For analysis of this revived alliterative verse, see a valuable article by Dr. Luick, _Die Englische Stabreimzeile im 14n, 15n, und 16n Jahrhundert_, in _Anglia_, vol. xi. pp. 392 and 553. Luick analyzes not only the poems of the "Pearl poet," but also the _Troy Book_, the _Alexander Fragments_, _William of Palerne_, _Joseph of Arimathea_, _Morte Arthure_, and minor poems. He finds the _Troy Book_ the most regular alliterative poem of Middle English, but in all of the group a general tendency to preserve not only the early laws of alliteration but also the "five types" of Sievers's Anglo-Saxon metrics. Dr. Luick attributes the final decline of the old measure in large degree to the falling away of the final syllables in _-e_, etc.; without these numerous feminine endings the primitive "long line" was impossible. This he regards as regrettable, since the old alliterative verse, "growing up on native soil with the language itself," represented the natural accent-relations of the Germanic languages, especially the recognition of two principal degrees of accent; whereas the modern rimed verse requires the reduction of this to a uniform "tick-tack" of alternating stress and non-stress. He put on his back a good plate-jack, And on his head a cap of steel, With sword and buckler by his side; O gin he did not become them weel! (_Ballad of Bewick and Grahame_. In GUMMERE'S _English Ballads_, p. 176.) The regular stanza of the old ballads was of this four-stress type, with extra light syllables admitted anywhere yet not in great numbers. More commonly, however, the fourth stress was lost from the second and fourth lines. (See p. 264, below.) I thanke hym full thraly, and sir, I saie hym the same, But what marvelous materes dyd this myron ther mell? For all the lordis langage his lipps, sir, wer lame, For any spirringes in that space no speche walde he spell. (_York Mystery Plays: The Trial before Pilate_. Ed. L. T. SMITH, p. 322.) As Gammer Gurton, with manye a wyde styche, Sat pesynge and patching of Hodg her mans briche, By chance or misfortune, as shee her geare tost, In Hodge lether bryches her needle shee lost. (_Gammer Gurton's Needle_, Prologue. 1566.) In these specimens we have the later descendant of the long line as used in the early drama of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries,--the "tumbling verse," regular in rhythm and rime, but indifferent to the number of syllables.[17] Sometimes, where most regular, as in lines 2-4 of the second specimen, the measure approximates closely to regular four-stress anapestic.