Old English Metre by Terasawa Jun;

Author:Terasawa, Jun;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: LIT011000, LAN023000
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Published: 2011-05-29T16:00:00+00:00

[Though you gave one name to all the creatures, naming all together and calling (them) the world]

[however, (you) named all together by one name, the world under clouds]

Replacement of the inflectional form by a mid-phrase is attributable to metrical requirements: the Meters poet adds the preposition mid to fill out the minimum four metrical positions. Without mid, the half-line would result in too short a verse with three metrical positions with noman resolved.

Not only does metre affect the choice between inflectional forms and prepositional phrases, but it can also determine the case which a preposition will take. In Old English, some prepositions govern more than one case, most frequently the accusative and dative. The choice between cases is often made on semantic grounds: the accusative denotes ‘motion’ (e.g., oþ ðæt ōþer cōm / gēar in geardas ‘until another year came to the dwellings’ Beo 1133b–4a) while the dative denotes ‘location’ (e.g., Ðǣm eafera wæs / æfter cenned / geong in geardum ‘To him a young son was later born in the dwellings’ Beo 12–13a) although the distinction is often blurred. Consider this passage from the Seafarer:

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