Page:Gummere (1909) The Oldest English Epic.djvu/34

18 inevitable cross-pattern, as it is in old poetic diction. Modern poetry makes ample use of metaphor; but the practical necessity of “kennings” in alternate statement or epithet is no longer known. Considering now these old factors of poetic style for themselves, one finds that variant repetition is woven into the very stuff of epic; it is closely allied, as in Hebrew poetry, with the rhythmic principle. But our epic verse is continuous, and has no stanzaic balance, no limit, such as exists in Hebrew; so that in oldest English poetry the unrestrained process of variant repetition piles epithet on epithet and phrase on phrase. In Beowulf there have been counted a hundred different appellations for the hero, and fifty-six for King Hrothgar. Occasionally there is a “couplet” which resembles the Hebrew:

On this variant repetition great force is bestowed by the use of metaphor, particularly by “kennings.” A kenning is where one speaks of the sea as “the whale’s road” or “the gannet’s bath,”—as if the phrase were a “token” of the thing. So in the couplet just quoted, “spake in answer” is literal; its variant, “unlocked the word-hoard,” is metaphorical; and “word-hoard” is kenning for “thoughts” or “intention.” When the reader grows accustomed to this cross-pattern of repetition,—and he has no quarrel with it in its somewhat different guise in the Psalms,—he will appreciate its importance as a factor in the old poetry, and he will not be unduly baffled