studies in Old and Middle English Language and Literature in honour of Herbert Dean Meritt, ed. Rosier, James L. (The Hague, 1970), pp. 93–8, at 95Google Scholar.

25 Kuhn, ‘Wortstellung’, p. 9.

26 On this point, see Campbell,’ Verse Influences’, p. 95, and Slay, D., ‘Some Aspects of the Technique of Composition of Old English Verse’, TPS 1952, 1–14, at 13Google Scholar.

27 Three of these words, hraðe, hwilum and oft, sometimes share in the alliteration. Though hraðe does not alliterate in 1294, 1310, 1437 or 1975, it not only alliterates but is certainly stressed in 1937, and I have therefore included this clause among those beginning with a stressed word; hwilum shares in the alliteration in 864, but not in 1728 or 2111; oft shares in the alliteration in 3077.

28 This problem has been extensively studied by Andrew, S. O. in his two books Syntax and Style in Old English (Cambridge, 1940Google Scholar) and Postscript on Beowulf (Cambridge, 1948Google Scholar); his conclusions have not been widely accepted. The question is taken up below, pp. 169–71.

29 Campbell,’ Verse Influences’, p. 95.

30 It will appear below, pp. 174–5, that the poet seems to have preferred to have precisely two particles before the first stressed word; but the number of clauses with more than two particles is too small to be separately recorded, and in any case it is not always easy to decide how many particles should be counted. Is se þe one particle or two? Is ne buru one particle or two? Should ne bit buru be counted as two particles or three? Perhaps mistakenly, I have accepted the normal word division as decisive, counting se þe as two particles but oopat as one. The number of doubtful instances is too small to make any difference to my conclusions.

31 Of 132 auxiliaries in initial position precisely half are monosyllabic and half disyllabic.

32 The same argument might be applied to auxiliaries which could be monosyllabic only by resolution and to monosyllabic auxiliaries preceded by an unstressed prefix; but these are few in number and can perhaps be ignored.

33 An alternative explanation of the avoidance of the first word order is attempted below, p. 177.

34 See above, p. 168.

35 See, e.g., Quirk, Randolph and Wrenn, C. L., An Old English Grammar (London, 1955), p. 95Google Scholar, §148; some exceptions to the general principle are listed in the latter part of the paragraph.

36 According to Andrew, a pronoun has been accidentally omitted from many subordinate clauses in Beowulf; see Postscript, §§75–7. In co-ordinate clauses the subject is generally not expressed, since it is normally the same as that of the preceding clause.

37 Andrew (Postscript, §77) suggests that the subject pronoun he, to be expected in a subordinate clause, has been omitted by haplography; if so, of course, the clause would conform to the general verse pattern.

38 Campbell, ‘Verse Influences’, p. 95.

39 Andrew, , Syntax and Style, §§26 and 52Google Scholar; Postscript, §§21, 22 and 35.

40 See above, pp. 159–62.

41 See above, pp. 174–7.

42 Campbell, Alistair, Old English Grammar (Oxford, 1959Google Scholar), §731(b).

43 The clauses are 64, 223b, 375b–6a, 642–3a, 1124b, 1151b–2a, 1192a, 1288–9a, 1310, 1647–8a, 1677–8, 1688–9a, 1745–7, 2306b–7a, 2646b, 2727–8a, 2913–14a, 2957b–8a, 2961–2, 2981b and 3134.

44 Beowulf and the Fight at Finnsburg, ed. Fr. Klaeber (Lexington, 1950), p. 276Google Scholar. The word winter is certainly monosyllabic in 1128a and 1132b.