The caesura after the fourth syllable suggests analogy with the Vedic,
Avestan, Greek, and Irish long lines formed with a four-syllable protasis.
What follows the caesura is an exact fit with our ^^G^^ prototype. That it is
to be assigned to our catalectic category is confirmed by the existence in
Russia of an acatalectic equivalent, an eleven-syllable verse, no longer with the
caesura, but still with the ninth syllable stressed and prolonged. We may infer
that proto-Slavonic had the two types, acatalectic ×××× | ××∪––∪−∪− ||
and catalectic ×××× | ××∪––∪−− ||.
Another common Slavonic verse, used for epical-historical narratives, is of
eight syllables, with stress on the sixth. By the principles applied above, this
should correspond to the G prototype, ××××∪−∪− ||. If we take the
Russian form of this verse, where the third syllable is also stressed, and apply
the same method, we arrive at ××−∪∪−∪− ||, which is exactly the Greek
glyconic and a frequent manifestation of the Vedic octosyllable. Outside
Russia, however, the stresses in the first half of the verse fall rather on the first
and fourth (Bulgaria) or the second and fourth syllables. There is also a
caesura after the fifth.
Another kind of octosyllable, associated with laments, is characterized by
trochaic rhythm and thus penultimate stress. This suggests the catalectic
category, and again there is a Russian acatalectic equivalent with an extra
syllable at the end to provide confirmation. There is also, in Russian and
Serbo-Croat, a longer form of the line, with an extra four-syllable colon at the
beginning –– the now familiar protasis element.
The Lithuanian songs make use of cola of four, five, six, and seven syllables
in various combinations.^81 The penultimate syllable tends to be long and
stressed, the distribution of other stresses being irregular. We find strophes
consisting of two, three, or four heptasyllables; strophes of two or four lines
of 5 | 5, or four of 5 | 4; of 5 | 5 | 7; of four of 4 | 6, or two of 4 | 4; of 4 | 4 | 6.
In a folk-tale published by Schleicher a horse utters a series of octosyllables
(4 | 4), concluding, as it were catalectically, with a heptasyllable.^82 The 4 | 6
combination resembles the Slavonic decasyllable.
The Latvian folk singers use three types of metre. The most frequent is the
4 | 4 octosyllable. Its rhythm is strongly trochaic, as Latvian has an initial
stress and monosyllables may not be placed in the fourth and eighth positions
(which are normally short). Sometimes the hemistich takes a catalectic form,
×′×− | instead of ×′××∪ |. Secondly, there is also a 3 | 3 verse with dactylic
rhythm: ×′×∪ | ×′×∪ ||, again with catalectic variants. Gasparov suggests that
(^81) Rhesa (1825), 334–47; P. Trost in Poetics. Poetyka. Poètika, i (Warsaw–The Hague 1961),
119–26; Kuryłowicz (1973), 200–10; Gasparov (1996), 13 f.
(^82) Noted and quoted by Meillet (1923), 77 f.
- Poet and Poesy 55