In music, the stretch of time from one very heavily stressed note to another is called a bar. The equivalent in English verse is called a foot. It is conventional in music to set out melodies so that the regularly occurring stressed notes appear first in the bar. It is similarly convenient in verse to arrange the vertical lines separating feet so that the stressed syllable comes first in the foot. (This differs from the old-fashioned manner of scansion using such notions as iambs, trochees, dactyls and so on: if you were brought up in the school which taught that Shakespeare’s verse is written in iambic pentameter, please read the Introduction to this book, if you have not already done so. If, however, you have not been indoctrinated with this ancient fairy story, please read on.)
I have already shown how conversation (about apples on the table, for instance) can be marked out in feet. English speech and verse and prose read aloud all contain stressed syllables occurring at regular intervals: in verse, we regard these stressed syllables as the beginnings of feet. (This statement will be modified in a later chapter to accommodate the notions of rests and syncopation as in music, but is true as it stands for all the examples given here.) Here are two more examples, followed by some transcriptions of speech for you to practise putting in the foot-lines.
1. Hi. How are you? (brisk conventional greeting)
| Hi. | How are | you? |
2. John, we’ve been worried about you. How are you?
| John, we’ve been | worried a | bout you. | How | are you?
Now it is your turn. Read the following examples aloud, then pencil a foot-line in front of each stressed syllable. (There are some suggested answers in Appendix One.)
3. I’m spending Christmas at home. 4. What’s your name? 5. What’s your name? 6. Waltz time is one-two-three, one-two-three. 7. Jane Austen. Pride and Prejudice. 8. Jack Horner. Little Jack Horner. 9. Little Jack Horner sat in the corner.
I hope you noticed that the last example is in verse. It rhymes, as English verse very often does, but that is not what makes it verse. What the original anonymous versifier did was to create a rhythmically repetitive pattern: traditionally, each segment of the pattern is set out as a separate line, thus:
The line is the most important unit in verse. Its length is measured not in words or syllables, but according to the number of feet that it contains, each foot beginning with a stressed syllable. (This statement will be modified in a later chapter to accommodate the notions of rests and syncopation, as in music.)
The two-foot line found in Little Jack Horner was very popular in early medieval English lyric poetry. Later poems often had four feet in each line, or alternate lines of four and three feet as in many traditional ballads. Indeed, if we listen to more of Little Jack Horner we find that there are some three-foot lines here, too, for variety:
(You will notice that occasionally a line begins in mid-foot, just as new lines of songs often begin in mid-bar. What matters metrically is how many heavily stressed or beat syllables — i.e. syllables occurring on the beat — there are in the line.)
Perhaps the most popular metre, used frequently by Chaucer and most of the time by Shakespeare, Milton and Pope and by writers of English sonnets, is a succession of five-foot lines. Lines with six or seven feet are rare, and lines longer than that most unusual.
How many beats are there in the following lines? Mark the beat syllables by putting a vertical line before them. (Suggested answers appear in Appendix One.)
10. Jack and Jill
Went up the hill
To fetch a pail of water.
Jack fell down
And broke his crown
And Jill came tumbling after.
11. Two, four, six, eight,
Who do we appreciate?
12. Macavity’s a mystery cat:
He’s called The Hidden Paw.
[T.S.Eliot]
13. There’s a whisper down the line at eleven thirty-nine,
When the Night Mail’s ready to depart,
Saying, “Skimble, where is Skimble,
has he gone to hunt the thimble?
We must find him, or the train can’t start!”
[T.S.Eliot]
The rhythms of these examples vary. Let us discover how poets achieve and exploit such variations.