accented line. But every now and then, under the pressure of poetic excitement, or personal taste, or the traditions of a local school, the bard breaks out into three, sometimes four, accents in one line, then sinking back again into the regular double tone-weight. One example will suffice to show what I mean [quoting lines 4-12 inclusive].
'Now, as far as I know, this rhythmical peculiarity is unknown in Old English verse except here, in Caedmon's Paraphrase, and in that noble epical fragment Judith. And I venture to assert that all these three are by one and the same Scóp. Cædmon wrote them all. They have all the same colour, all the same Miltonic sublimity, the same "steeling" of phrase, the same sinking back not only to the two-accented line, but sometimes to an almost prosaic simplicity in the intervals of his flights of genius. I am thus led to do for Judith what Mr. Haigh did for the Dream. I attribute it to Cædmon. After-discovery has proved the latter in the right; probably we shall never be able to produce direct evidence with regard to Judith.'
Elsewhere Stephens asserts : 'It cannot be later than the latter half of the seventh century, for it bears a grammatical form so antique (the accusative dual ungcet) that it has hitherto only been met with in this place, while the art-workmanship also points to the same period[1].'
This theory of Stephens's, then, rests on three main postulates :
1. The Cross was sculptured in the seventh century: that is, the figures and ornamentation are old.
- ↑ Run. Mon. 2. 420. The remark about ungcet came originally from Kemble (Archæologia 28. 359) : ' The word Ungket is another incontrovertible proof of extreme antiquity, having, to the best of my knowledge, never been found but in this passage.' On this word see my 'Notes on the Ruthwell Cross,' p. 384.
