Sing of two Great Titans

SYLLABIC STRESSES

         /         /
Sing of two Great Titans 
     /        /
Of terrible might. 
 /            /
Each one is fearsome, 
         /             /
Though equal they are not. 
           /     /
One is a fierce feline 
    /    /
Of fury unequalled. 
          /   /
One is a big birdie 
      /         /
That burns and blows up. 

      /     /
One meows mightily 
  /          /
Making foes tremble. 
       /          /
One squawks and squeaks 
             /      /
Like well-squeezed bagpipes. 
      /              /
One brings out the breezes 
       /           /
That brighten the day. 
     /      /
One comes calling and 
          /           /
Sets the curtains on fire.

This poem is done in the style of Fornyrðislag (pronounced FORT-near-this-lahg) It is the descendant of the older stichic poetry found in the poetic eddas .This style usually consisted of 8 line verses. Each line had two stressed syllables and between 2 and 5 unstressed syllables. The lines came in pairs (or strophes) that practiced alliteration (consonant rhyming) so that the same consonant sound was heard usually two or three and sometimes four or five times in a pair of lines. Usually, though not always, the stressed syllables were part of the first three alliterative words. The third stressed syllable of the strophe ( which is also the first stressed syllable of the second line) is the ‘Head stave’. It forms the backbone of the structural alliteration. In this particular poem, the ‘Head staves’ are as follows, in order; Terrible, Equal, Fury, Burns, Making Squeezed, Brighten, Curtains.

It should be stated that while this practice of alliteration is also often referred to as consonant rhyming it does NOT have to be done only by consonants. Vowel sounds at the beginning and even in the middle of words are acceptable practices in Fornyrðislag, and the 3rd and 4th lines of the 1st verse (which repeat the long ‘E’ sound) are found in both the eddas and the translations of them as being part of alliteration.

In this particular poem, which is two verses long, I have made sure to include three alliterative sounds in every strophe. This is the standard, although there are many exceptions to the rule. It should be noted that in the last strophe of the first verse, which goes ‘One is a Big Birdie . . . that burns and blows up’ the word ‘blows’ is a classical dipthong and therefore is not a consonant rhyme. (The BL sound only rhymes with the BL sound, not with other B sounds.)

The slash marks above the words are the stressed syllables in each line. Note how they match most of the time with the first three alliterative words.

I have chosen this subject matter based upon the upcoming ‘War of the Wings’ between Sacred Stone and Windmasters’ Hill, whose symbols are, respectively, the Phoenix and the Kittyhawk. See if you can guess who’s side I am on.

REFERENCES
Ringler, Dick. Formal Features of Jónas Hallgrímsson's Poetry and the Present Verse Translations. University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1996. Found on the website http://www.library.wisc.edu/etext/jonas/Prosody/Prosody-I.html

Terry, Patricia. Poems of the Elder Edda. Revised ed. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990.