(LAYAMON: _Brut_, ll. 2912-2931. Madden ed., vol. i. p. 123. ab. 1200.) The _Brut_ of Layamon represents typically the transition period, when alliteration and end-rime were struggling for the mastery in English verse. Schipper points out that we find in the poem four kinds of lines: 1. Simple alliterative lines in more or less strict adherence to the old rules. 2. Lines combining alliteration and rime or alliteration and assonance. 3. Lines showing rime or assonance, without alliteration. 4. Four-stress lines with neither rime nor alliteration. The present specimen shows the preference for alliteration; that on p. 127, below, represents the introduction of rime. In a somer seson . whan soft was the sonne, I shope me in shroudes . as I a shepe were, In habite as an heremite . unholy of workes, Went wyde in this world . wondres to here. Ac on a May mornynge . on Malverne hulles Me byfel a ferly . of fairy me thouȝte; I was wery forwandred . and went me to reste Under a brode banke . bi a bornes side, And as I lay and lened . and loked in the wateres, I slombred in a slepyng . it sweyved so merye. (WILLIAM LANGLAND (?): _Piers the Plowman_, Prologue, ll. 1-10. B-text. Fourteenth century.) _Piers the Plowman_ represents the revival of the alliterative long line, with fairly strict adherence to the old rules, by contemporaries of Chaucer, in the fourteenth century. For this verse, see further in Part Two, pp. 155, 156. Apon the Midsumer evin, mirrest of nichtis, I muvit furth allane, neir as midnicht wes past, Besyd ane gudlie grene garth, full of gay flouris, Hegeit, of ane huge hicht, with hawthorne treis; Quhairon ane bird, on ane bransche, so birst out hir notis That never ane blythfullar bird was on the beuche harde: Quhat throw the sugarat sound of hir sang glaid, And throw the savar sanative of the sueit flouris; I drew in derne to the dyk to dirkin eftir myrthis; The dew donkit the daill, and dynarit the foulis. (WILLIAM DUNBAR: _The Tua Mariit Wemen and the Wedo_, ll. 1-10. Ed. Scottish Text Society, vol ii. p. 30.) See notes on Dunbar as a metrist, in this edition, vol. i. pp. cxlix and clxxii, and T. F. Henderson's _Scottish Vernacular Literature_, pp. 153-164. Alliteration as an organic element of verse was especially favored in the North country, and its popularity in Scotland--illustrated in the present specimen from Dunbar--considerably outlasted its use in England. The famous words of Chaucer's Parson will be recalled: "But trusteth wel, I am a Southren man, I can nat geste--rum, ram, ruf--by lettre." We find King James, as late as 1585 (_Reulis and Cautelis_), giving the following instructions: "Let all your verse be Literall, sa far as may be, ... bot speciallie Tumbling verse for flyting. By Literall I meane, that the maist part of your lyne sall rynne upon a letter, as this tumbling lyne rynnis upon F: