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Craigie: Skaldic Metre.
343
§ 2. The clearest evidence that the theory of Old
Northern metre presently in favour does not account for certain
remarkable features of skaldic verse, is afforded by the lines
which Prof. Sievers quotes as undoubted examples of his
E-type, that is, in dr6ttkv»tt, -*- ^X | -^ || + X. These are
the following (Altgerm. Metr. p. 104):
a SuSvirki lid buSir
verftungar, styr gerctu
fi dgndjarft fyr kn6 hvarfa
greiaendr a skip reictir
y ulfs f6t viS sker Sota
ox hildr meS gram mildum
fdr beiS 6r stad sdra
d drengr magnar lof pengils
e gunnreifum Aleifi
dbglingr vict bersogli
preifsh s6kn meS Aleifi
pair a hold und Rognvaldi.
I shall not at present insist on the extreme improbability
of the metrical structure assumed for some of these lines
(especially those of the group y), though it seems to me
almost incredible that a poet who had any ear for verse
could have so intended or recited them. There is a much
more weighty and material objection than this. It will
be observed that in the first four classes given above, the
fourth place of the line is occupied by a substantive, and
that in seven cases this substantive has a short vowel
(lift, styr, skipj etc.), while in the remaining case (kne) it
ends in an (originally short) vowel. By Prof. Sievers’ theory
all these words must be supposed to have the metrical value
of -£; and in fact this is expressly assigned to them in
similar positions (see Altg. Metrik p. 58) even when followed
by a word beginning with a vowel, e. g. vit!S sky uppi} d
aldinn mar orpit, or ok hjorunduS. If we assume, however,
that it was the intention of the skald to have, in this place
of the line, a substantive metrically equivalent to -£, it must
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