Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1981, Page 173
Extended alliteration usually occurs in scenes dramatically and structur-
ally significant for the plot. Alliterative clusters can take several forms.
At times one sound alone predominates, but more frequently alliterative
groups in varying combinations are interlaced with one another, or se-
mantically synonymous or antithetic collocations appear as part of an
extended enumeration. Invariably, one comes across alliteration in
scenes in which combat is depicted, as in the following passage from
Parcevals saga, in which Parceval’s bout with the Red Knight is depicted:
På reiddisk riddarinn
ok tok spjot sitt bååum hondum
ok slo svein um jwerar herdar honum
med |}eim endanum sem eigi var jarnit i
svå at hann seig eptir hogginu å hals hestinum.
På reiddisk sveinn
ok réttisk upp ok /iristi gaflak sitt
ok fleygdi at riddaranum med ollu afli
ok skaut hann \ augat
svå at /zeilinn fylgdi ut um /makkann,
en riddarinn féll jafnskiott daudr til jardar. (ch. 3, 9:17-23)
(Then the knight got angry and took his lance with both hånds and
struck the boy across both his shoulders with that end in which
there was no iron, so that from the blow he was brought down onto
the neck of the horse. Then the boy got angry, and straightened up
and brandished his javelot, and let fly at the knight with all his
might, and pierced him through the eye so that the brain came out
at the nape of the neck, and the knight feli at once dead to the
ground.)
The scene is relatively short and consists of two parallel periods, each
commencing with på reiddisk ..., one focusing on the Red Knight, the
other on Parceval. Both sentences contain vowel alliteration in addition
to the s- and h- alliteration in the first period, and r- alliteration in the
second. The passage contains a repertoire of standard alliterating combi-
nations, such as subject-verb (reiddist.riddari), verb-object (slo:svein),
and verb-verb (réttist.hristi).32 In this passage as in others cited below
32 For the various categories of alliterating combinations possible, see especially Gering,
Islendzk Æventyri, II, pp. XXXI-XLIX. In the passage above, alliteration is indicated from
159