In the alliterative line the position of the rhythmic accent depends on the accent of the words which make up the verse. In the even-beat metres on the other hand the regular succession of thesis and arsis is the ruling principle of the versification, on which the rhythmic accent depends, and it is the poet's task to choose his words according to that requirement. The difficulties to be surmounted in order to bring the word-accent into conformity with the verse-accent will frequently drive the poet using this kind of rhythm to do violence to the accented and, more frequently still, to the unaccented syllables of the word. He will be induced either to contract the unaccented syllables with the accented ones, or to elide the former altogether, or to leave it to the reader to make the word-accent agree with the verse-accent by making use of level stress, or by slurring over syllables, or by admitting disyllabic or even polysyllabic theses in a verse. On the other hand, the poet who writes in the native alliterative long line or in any of its descendants is allowed as a rule to use the words required for his verse in their usual accentuation or syllabic value, or at least in a way approximating very closely to their ordinary treatment in prose. Hence those unaccented syllables which, in even-beat rhythms, are found to be subjected to the same treatment (i.e. to be equally liable to slurring, elision, syncopation, or apocopation, according to the requirements of the verse) must be presumed to have been at least approximately equal in degree of accentual force. Now when we examine the relation between word-accent and verse-accent in certain poetical works of the first half of the thirteenth century, viz. the _Ormulum_ (which on account of its regularity of rhythm is our best guide), the _Pater Noster_, the _Moral Ode_, the _Passion_, and other poems, we arrive at the following results:-- § =114.= The difference in degree of stress among inflexional endings containing an _e_ (sometimes _i_ or another vowel) which is alleged by some scholars--viz. that such endings (in disyllabic words) have secondary stress when the root-syllable is long, and are wholly unaccented when it is short--has no existence: in both cases the endings are to be regarded as alike unaccented. For we find that in even-beat measures (especially in the _Ormulum_) these endings, whether attached to a long or to a short root-syllable, are treated precisely alike in the following important respects:-- 1. Those inflexional endings which normally occur in the thesis, and which are naturally suited for that position, are found in the arsis only in an extremely small number of instances, which must undoubtedly be imputed to lack of skill on the part of the poet, as e.g. in _hallȝhé_ Orm. 70, _nemmnéd_ ib. 75, whereas this is very frequent in those disyllabic compounds, the second part of which really has a secondary accent, as e.g. _larspéll_ ib. 51, _mannkínn_ ib. 277.