Ref. Davidson, C., 'Erotic “Women's Songs” in Anglo-Saxon England',
Neophilologus, 59 (1975), 451–62
Davidson provides the following text and translation for "Nam languens" (I've guessed at the line breaks in the translation):
Nam languens amore tuo
consurrexi diluculo
perrexique pedes nuda
per
niues et frigora
atque maria rimabar mesta
si forte uentiuola
uela
cernerem
aut frontem nauis conspicerem
Languishing with love for you,
I rose at daybreak
and bare- footed
went
through the snow and cold,
and examined the sea-waste
to see if
I could spot
sails in the breeze
or see the bow of a ship
Some notable features:
Irregular line length: I think. There are a lot of vowels in there, and I'm guessing which ones make dipthongs and which ones get pronounced separately. I think it goes 8-8-8, 7-10-7, 6-9.
Not much end rhyme: tuo/diluculo is weak; cernerem/conspicerem is better. The other lines all end on unaccented "a" sounds but they're not true feminine rhymes.
A little internal same-sounds: consurrexi/perrexique catches the ear
Rhythmic trope: Not being sure of the pronunciation, I don't think there's a particular exact rhythm, but a pattern of "u u / u" (or maybe "\ u / u")shows up a lot.
Alliteration:
- Line 2: If the first syllable of "consurrexi" is a weak or secondary stress, that with the third syllable of "diluculo."
- Line 3: Same with first syllable of "perrexique" and "pedes"
- Line 3-4: "nuda" with "niues." In OE poetry, the last stress of a line could foreshadow the alliteration of the next line.
- Line 5: "maRIa" with "rimabar" (which, probably because of the -ar ending, I'm thinking sounds like RIMabar, as it would in Spanish); "maria" sort of with "mesta" (the m in maria isn't stressed but it does start the word).
- Lines 6-7: Assonace, with "uentiuola"s primary and secondary stresses assonating with "uela," next line.
- Lines 7-8: Eh... does "cernerem" foreshadow "conspicerem"? I'd guess they're pronounced KER-ner-em and con-SPEE-ker-em, again based on my Spanish experience. There's a lot of hard "C"s going on even if they're not stressed in the second line.
Not that I pretend to really know a single thing about modern poetry, but this reminds me a bit of free verse. There are definite poetic techniques being used, even if there is no fixed form.
Or is there?
"The eight syllable lines of this fragmentary poem break down in the last three lines; the version given here is amended to give it the octosyllabic structure it seems meant to have." Jane Stevenson, Women Latin Poets, footnote on p. 103.
Anne Klink (hey, I remember her from the Wulf and Eadwacer translation!) has this to say about it in her An Anthology of ancient and medieval woman's song:
Possibly this evocative piece is a fragment of something longer; only the feminine inflection of nuda points unmistakably to a female speaker. The woman looking out over the sea is reminiscent of Ariadne, except that here she seems to be expecting a returning lover. Ovid (although not Catullus) was well known in the Middle Ages and may have been an influence. As in the following two poems, there are also echoes of the Song of Songs.
[The poem follows, being broken into short four syllable lines.]
Provenance: Germany, early 11th century.
Meter: Lines 1-8 and 14 of 4 syllables; 9-10 and 12-13 of 5; line 11 of 7. The alternate lines rhyme. Could also be treated as (for the most part) longer lines rhyming in pairs.
...I may need to acquire that book. It looks good.
Okay, so... octosyllabic rhyming couplets, maybe totally regular, maybe not. Not like that's unusual or anything. It still doesn't seem very rhymy to me, though. Maybe there's a technical poetry word that covers it that I don't know.
