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346
Craigie: Skaldic Metre*
fourth place has a noun. The distribution is practically the
same as above: 36 of the one type, as $joty dag, hint, hoi,
etc. (in one case skips), and 12 of the other, as na, 7y, say
gny, while two are anomalous in having setr and praut’).
The pronominal lines number 25, the commonest forms being
pat and pvi. Of lines containing a verb there are only 7,
the words being heft, te% vil, vas, rann, hett.
§ 6. Lines of the <3-type, having the second word of
the form — ^, as in drengr magnar Iqf pengils, are very
numerous, amounting to 160 in all (including the few lines
which have the form 13 til Svinadah mina, 20 pa v’s d&
misalr dorna, 27 skulum kennival hanna). Here also the rule
is rigorously observed, and of the 64 nouns which appear in
the fourth place of the line, 56 have a short vowel (2 with
inflexive -r, and 1 with «*), and 8 end in a vowel or
diphthong. The only real exception is Korm&k’s line, 13 ihattar
stall tni&jan, for in Bjdrn’s line, 31 ok vdgum {torn peygi the
manuscript reading is pawn, and in Sigvat’s, 41 hand
krist-inn 1yd standa, the correct words are hristit #&
Pronominal and adverbial lines are specially common, 81 in all,
leaving only 15 for verbs of the various types.
§ 7. The above statistics clearly prove the statement
that in dr6ttkvaett down to c. 1030 A. D. the skalds
carefully avoided a definitely long syllable with full stress in
the fourth place of the line’), and a glance at the work of
any of the later poets will show that the rule was practi*
cally never broken so long as the genuine metrical tradition
survived. We must next enquire how far the same rule was
observed in the shorter metre now commonly called forn-
*) 5 Gerum far fyr setr solar, Egill. 14 Fa&ir tninn of fraut finni,
Gisli; perhaps frd should be read here.
*) Thi* at onoe disposes of not a few emendations in the printed
texts, of which I shall only mention WiseVs readings in p6rsdrdpat 10* eiS
Jardar ljug tneira (MSS. hug), and IB1 fjarSeplis kvan jardar (MSS. kon).
It would be easy to quote other instances.
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