On a Crux in Beowulf: The Alliteration of Finite Verbs and the Scribal Understanding of Metre

Abstract

Because of its faulty alliteration and irregular metrical configuration, the manuscript reading felasinniġne secg, corresponding to l. 1379a of Beowulf, has traditionally been emended to sinniġne secg by most editors of the poem, who have thus regarded fela as a scribal interpolation. As the editors of Klaeber IV have suggested, the rationale behind such an interpolation probably is that the scribe mistook 1378b, ðǣr þū findan miht, and 1379a as a verse pair, thereby introducing fela in order to remedy the lack of f alliteration. This is a credible hypothesis, since the initial consonant of the word interpolated by the scribe into 1379a alliterates with that of findan in 1378b. Why the scribe should have failed to recognize 1379b, sēċ ġif þū dyrre, as the pair of 1379a in the first place, however, remains an unresolved crux in Beowulf textual criticism. The present essay argues that because of his deficient understanding of the principles of verse construction, the scribe was unable to recognize the finite verb sēċ as the legitimate alliterative link of l. 1379a. By virtue of their intermediate prosodic status, the metrical behaviour of finite verbs, unlike that of stress-words and proclitics, is variable. Such variability is governed by a series of metrical rules whose ultimate rationale is the preservation of the four-position structure of the verse. If the scribe was ignorant of the four-position principle, as this essay argues, then he would have lacked the ability to scan the finite verb sēċ correctly. It is this inability to scan sēċ that would have led him to prefer the pairing of 1378b and 1379a, despite their failure to alliterate, to the pairing of 1379a and 1379b. Besides positing a new metrical rule that has not been fully articulated in previous scholarship, this essay explores the crucial implications that the scribes’ deficient understanding of Old English metre has for textual criticism.