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344
Craigie: Skaldic Metre.
be admitted that he would most readily have found what he
wanted in such words as land, jdr&, stein, ulf, etc. Such
forms are certainly not less numerous in the language than
either of the types, lid, styr or knS, sty. Now, if it proves
to be the fact that every dr6ttkvaett-poet carefully avoided
the former types and deliberately selected the latter, it is
evident that there must be a good reason for such a choice,
and the reason which comes most naturally to hand is that
they wanted a short syllable and not a long one. Even if
it is maintained that such words as lid, styr etc. are long
in this position, the fact remains that the skald was influenced
in his choice by considerations for which Prof. Sievers’ types
supply no explanation.
To show that the statement I have made is practically
true without exception, I shall deal successively with lines
of the four types instanced by Prof. Sievers. It will,
however, be necessary at the outset to give up any attempt to
separate D- and E-lines; so far as this point is concerned,
there is no distinction between them, and it would only lead
to needless complications to try to keep them apart
throughout the following statistics. The real difference which exists
between lines of apparently the same form will be dealt
with later on. For the same reason I include in the
statistics of the groups y and 6 (§§ 5 and 6) lines which would
ordinarily be taken as examples of Prof. Sievers’ B-type (as
par’s gollin spjor gullu). As will be seen (§§ 15, 16) this
type also seems to require an interpretation altogether
different from that hitherto assigned to it.
§ 3. The a-type, with a trisyllabic word at the
beginning of the line, as Sufrvirki U9 bu&ir occurs 133 times in
the 2000 lines of Skjaldekvad. In 29 cases the word in
the fourth place of the line is a substantive, and in every
case this has a short vowel, as fSr, lift, fri&, sUg, brim,
skSp, gram, dag, etc. or (in two cases) ends in a vowel, as
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