A Guide to Gothic Alliterative Verse

Here is a speculative guide to how alliterative verse might have worked with the Gothic language, using common conventions and examples from attested texts in other Germanic languages, and a degree of personal interpretation.

Preface

A poetic style found extensively in the earliest Germanic texts and inscriptions is alliterative verse, attested as early as the fifth century on the Golden Horns of Gallehus, and most likely transmitted orally long before that. Although its form varies across Germanic languages, there are some core elements that form a shared tradition.

For creative purposes, anything on this page may be disregarded, and it is not intended as a reconstruction of historical Gothic verse. However, it is an attempt to establish a shared Gothic tradition and framework, based on the earliest attested Germanic poetic traditions, through a consistent set of conventions that can help listeners learn and perceive the flow and structure of the alliteration. With this guide, I hope to encourage the development of a distinctive Gothic form of alliterative verse poetry, and with that, help bring more people to the Gothic language.

Lifts

Each line is made up of two half-lines, with a heavy pause (cæsura) separating them. The half-lines themselves are also known as ‘verses’ (or ‘hemistiches’ or ‘distiches’), the first verse is called the a-verse (or on-verse) and the second the b-verse (or off-verse).

Each half-line has two lifts. The first and/or second lift of the a-verse alliterates with the first lift but not the second lift of the b-verse.

• AA AB: “ek hlewagastiʀ holtijaʀ / horna tawidō” (inscription on the Golden Horns of Gallehus, c. 5th century)
• AA AB: “gomban gyldan. / þæt wæs god cyning!” (Beowulf, c. 1000 AD; line 11)
• AA AB: “Nús hersis hefnd / við hilmi efnd;” (Egil’s Saga, c. 850–1000 AD)
• AB AC: “thuru kraft godas / gekorana wurðun,” (Heliand, 9th century AD; line 1:17)
• AB BC: “ne hyrde ic cymlicor / ceol gegyrwan” (Beowulf; line 38)

The coloured letters mark the lifts, with green indicating alliteration.

If only one lift alliterates in the a-verse, it seems most commonly to be the AB AC pattern throughout the whole text, probably so that it’s easier for the listener to recognise. But there are also texts in which the AB BC pattern predominates, as well as texts that use a mixture of both.

The two lifts are the two primary stresses within the half-line, determined by a stress hierarchy:

• most stressed (‘stress-words’): nouns, adjectives, participles, infinitives
• less stressed (‘particles’): most finite verbs (i.e. tensed verbs) and adverbs
• even less stressed (‘proclitics’): most pronouns, weakly stressed adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, parts of the verb to be, word-endings

“kuman thuru kraft godes / endi Cristas giburd” (Heliand; line 1:49) – Come through the power of God / and Christ’s birth

In the example above, you have a verb (kuman, to come), a preposition (thuru, through) and a conjunction (endi, and), and then the 4 nouns, which, following the hierarchy, all become the lifts. While in the AB AC example above, a participle (gekorana, chosen) and a verb (wurðun, became) become the lifts of the second half-line, as there are no other words further up the hierarchy.

A tip: one way to reduce the number of primary stresses is through compounding. For example, haurnis gudis becoming gudahaurnis (of God’s horn). This reduces two primary stresses to one primary stress and one secondary stress. Even so, tread carefully in creating new words.

Word Stress

There doesn’t seem to be a full consensus on the placement of stress within Gothic words. What most can agree on is that, in compound verbs, the primary stress falls on the initial syllable of the verbal component of the word. For nouns and adjectives, the primary stress generally falls on the first syllable of the whole word.

Where it becomes unclear is when it comes to prefixes. Some researchers argue that any prefix occupying the first syllable of a noun receives the primary stress. There is disagreement when it comes to the ga- prefix however. Again, looking at the AB AC example above, the primary stress falls on the ko in gekorana, skipping the ga-. This is a common feature across later Germanic languages.

The question is whether this is a later innovation after the time of Gothic, or an inherited feature going back to Proto-Germanic or earlier. In my own research¹, I’ve come to believe that ga- was very likely always weakly stressed, and that bi-, du- and dis- may have been as well. Though of the latter three, only bi- is attested as a nominal prefix.

All this is subject to change as I learn more. Please feel free to contact me if you think otherwise or have additional research and ideas to add to this.

