verse passages are the more fixed or traditional elements, capable of being
sung or recited on their own, but needing to be put in context at least by oral
exposition, which then takes prose form in a written text.
This is an ancient and widespread format. An early non-Indo-European
example is the Hebrew saga incorporated in the historical books of the
Old Testament, which intermittently quotes songs that were sung at certain
critical moments. At least some of these appear to be much older than the
prose narrative, but they must always have been accompanied by some
account of the circumstances in which they were sung.^96
A pertinent Greek example is the pseudo-Herodotean Life of Homer, in the
course of which are quoted some seventeen short poems, the so-called
Homeric Epigrams, that Homer is supposed to have improvised in response
to various situations. Again, the poems must be centuries older than the
narrative in which they appear, much of which is constructed to support
them. But most of them only make sense with the story to explain them, and
they must always have been transmitted in the framework of some such
account.
We see comparable narrative forms in the Indian Bra ̄hman
̇
as and Ja ̄takas,
the Irish and Norse sagas, and Snorri’sGylfaginning. The songs or poetic
speeches represent the dramatic high points at which the characters give vent
to their emotions, as in the arias of opera. They tended to be handed down
with little change, whereas the prose narration that threads them together
could be reformulated by every storyteller. Many of the Eddic poems are of
this category, and in the Codex Regius that preserves them they are mostly
introduced and interlaced with explanatory prose passages. In earlier ages
when poetry was entirely oral it must have been quite common for poets to
supplement their recitals with accessory information given informally.^97
(^96) Cf. West (1997), 91 f.
(^97) Cf. Hermann Oldenberg, Die Literatur des alten Indien (Stuttgart–Berlin 1903), 44–7; Ernst
Windisch, Die altirische Heldensage Táin bó Cúalnge (Leipzig 1905), xlviii f.; id., Geschichte der
Sanskritphilologie (Strasbourg 1920), ii. 404–14; H. M. and N. K. Chadwick, The Growth of
Literature (Cambridge 1932–40), ii. 478 n. 2, 506; Dillon (1948), 2; (1975), 70–94, 147–53;
Winternitz (1959), 88 f., 184; L. Alsdorf, Journal of the Oriental Institute of Baroda 13 (1974),
195–207; Dillon (1975), 70–9, 147–53; Durante (1976), 68 n. 10; McCone (1990), 37 f.
(sceptical); W. Meid, Die keltischen Sprachen und Literatur (Innsbruck 1997), 48. It has been
argued that the Welsh saga englynion are relics of verse–prose narrative: Sir Ifor Williams, The
Beginnings of Welsh Poetry (2nd edn., Cardiff 1980), 126–42, cf. Chadwick–Chadwick, i. 44;
criticism in Rowland (1990), 260–75.
62 1. Poet and Poesy