A New Look at Old English Metrics

Abstract

In this paper I propose a scansion of Old English alliterative poetry in terms of a binary branching template. The analysis builds on work by Halle and Keyser (1971) and Maling (1971), but has two advantages over these analyses: (a) it provides a natural explanation of many apparently irregular verses, and (b) it makes more accurate predictions of the relative frequencies of different verse types.