METRICAL ARRANGEMENT.--As to metrical arrangement, Saxon poetry differed from our modern English as well as from the classical models, in that their poets followed no laws of metre, but arranged their vernacular verses without any distinct rules, but simply to please the ear. "To such a selection and arrangement of words as produced this effect, they added the habit of frequently omitting the usual particles, and of conveying their meaning in short and contracted phrases. The only artifices they used were those of inversion and transition."[7] It is difficult to give examples to those unacquainted with the language, but the following extract may serve to indicate our meaning: it is taken from Beowulf: Crist waer a cennijd Cýninga wuldor On midne winter: Mære theoden! Ece almihtig! On thij eahteothan daeg Hael end gehaten Heofon ricet theard. Christ was born King of glory In mid-winter: Illustrious King! Eternal, Almighty! On the eighth day Saviour was called, Of Heaven's kingdom ruler. PERIPHRASIS.--Their periphrasis, or finding figurative names for persons and things, is common to the Norse poetry. Thus Caedmon, in speaking of the ark, calls it the _sea-house, the palace of the ocean, the wooden fortress_, and by many other periphrastic names. ALLITERATION.--The Saxons were fond of alliteration, both in prose and verse. They used it without special rules, but simply to satisfy their taste for harmony in having many words beginning with the same letter; and thus sometimes making an arbitrary connection between the sentences or clauses in a discourse, e.g.: Firum foldan; Frea almihtig; The ground for men Almighty ruler. The nearest approach to a rule was that three words in close connection should begin with the same letter. The habit of ellipsis and transposition is illustrated by the following sentence in Alfred's prose: "So doth the moon with his pale light, that the bright stars he obscures in the heavens;" which he thus renders in poetry: With pale light Bright stars Moon lesseneth. With this brief explanation, which is only intended to be suggestive to the student, we return to Beowulf. THE PLOT OF BEOWULF.--The poem contains six thousand lines, in which are told the wonderful adventures of the valiant viking Beowulf, who is supposed to have fallen in Jutland in the year 340. The Danish king Hrothgar, in whose great hall banquet, song, and dance are ever going on, is subjected to the stated visits of a giant, Grendel, a descendant of Cain, who destroys the Danish knights and people, and against whom no protection can be found.