> Many folksongs & blues employ dipodic modes. Not a no-no at all in my
> book.
>
> jd
... and ballads and nursery rhymes.
The NPEPP has a whole column (written by Tim Brogan) on it.
To quote:
"... primarily the term is now used to refer to a distinctive feature of
ballad meter (q.v.) namely stress hierarchy. ... in ballad meter, not only
do the stresses and the slacks alternate, but the primary and secondary
stresses alternate as well."
One example is :
\ x / x \ x x /
Humpty dumpty sat on a wall
\ x / x \ x x /
Humpty dumpty had a great fall.
[For anaoraks: The metre was first formally identified by Coventry Patmore
in 1857, and most fully explored by George R. Stewart in a book on ballad
metre in 1922. There are fairly extended discussions in Attridge, _Rhythms
of English Poetry_, and Joseph Malof, _A Manual of English Meters_ (1970)
{which is where I first noticed it referred to, and decided that it was a
useful way of identifying an element of John Crow Ransom's rhythm that had
intrigued me for ages}.
Malof's discussion is in pages 126-137 of his book.
From Malof:
"
THE DIPODIC PRINCIPLE
There is, in most folk-meter poems, an interesting rhythmical characteristic
which occurs so regularly that it may be considered a standard metrical law
of the folk lines. It has to do with the tendency of the primary stresses to
alternate with secondary stresses, and the tendency of the full-line always
to contain four primaries regardless of the number of secondaries. These
features can be explained in terms of the Dipodic Principle, a somewhat
involved dimension of the Folk Meters that we must look at now ... (126)
The basic measure or 'foot" of the regularly isochronous folk line consists
of one primary stress plus one secondary stress or its equivalent (in a
pause or hold). This two-stress foot is a dipod. A poem where primaries and
secondaries alternate regularly is called dipodic verse. ... The two
stresses may be separated by one, two, or no slacks, or possibly three ...
(128)
"
The reason why New Formalists try to pretend it doesn't exist is that the
division between strong and weak stressed syllables as a *significant
patterning element in the meter is totally alien to syllable accent meter.
Strictly, though no one bothers to do this, it being taken pretty much as
read, one should distinguish between METERS and METRICAL SYSTEMS. There are
five [or six] potential metrical *systems which have been used, with a
greater or lesser degree of success, in English poetry -- Stress, Syllable
Accent, Dipodic, Quantitative, Syllabic and [Free Verse].
Thus, the iambic metre is one of the four metres [the others being trochaic,
anapestic and dactylic -- I'm with Malof here in limiting the useful number
feet to use to discuss syllable accent metre to four] found as part of the
Syllable Accent metrical system.
Phew!]
Robin
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