[102] Cf. our remarks in Book I, Part II, on the Septenary Verse in combination with other metres. [103] Cf. Wissmann, _King Horn_, pp. 59-62, and _Metrik_, i, pp. 189-90. [104] _Signs of Death_ in _Old Engl. Misc._ (E. E. T. S.), p. 101. [105] Cf. Hall's edition (Clar. Press, 1901), pp. xlv-l, where our views on the origin and structure of the metre are adopted. [106] See Paul's _Grundriss_, ed. 2, II. ii. p. 156. CHAPTER IV THE ALLITERATIVE LINE IN ITS CONSERVATIVE FORM DURING THE FOURTEENTH AND FIFTEENTH CENTURIES A. The alliterative verse without rhyme. § =52.= The progressive or free form of the alliterative line came to an end as early as the middle of the thirteenth century, when it broke up into short rhyming couplets. The stricter form was for nearly three centuries longer a very popular metre in English poetry, especially in the North-Western and Northern districts of England and in the adjacent lowlands of Scotland. The first traces, however, of its existence after the Norman Conquest are to be found in the South of England, where some poetical homilies and lives of saints were written at the end of the twelfth and in the beginning of the thirteenth century which are of the same character, both as to their subjects and to their metre, as the poetical paraphrases and homilies written by Ælfric. These poems are _Hali Meidenhad_ (a poetical homily), the legends of _St. Marharete_, _St. Juliana_, and _St. Katherine_. These poems have been edited for the Early English Text Society, Nos. 18, 13, 51, 80; the first three by Cockayne as prose-texts, the last by Dr. Einenkel, who printed it in short couplets regarded by him as having the same four-beat rhythm (Otfrid's metre) which he and his teacher, Prof. Trautmann, suppose to exist in Layamon and _King Horn_.[107] The Homilies have no rhymes. The form of these homilies and legends occasionally exhibits real alliterative lines, but for the most part is nothing but rhythmical prose, altogether too irregular to call for an investigation here. Some remarks on passages written in a form more or less resembling alliterative verse may be found in our _Englische Metrik_, vol. i, § 94.