As longtime readers will know, the oldest meter of English poetry was long ago purged out of our mainstream tradition, and only much later revived by medievalist scholars like Francis Gummere and J.R.R. Tolkien. Since the mid-twentieth century or so, it has preserved itself as it were underground, in the high fantasy genre and other types of speculative fiction. An online literary magazine dedicated to these genres, Illuminations of the Fantastic, has recently published a selection of modern poems written in this ‘alliterative’ or ‘chyming’ verse-style.1
The last of these is a little ort of my own, entitled Weyland’s Revenge. What you ought to know before reading it, assuming that you don’t already, is that ‘Weyland’ or ‘Wayland’ (Weland in Old English, Völundr in Old Norse) was a legendary blacksmith who was hamstrung and enslaved by a cruel king (Niþhad or Níðuðr). In an interesting parallel with the Greek story of Daedalus, he fashioned artificial wings for himself, then cooked up a terrible vengeance on his captor – involving the rape of his daughter (by some accounts, her willing seduction) and the fashioning of treasures made from the body parts of his two young sons. When he finally made his escape with the aid of his wings, he wasn’t in too much of a hurry to first perch at a safe height and gloat to the king about all that he had done.
Weyland’s Revenge is an imaginative retelling of this dramatic ending to the tale. Those who wish to read the original stories may consult Konrad Rosenberg’s translations of Deor and the Vǫlundarkviða, or seek out the late-medieval version of the tale in the Thidrekssaga. Note that the names of the characters have been changed in my version, somewhat arbitrarily by my present standards (I wrote it more than a year ago), but for the sake of rhythm and ease of pronunciation.
I also came up with a simple ‘backing tune’ to this poem, which can be performed on a 7-stringed lyre tuned to G minor. The score would accompany the sung verses according to the usual technique, and would be repeated every eight lines, subject to improvizational variation (such as breaking some half-notes into quavers, etc.).
Chyming verse enjoyers should also check out the excerpt from Paul Deane’s ongoing translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the rest of which can be found at his site.