Pronounced final -e plays an important role in the rhythms of alliterative verse. Sometimes this -e is inflectional (see ‘Dialect and Inflections’ above), and sometimes it is an organic part of the word. In order to hear the metre, those unfamiliar with the grammatical and etymological principles which dictate what -es are sounded need only remember to sound such -es as will ensure the two-syllable dip between the a-verse stresses and will produce the two-syllable dip that must occur once in the b-verse, and should bear in mind that all alliterative long lines end in one unstressed syllable. Thus:
That all that longëd to luther ful lodly He hated (1090)
Wel clener then any craft couthë devisë (1100)
Bot if my gaynlychë God such gref to me woldë (Pa 83)
Then eft lastës hit likkës, He loses hit illë (1141)
A reliable rule of thumb is that all instances of -e that effectively turn monosyllables into disyllables must be sounded (as in the lines above). After an unstressed syllable, however, -e, final or in -es or -ed terminations, was often unsounded:
Then confourme thee to Cryst, and thee clene makë,
That ever is polysed as playn as the perle selven. (1067–8)
The required long dip (of two or more syllables) will normally indicate where such an -e needs to be pronounced, as with relykës (< OF reliques) or solemnë (< OF solempne) in the following lines:
And robbëd the rèlygioun of relykës allë (1156)
He sat on Salomones solie on solemnë wysë (1171)
‘The Alliterative Revival’ is a phrase often used to categorize the group of narrative poems – which includes Cleanness, Patience and Sir Gawain – written from about the mid-fourteenth century onwards in the alliterative metre that is otherwise virtually unrecorded after Layamon’s Brut (composed around 1200 during the transition from Old to Middle English). But there are problems with the term ‘revival’. It can scarcely be the case that these poets returned to a mode for which practically their only models were Anglo-Saxon and very early Middle English. Quite apart from the absence of any evidence as to significant manuscript circulation of those earlier poems, the changes in English were sufficient to have rendered that corpus far from easily accessible to fourteenth-century readers. The similarities with Old English verse (the four-stressed aa/ax metre and the many shared items of ‘poetic’ vocabulary) are unlikely, on the other hand, to have been the result of an alliterative metre reinvented without reference to its forerunners. There was obviously some kind of continuing tradition, and what was ‘revived’ in the mid-fourteenth century was probably not the metre itself, but the use of it (now that English – as opposed to French or Latin – had re-established itself as a medium suitable for serious verse) for major and lengthy poems. The alliterative poets were thus doing something new in their refurbishment of the old, and should not be regarded as ‘dated’ in their choice of metre. The poet of Cleanness was certainly familiar with the French models for rhyming verse, as his extended reference to Le Roman de la rose at 1057–64 indicates; and Pearl and the bob-and-wheel lines in Sir Gawain show that he could handle iambic and rhyming verse very effectively if he chose. The alliterative metre was not selected, therefore, for want of acquaintance or skill with the more ‘modern’ (though by this time somewhat predictable) metrical forms. The poet was plainly an enthusiast for the new/old alliterative mode, for he shows a wide familiarity with its collocational patterns and stylistic techniques – and he handles the line to produce many striking and very varied effects.
EDITORIAL PRACTICE
In line with the conventions of this series, the orthography of the manuscript (and of texts cited in the endnotes) has been partially modernized and regularized. The obsolete characters thorn and yogh (þ and ȝ) have been replaced by their modern equivalents: þ by th, and ȝ (used in the manuscript to represent a number of different sounds) by, variously, gh, w, s and y, and where yogh represents a vowel, it has been omitted without replacement: thus, for example, þe becomes the, and riȝt, boȝed, fautleȝ, tryȝe [try] become right, bowed, fautles and trye. The idiosyncratic -tȝ in words such as hatȝ and watȝ has been replaced with -s. Where w represents a vowel (e.g. remwe, grwe, knwe), it has been replaced by u or by whatever more familiar spelling of the word in question is elsewhere used by the scribe. In medieval spelling i and j were interchangeable; we have used whichever symbol accords with modern practice: for instance, iuggement becomes juggement. The letters u and v were earlier distinguished by position in the word: v was typically used initially (vnto [unto], vs [us], etc), and u medially (preued [proved], saue [save], etc); we have transcribed these letters in accord with the modern convention, using u to represent a vowel sound, and v a consonant.
We have also attempted to simplify the various spellings and forms found for any given word, following J. A. Burrow’s practice in his Penguin edition of Sir Gawain. Spelling was unstandardized in this period, and the scribe often uses a number of different spellings and/or dialectal or other forms for the same word. We have retained variants that reflect distinct derivation, e.g. from Old English and Old Norse, and so ‘though’ figures as both thogh and thagh. But otherwise we have regularized, for instance, man/mon to man, cast-/kest- to cast-, myght-/moght- to myght-, are/ar/arn(e) to are, were/wer/weren/wern to were, hold-/hald- to hold- (despite the fact that the o form figures only once in the manuscript), saw/sey(en)/sye to saw(en), sprang/sprong/spronge to sprang. We have, that is, generally regularized the variants to whichever scribal form is least likely to confuse a modern English reader, even if the scribe uses that form only once, except where the variant is one required by the metre (thus sprenged is retained at the end of the alliterative line, where it supplies the line-final unstressed syllable that sprang would not supply: see p. xxiv). We have sometimes taken advantage of manuscript variation to make distinctions it does not consistently make: for instance, we have transcribed Gawan when the name alliterates on g, but Gawayn when iambic beat or rhyme falls on its second syllable. Only in exceptional cases, however, have we regularized to spellings that are not found in the manuscript.48
Final -e is retained where it is metrically significant (see pp. xxvi–xxvii) and where it has a grammatical significance that the scribe’s practice elsewhere suggests was usually observed. But a grammatically correct -e missing from the manuscript spelling has not been supplied where it is not metrically needed. We have not, however, hesitated to supply a grammatically and/or historically justifiable final -e where metre does require it. For, accurate and careful though the scribe generally seems to have been, he was not a poet, and often omitted a final -e that had in his dialect no necessity other than metrical. For instance, myght [could] is frequently found at line ending, but not (except in the case of the MS forms moghtes, second-person singular, at C 655 and moghten, plural, at G 1953) written with the inflectional ending which conservative grammar would give it and which the line-ending position (where an unstressed syllable was a rule of the alliterative metre) requires. We have in all relevant cases transcribed the word myghte. Metrically irregular lines which are not susceptible of regularization by restoration of inflection or other obvious and minor emendation, and which make sense as they stand, have not been emended. But we have, as indicated, regularly restored such inflectional endings as the poet himself demonstrably used for the following metrical purposes (see p. xxi): to ensure iambic metre, or, in the alliterative line (on the rules of which see the previous section), to ensure the line-ending unstressed syllable, the single long dip required in the b-verse and (though here we have been less rigorous, since the rules are not yet finally established) the long dip usually required between the two alliterative stresses in the a-verse.49 On some occasions, as in the case of myghte, we have emended to a form of the word which does not actually occur in the manuscript. And line-ending -e as it occurs in the manuscript has in some rare cases been retained even where it does not appear to be justified (e.g. Gode at C 1730), since the form may have some as yet unknown explanation.