Stress Assignment in Middle English Alliterative Poetry.

Finds PPl the sole exception to the general rule (borne out by a study of 18,528 alliterating verses) that in authorial lines metrical and linguistic stress always falls on alliterating syllables. Thus for PPl it is necessary to qualify the rule as follows: “When the alliterating staves are established clearly in the a-verse, a word in the first or second dip of the b-verse may carry alliteration without bearing linguistic or metrical stress.”