_nu scýlun =h=érgan | =h=éfænr[=i]cæs uárd, =m=étudæs =m=[æ´]cti | end his =m=[=ó]dgidanc._ Cædmon's Hymn.
§ =75.= The evidence contained in this chapter, with regard to the continuous survival, in its essential rhythmical features, of the Old English native verse down to modern times, may be briefly summed up as follows:--
1. In the oldest remains of English poetry (_Beowulf_, _Elene_, _Andreas_, _Judith_, _Phoenix_, &c.) we already find lines with combined alliteration and rhyme intermixed with, and rhythmically equivalent to, the purely alliterative lines, exactly as we do in late Old English and early Middle English poems such as _Byrhtnoth_, _Be D[=o]mes Dæge_, _Oratio Poetica_, _Chronicle_ an. 1036, _Proverbs of Alfred_, and Layamon's _Brut_.
2. In some of these poems, viz. the _Phoenix_ and the _Oratio Poetica_, Latin two-beat hemistichs are combined with English hemistichs of similar rhythm to form regular long lines, just as is done in Bale's play of _Kinge Johan_ (sixteenth century).
3. The lines of this play agree in the general principle, and frequently in the details of their rhythmical structure, with alliterative-rhyming long lines which occur in lyric and epic poems of the same period, and which two contemporary metrists, Gascoigne and King James VI, recognized (independently of each other) as lines of four accents.
4. The rhythm of these sixteenth-century lines is indistinguishable from that of a four-accent metre which is popular in English and German poetry down to the present day.
These facts appear to leave no room for doubt that the Germanic metre has had a continuous history in English poetry from the earliest times down to the present, and that the long line, in Old and Middle English as in Modern English, had four accents (two in each hemistich). The proof acquires additional force from the fact, established by recent investigations, that the most important of the metrical types of the Old English hemistich are found again in Middle and Modern English poetry.
[107] This view has been combated by the author. The stages of the discussion are to be found in articles by Einenkel, _Anglia_, v. Anz. 47; Trautmann, _ibid._ 118; Einenkel's edition of _St. Katherine_, E. E. T. S. 80; the author's 'Metrische Randglossen', _Engl. Studien_, ix. 184; _ibid._ 368; and _Anglia_, viii. Anz. 246. According to our opinion Otfrid's verse was never imitated in England, nor was it known at all in Old or Middle English times.