Heill Konráð!
I was curious about the Old Gutnish three liners as they seem to be
another expansion of the ancestral fornyrðislag metre shared in some
form by all the Germanic peoples. Maybe the dróttkvætt style arose
out of experiments like this, at first without structural rhyme or
strict syllable counting; I gather the earlier verses such as those of
Bragi himself were still quite free with the hendingar. This Gutnish
grouping of three lines has some similarity with ljóðaháttr, except
that there are three beats in each line instead of 2:2:3 + 2:2:3. It
also has some similarities with the Old English hypermetrical lines.
These are attested as early as c. 700 in the quote from the Dream of
the Rood on the Ruthwell Cross inscription. They expand the normal
pairs of 2-beat halflines to 3-beat pairs with double alliteration on
the first two beats of the first halfline, but the headstave is the
*middle* beat of the second halfline:
...swætan on þa swiðran healfe.
Eall ic wæs mid sorgum gedrefed,
forht ic wæs for þære fægran gesyhðe.
Geseah ic þæt fuse beacen
wendan wædum ond bleom;
hwilum hit wæs mid wætan bestemed,
beswyled mid swates gange,
hwilum mid since gegyrwed.
...to bleed on its right side.
I was utterly afflicted with sorrows,
I was afraid of that fair sight.
I saw that eager beacon
change clothes and colours:
sometimes it was wet with moisture,
drenched with a flow of blood,
sometimes adorned with jewels.
These hypermetrical lines come in small groups like this embedded in
poems which otherwise follow the more usual pattern of 2:2 with the
headstave on the first beat of the second halfline. So the
hypermetrical are a special effect, like going into slow motion. The
lines are usually expanded by adding an extra foot, often / x
(healfe), but also sometimes x / (ond bleom), or they can be like D
lines with an extra dip between the first two lifts (a to ðam
ælmihtigan). Optionally, the first and third beats of the second
halfline can alliterate with each other (oferdrencte his duguðe ealle,
. swylce hie wæron deaðe geslegene), but as far as I know the
third beat of the first line must have a different initial sound to
all the other beats.
> > ON meters like ljóðaháttr and fornyrðislag were inherited from Proto-
> Germanic.
As far as I'm aware, the former doesn't have an Old English
equivalent. The closest to it is Wulf and Eadwæcer [
http://www.wmich.edu/medieval/research/rawl/wulf/ ], a powerful and
mysterious poem which is also unusual in having a refrain. I've seen
it described as ljóðaháttr, but it's not really clear whether the
standalone halflines with only line-internal alliteration are to be
recited with three beats, or two, since each of them could be read as
perfectly regular lines according the the normal rules of OE verse:
ungelic(e) is us - E
bireþ wulf to wuda - B
uncer giedd geador - C
My guess is that they would all be treated as ordinary halflines.
They all have two alliterating staves. The last two have a similar
rhythm if not exactly the same, adding to the sense that this might
have been sung. The overall effect is to interupt the flow,
fragmented and inconclusive, the opposite of the grand rolling
passages of the hypermetrical verse, but perfectly in keeping with the
subject. Curiously, there are other halflines that have less than the
usual number of unstressed syllables -- Wulf min Wulf -- more like the
reduced lines that appear sometimes in ON fornyrðislag. Old English
verse is more tolerant of unstressed syllables generally that Old
Norse, partly because of changes that happened between Proto-Norse and
Old Norse which led to a reduction of unstressed syllables, but maybe
also a stylistic tendency. But then continental Germanic alliterative
verse is much looser still in this regard.
Now just a few thoughts abojut your Gothic version of the verse from
Hávamál / Hó,vamó,l.
> juggs was ik faúrþis
This raises an interesting question of where to put the pronoun if the
verb is in "second position" after some non-subject constituent. Old
English tends to place the pronoun before the verb, 'geong ic wæs',
'forht ic wæs', except in questions, negatives and with þá "then" and
þonne "then", (but if the subject was a noun, then that noun tends to
follow the verb), whereas Norse and the continental Germanic languages
tend to treat nouns and pronouns alike when the verb is in second
position, even in their earliest attested forms, and be a bit stricter
about the second position of the verb than Old English (in those types
of clause that demand it), at least in prose. But I guess there's
more freedom in poetry, and this is only a tendancy in OE. The other
order is found too e.g. 'Seccan sohte ic ond Beccan'.
I've read some theoretical arguments from Þórhallur Eyþórsson in
favour of Gothic being like Old English on this score, but I've also
noticed one example where the pronoun seems to follow a verb in 2nd
position: þanuh biþê ût usiddjêdun eis (translating a Greek absolute:
AUTWN DE EXERCOMENWN). So you could be right about the word order
here. But as ever, it would be nice to have more (reliably
independent) examples. Another example that might be relevant: iba
þank þû faírháitáis "you do not offer thanks, do you...?" (Gk. MH ECEI
CARIN)--but since the rest of the clause matches the Greek word order,
it's not clear how the whole thing would look in natural Gothic. So
maybe either would be possible: 'juggs was ik faúrþis' and 'juggs ik
was faúrþis'.
> fôr ik áins samana
I don't think the ON idiom 'einn saman' "alone" is attested in Gothic.
If you wanted to avoid it for that reason, there are a few other
verbs of travelling that could fill the gap, e.g. áins hvarboda; áins
wratoda.
> áudags þûhta mis (+ik/ik wisan)
I think Gothic may have expressed this as simply 'áudags þûhta ik', or
'áudags ik þûhta', either with 'wisan' (Gal 2:6, Gal 6:3, Sk 4:7), or
without (2Cor 13:7). I'm fairly sure the dative pronoun would be left
out even though that's potentially ambiguous with the meaning "to
seem". Compare: 'jabai hvas anþar þugkeiþ trauan in leika, ik mais'
"if any other man thinks that he (himself is able to) trust in the
body, I (do) more." And: 'sahvazuh izei usqimiþ izwis, þuggkeiþ
hunsla saljan guda' "whoever kills you will think that he is offering
a sacrifice to God."
For the sake of the metre, maybe either: 'áudags ik þûhta' or change
it to a B line with the pronoun and finite verb unstressed at the
beginning: 'ik þûhta áudags wisan'?
> manna ist mans gaman
A bit of a pun here: a Gothic word 'gaman' (= ga + man, neuter) does
occur, but with the meaning "partner" or "comrade" [
http://www.wulfila.be/lib/streitberg/1910/HTML/B046.html ]. If you
wanted to stick to attested words, you could maybe have 'fahêþs' or
'hlasei' here.
Anyway, thanks for you detailed response to my questions. I hope I
haven't wandered too far off topic with this post, but I think it's
interesting to compare the different Germanic traditions, and might
offer insights about the origins of the various different metres that
are attested in Old Norse which were developed from the inherited
fornyrðislag style.
Llama Nom