Some examples, using the acute diacritic (á) to indicate the syllable with the primary stress:

• þíudangardi
• ándahafts
• andháftjan
• ánamahts
• filuwáurdjan
• híndarweis
• in kúnja
• ínkunja
• gadráuhts
• þairhstágg

Alliteration

All vowels alliterate with one another, probably due to the unwritten glottal stop preceding them at the start of syllables.

“ísig ond útfús / æþelinges fær” (Beowulf; line 33)

A common convention in attested Germanic alliterative verse is that sk, st and sp do not alliterate with plain s, nor with one another. This restriction could just have been an innovation in the hundreds of years between writing the Gothic bible and the surviving Germanic alliterative verse texts we know of. And with the limited vocabulary available to us, I personally have decided to ignore this restriction.

As an equivalent to imperfect rhymes perhaps, there are some Gothic sounds that could potentially alliterate with one another. These include ƕ with w or h, q with k, and x with k or h. However, I would use these only as a last resort, as ƕ, q and x have their own Gothic letters and were therefore likely felt as somewhat distinct, although x may have been pronounced as /k/.

Metre

Gothic words are somewhat longer than those in the later Germanic languages used in surviving alliterative verse texts. I often see references to Sievers’ types, but this is a theory developed specifically around Anglo-Saxon alliterative verse and doesn’t work particularly well for Gothic (and I read shouldn’t be followed too closely anyway for creative reasons²). Putting aside the number of unstressed syllables, I feel the rise and fall patterns of the types are worth noting though, as during recitation they give the lines a pleasing flow.

A line can be quite short and tight, as found in Cædmon’s Hymn, with the lifts falling on almost every word, or quite long, as found in Beowulf and the Heliand, for a more expansive narrative style.

The details on metre can get quite deep with long and short syllables, resolution and patterns of stressed and unstressed syllables, which is something for me to personally still figure out, but I think the most important part in getting the metre right is just reading your work aloud repeatedly, with feeling and understanding. Doing so helps you notice what flows well, where you stumble, and how the half-lines and full lines are balanced in length with one another, and then adjusting until it produces a pleasing rhythm.

A quote by J. R. R. Tolkien on the metre of Old English alliterative verse, which I think is highly relevant to alliterative verse as a whole:

The very nature of Old English metre is often misjudged. In it there is no single rhythmic pattern progressing from the beginning of a line to the end, and repeated with variation in other lines. The lines do not go according to a tune. They are founded on a balance; an opposition between two halves of roughly equivalent phonetic weight, and significant content, which are more often rhythmically contrasted than similar. They are more like masonry than music

“Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics.” The Monsters and the Critics, and Other Essays, HarperCollins, 1997, pp.5-48.

Getting Started

If you are entirely new to Gothic poetry and want to get a feel for alliterative verse, I suggest first that you translate a poem or even a short story into Gothic, focusing on getting the meaning right without trying to be too poetic, and then convert it into alliterative verse.

Even if you don’t understand the meanings of the words, it can also be helpful to look through the texts such as Beowulf, the Heliand, the Poetic Edda and Cædmon’s Hymn, and take note of the appearance of the lines: their length, the frequency of alliteration and the placement of lifts and how words are distributed across the lines.

Notes

What I’m presenting here is a baseline. Beyond this, you can build on it however little or as much as you like really. As found in Old Norse poetry, you can even add internal and end rhyme:

“hlakkar íss ok hausar, / hjalm-stall í gný malma.” (From the Fagrskinna collection, c. 1220 AD)

If anything is unclear or could be improved in this guide, please feel free to contact me. I will continue to revise and improve it as I learn more.

Works in Gothic

• Thunravalds Sunau by Hans Ferdinand Massmann, 1841
• Wulfilaliuþis by Tim O’ Neill, 1985
• Faginoþ Fugls by Rydwlf V, 2008
• Gibiþ Ausona Gabeins by Godrikr af Stafn, 2021
• Liuþ Kaidmonis by me, 2026
• Liuþ Weihin Niketin by me, 2026

Further Reading

Some pages that helped me in understanding alliterative verse:

• What are the detailed principles of alliterative verse? – A guide on Anglo-Saxon alliterative verse
• Old English Metre: A Brief Guide

Footnotes