It is convenient, however, to adopt Luick's formulas for these common forms of Layamon's verse, with this necessary modification, that we discard the secondary accent attributed by him to the last syllable of the types A, C, D, accepting only his types B and E without any change. We therefore regard the normally constructed short lines of Layamon's metre--so far as they are not purely alliterative lines of two accents, but coupled together by rhyme or assonance, or by alliteration and rhyme combined--as belonging to one or other of the following two classes: (1) lines with four accents and masculine or monosyllabic endings (types B and E); and (2) lines of three accents and feminine or disyllabic endings (types A, C, D). In this classification those unaccented syllables which receive a secondary stress are, for the sake of brevity, treated as full stresses--which, indeed, they actually came to be in the later development of the metre, and possibly to some extent even in Layamon's own verse.
Assuming the correctness of this view, the chief types of Layamon's verse may be expressed by the following formulas, in which the bracketed theses are to be considered optional:
Type A: (×) -´ (×) `× × -´ ×. Type B: (×) `× × -´ (×) `× × -´. Type C: (×) `× × -´ -´ ×. Type D: (×) -´ × -´ `× ×. Type E: × -´ (×) `× × `× × -´.
As these types may be varied by resolutions in the same way as the primary types, there arise various additional formulas such as the following:
A: (×) )´ × (×) × -´ ×. B: (×) `× × -´ (×) `× × )´ ×. C: (×) `× × )´ × -´ ×, &c.
Other variations may be effected by disyllabic or even polysyllabic theses in the beginning ('anacruses') or in the middle of the verse instead of monosyllabic theses.
Apart from these another frequently occurring variation of type C must be mentioned which corresponds to the formula (×) `× × -´ × -´ ×, and may be designated (with Professors Paul and Luick) as type Cª, because the position of its accented syllables points to type C, while on the other hand it bears a certain resemblance to type A.
The following examples, many of which have been quoted before by Luick, may serve to illustrate these types of short lines or rather hemistichs and their combination in couplets or long lines, in which a normal hemistich is often followed by a lengthened one and vice versa: