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ALLITERATION.--The Saxons were fond of alliteration, both in prose and
verse. They used it without special rules, but simply to satisfy their
taste for harmony in having many words beginning with the same letter; and
thus sometimes making an arbitrary connection between the sentences or
clauses in a discourse, e.g.:
Firum foldan;
Frea almihtig;
The ground for men
Almighty ruler.
The nearest approach to a rule was that three words in close connection
should begin with the same letter. The habit of ellipsis and transposition
is illustrated by the following sentence in Alfred's prose: "So doth the
moon with his pale light, that the bright stars he obscures in the
heavens;" which he thus renders in poetry:
With pale light
Bright stars
Moon lesseneth.
With this brief explanation, which is only intended to be suggestive to
the student, we return to Beowulf.

THE PLOT OF BEOWULF.--The poem contains six thousand lines, in which are
told the wonderful adventures of the valiant viking Beowulf, who is
supposed to have fallen in Jutland in the year 340.


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