Sir Orfeo

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1329

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Download PDF

Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Form and Meter

Sir Orfeo consists of octosyllabic lines. This means that each line has eight syllables:

There down in shade they sat all three,

beneath a fair young grafted tree;

and soon it chanced the gentle queen

fell there asleep upon the green (Lines 69-72).

There are some exceptions, since a small number of lines have nine syllables, for example, “concerning adventures in those days” (Line 15), “Of adventures that did once befall” (Line 21), “saw sixty ladies on horses ride” (Line 304), and “who had been royal, and high, and fair” (Line 326).

In the original Middle English, the initial unstressed syllable sometimes does not appear, giving a line of seven syllables, but Tolkien’s translation usually adds that missing syllable to create the iambic meter. For example, the Middle English line, “Traciens withouten no” becomes in Tolkien’s translation, “as Tracience was known to men” (Line 50).

Tolkien’s translation also varies the iambic rhythm from time to time, substituting a trochee—a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable—for an iamb in the first foot, for example, “‘Minstrel, thy music pleaseth me’” (Line 449). In the line that follows, Tolkien uses a spondee (two stressed syllables) in the first foot: “Come, ask of me whate’er it be” (Line 450). Lines 521-22 provide another example of a trochaic first foot: “[T]rumpeters, tabourers there played / harpers and fiddlers music made.”

Rhyme

The poem consists of rhyming couplets, or two successive lines of verse that rhyme: “Sir Orfeo was a king of old, / in England lordship high did hold” (Lines 25-26). In Tolkien’s translation, the vast majority of the rhymes are masculine rhymes, in which the rhyme falls on the final stressed syllable. In the couplet quoted above, “old” and “hold” is a masculine rhyme. In the original poem, in Middle English, there are many feminine rhymes. A feminine rhyme consists of a stressed syllable followed by one or more unstressed syllables. It is common in Middle English verse because of the frequency of the final e, which is pronounced, as in “Himself loved for to harpe / And laide theron his wittes sharpe.” In his translation, Tolkien turns this feminine rhyme into a masculine one: “[H]imself he loved to touch the harp / and pluck the strings with fingers sharp” (Lines 37-38).

Alliteration

Alliteration is a common poetic device. It consists of the repetition of the initial consonant sounds in nearby words, and it can be particularly effective when a poem is read aloud, as Sir Orfeo would have been in medieval times. Examples from Tolkien’s translation include “every field is filled with flowers” (Line 60), “Blossom blows” (Line 61), “glory and in gladness grows” (Line 62), “spread and spring” (Line 67), “dark my doom” (Line 127), “weeping woe” (Line 234), “heather hard” (Line 243), “water and wild, and woods” (Line 245), “long and lank” (Line 266), “marvelous minstrelsy” (Line 302), “stock nor stone he stayed / Right into a rock the ladies rode (Lines 346-47), “princely and proud” (Line 356), “mirth and music” (Line 383), “gnarled and knotted” (Line 508), and “sore and strong” (Line 560).

Anaphora

Anaphora is a literary device in which a word or a phrase at the beginning of a line is repeated in subsequent lines. Like alliteration, anaphora is also effective when a poem is read aloud, as the repetitions build up, relentlessly driving the point home. In Sir Orfeo, anaphora occurs most strikingly in the description of the grisly sight that greets Orfeo as he enters the fairy palace. He sees some of the people whom the fairies have abducted. Ten lines begin with the word “and,” and of those, six lines begin with “and some”:

For some there stood who had no head,

and some no arms, nor feet; some bled

and through their bodies wounds were set,

and some were strangled as they ate,

and some lay raving, chained and bound,

and some in water had been drowned;

and some were withered in the fire,

and some on horse, in war’s attire,

and wives there lay in their childbed,

and mad were some, and some were dead;

and passing many there lay beside

as though they slept at quiet noon-tide (Lines 391-402).

Another example of anaphora can be found in Lines 241-253, in which the phrase “He once had” (Line 241) is repeated at the beginning of Lines 245, 249, and, in slightly varied form, Line 253. The repetitions effectively emphasize the contrast between Orfeo’s life in the wilderness and his former life as king.