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Craigie: Skaldic Metre.
357
the fourth place is strongly against this. They might
possibly be taken as -£ ^ X | £ | — X, and this view would
receive support from the fact that the noun in the fourth
place regularly has the alliterative letter, but I am inclined
to believe that the correct interpretation is rather J- | -*- ^ ^ \
J- ^ the two secondary stresses being the equivalent of one
full stress, so that the difference between first and second
lines still consists in the latter admitting of the more weighty
form (compare, however, § 27). I may point out that there
is no inconsistency in assuming that the verb in this case
has a different value from that which has been assigned
to it in such lines as fyrr raud Fenris varra. In the latter
type the verb falls between two full-stressed syllables; in the
other it is always followed by an unstressed word, and hence
cannot be passed over so lightly.
For some reason or other a verb rarely appears in the
fourth place of such lines; in Skjaldekvad I have found
only 6 examples *), and all are first lines:
en ek veit at hefr heitit
nu hefi’k en t6’k tanna
bloS fell en vas vdfii
Knutr riS ok bad MSa
vas-a fyst es’k rann rastar
Bums letfk ok helt htima.
It will be seen at once that these lines are in perfect
agreement with those given above; we may suppose that the verb
in the fourth place receives a (secondary) stress because it
has one of the alliterative letters, and is preceded by an
unstressed word. The cases in which the word in the fourth
place is a pronoun (mik7 mer, very ser} pat, pvi etc.) follow
the same rule as those in which it is a noun: hence such
lines as bjort lj6s a mik drosar, hug minn vid pat inni, gotf
*) Gisli’s line kemr pegar’s ek vil blunda is suspicious, as one of the
stu&lar is wanting.
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