3
Still later even this exception submitted to the technical rules of the poetic sept. Vid. Hymn edited by Stokes in Zeit. f. Celt. Phil. Vol. I. p. 62, where accent asserts itself pretty regularly in the end of the line and compare with the late Contention of the Bards where it is completely lost.
To suppose therefore that, the late prosody borrowed its accentuation from a Germanic source is a mistake. In all periods of the literature we find embedded certain barbed fragments of folk-wit that had pierced the exclusiveness of the schools and stand a running testimony to the continued existence of a simple style of versification which the common people might compose and sing. Cf. Wh. 27a teora tonna torunni, the legal aphorisms in the Brehon Code, and such wise sayings as atcota sochell saidhbhre, atcota cuirm carna, Mur 48 Roscadha Flain Fina mic ossa Rig Saxon, p. 351. Also bringing together the two extremes of Irish poetry Ultan’s Hymn for instance and the so-called Midnight Court written in 1780 we can discern no essential difference of structure. Wherefore I re-affirm an opinion expressed by me some time ago Zeit. f. Celt. Phil. Vol. I, p. 141, that“ there was reason to suspect that this simple and effective skeleton of verse-building lived from old times in populur song side by side with the elaborated prosody to reappear afterwards when the folk language became the only literature.“
Taking the last example cited from Dr. Keatynge and marking accented vowels in colour we find the following scheme.
| . | ō | . | ǡ | . | ǡ | . | o | . | ī | . | |
| . | . | ō | . | ǡ | . | ǡ | . | o | . | ī | . |
| . | ō | . | ǡ | . | ǡ | . | o | . | ī | . | |
| . | ō | . | ǡ | . | ǡ | . | o | . | ī | . |
Here then the verse was woven on a fixed net-work of assonance, there is a regular accent beat and alliteration is abundant. A system so dependent on pronunciation demands for its reading some notions of the phonology of modern
