Andersen. — Metre. 471 



we have two trisyllabic feet followed by a foot in which both 

 syllables are accented, forming a fine contrast. 



(c.) These are the usual variations. Such a fine as the first 

 of quotation 8 is too rugged to be correct ; it has too many 

 syllables : the second of quotation 9 has too few : both may 

 be instances of faulty transmission. It is possible to read them 

 with their proper metre, but the effect is unpleasing, whereas the 

 effect of the other variations quoted is the reverse. 



All the variations arose, possibly, by accident ; it is more than 

 possible they were faulty slips of amateur ballad-singers seized 

 upon by good craftsmen as means of embellishing and varying 

 the sing-song of the measure. 



5. (a.) Referring again to quotation 15, — 



'Alas 1 1 then sayd | good R6|byn, | alas | and well | a woo 1 1 



As already suggested in (b) of the previous section, this line has 

 the eighth syllable dropped, and reads normally by the insertion 

 of " Hood " after " Robyn." It will be noted that the syllable 

 dropped is one which when present bears an accent ; and though 

 lines such as this, containing thirteen syllables, do not often 

 occur in English ballads, it is the normal line of the Danish 

 and German ballad. The great German epic, the " Nibelungen 

 Noth," is written entirely in this thirteen-syllabled line, varied 

 in the same way that the English line is varied. In old pieces 

 it is written as one line ; in later compositions it is split in two 

 just as the English line is, and a mid- rime further disguises it ; 

 as in (Ehlenschlaeger's " Thor in Helheim " : — 



His mood and trust enduring. 



He hasted through the night ; 

 The darkness, less obscuring, 



Was slowly lost in light. 

 One saw where torches glimmered 



Within the chasm, as if 

 The moon had iall'n, and shimmered, 



Caught in a cloven cliff. 



In this metre the stanzas are, as a rule, made up of either four 

 lines of thirteen syllables, or eight of seven and six alternately. 

 The latter is the case when mid-rime occurs, as in example 

 quoted ; the former is the case where there is no mid-rime, as in 

 the case of the German epic, and in the Danish poet Winther's 

 series of tales entitled " Woodcuts." A stanza of similar con- 

 struction is that employed by Allan Ramsay in " Christ's Kirk 

 on the Green." 



(b.) Quotation 11, again, has, as noted, a foot dropped in 

 each line : — 



And yf I toke it twyse. a shame it were to me; 



And trewly, gentyll knyghte, welcome arte thou to me. 



