page_title: The Awntyrs off Arthure
section_title: Verse form
hierarchical_section_title: The Awntyrs off Arthure / Verse form
context_page_description: The Awntyrs off Arthure at the Terne Wathelyne is an Arthurian romance of 702 lines written in Middle English alliterative verse. Despite its title, it centres on the deeds of Sir Gawain. The poem, thought to have been composed in Cumberland in the late 14th or early 15th century, survives in four different manuscripts from widely separated areas of England.
context_section_description: The Awntyrs off Arthure is written in a form of alliterative verse combining the usual four-stress alliterative line with a rhyme ABABABABCDDDC in a thirteen-line stanza; the density of alliteration is higher than in any other Middle English poem, with over half of its lines containing four alliterating stresses rather than the customary three. The style can be illustrated by the opening stanza:
  In the tyme of Arthur an aunter bytydde,
  By the Turne Wathelan, as the boke telles,
  Whan he to Carlele was comen, that conquerour kydde,
  With dukes and dussiperes that with the dere dwelles.
  To hunte at the herdes that longe had ben hydde,
  On a day thei hem dight to the depe delles,
  To fall of the femailes in forest were frydde,
  Fayre by the fermesones in frithes and felles.
  Thus to wode arn thei went, the wlonkest in wedes,
  Bothe the Kyng and the Quene,
  And al the doughti bydene.
  Sir Gawayn, gayest on grene,
  Dame Gaynour he ledes. (1–13)
  Variants of the thirteen-line alliterating stanza are found in a handful of other English poems: The Four Leaves of the Truelove, The Three Dead Kings, The Pistel of Swete Susan, and a number of others.
caption: Early 15th century deer hunt, from a French manuscript. The poem opens with a deer hunt in "the depe delles" of Inglewood Forest.
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