My first stab at Germanic poetry in prayer..

[Aiwelin]

While coming up with a Pagan Blog Project post this week, I felt the need to write a prayer for healing to my Idesa (Anglo-Saxon equivalent of the Norse Disir).  It's my first stab at alliterative verse, and since I've never understood the concept of stressed syllables very well, I'm not sure how it turned out.  Would anyone with a little more knowledge be willing to offer a critique?  Thank you!

Mothers who mourned when your merry ones were ill,
my children are crying, chilled and feverish.
Help us, heal us, hold us together
so fit and fierce, we will face the day.

[bobthesane]

While coming up with a Pagan Blog Project post this week, I felt the need to write a prayer for healing to my Idesa (Anglo-Saxon equivalent of the Norse Disir).  It's my first stab at alliterative verse, and since I've never understood the concept of stressed syllables very well, I'm not sure how it turned out.  Would anyone with a little more knowledge be willing to offer a critique?  Thank you!

Mothers who mourned when your merry ones were ill,
my children are crying, chilled and feverish.
Help us, heal us, hold us together
so fit and fierce, we will face the day.

this flows very nicely. I found myself falling right into the rhythm while reading it

[ALiteraryLady]

While coming up with a Pagan Blog Project post this week, I felt the need to write a prayer for healing to my Idesa (Anglo-Saxon equivalent of the Norse Disir).  It's my first stab at alliterative verse, and since I've never understood the concept of stressed syllables very well, I'm not sure how it turned out.  Would anyone with a little more knowledge be willing to offer a critique?  Thank you!

Mothers who mourned when your merry ones were ill,
my children are crying, chilled and feverish.
Help us, heal us, hold us together
so fit and fierce, we will face the day.

 
It's a beautiful verse and I think it would be appropriate for your Idesa to hear. I like the message and flow of it.

[Aiwelin]

this flows very nicely. I found myself falling right into the rhythm while reading it

 

It's a beautiful verse and I think it would be appropriate for your Idesa to hear. I like the message and flow of it.

Thank you both!  I'll be tucking this one away for future use

[SunflowerP]

this flows very nicely. I found myself falling right into the rhythm while reading it

 
I agree! And 'flows well' and 'falling right into the rhythm' are more critical, IMO/IME, than whether you have exactly the syllable counts that someone writing poetry in Anglo-Saxon twelve centuries ago would've had. Germanic-style alliterative verse is about the effect, not about exact forms.

Sunflower

[Gilbride]

It's my first stab at alliterative verse, and since I've never understood the concept of stressed syllables very well,[/I][/CENTER]

This is actually really good, so you must understand it better than you think.

The easiest way to think of syllable stress is that stressed syllables are STRONG and unstressed are weak. Iambic pentameter (just as an example) has ten syllables per line in the pattern:

weak STRONG weak STRONG weak STRONG weak STRONG weak STRONG

Or:

"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?"

Or:

I'm going to the store to get some beer

I'm using iambics only because it's relatively easy to hear the pattern, but of course Germanic alliterative verse doesn't use iambics. Anyway, when you're trying to figure out a rhythm of stresses as you're writing a poem, just take an example of the same kind of poem and translate one or two lines into patterns of weak and strong and the rhythm you need should become clear.

Having said all that, I don't think you really need it because your verse flowed really well.

[Fireof9]

While coming up with a Pagan Blog Project post this week, I felt the need to write a prayer for healing to my Idesa (Anglo-Saxon equivalent of the Norse Disir).  It's my first stab at alliterative verse, and since I've never understood the concept of stressed syllables very well, I'm not sure how it turned out.  Would anyone with a little more knowledge be willing to offer a critique?  Thank you!

Mothers who mourned when your merry ones were ill,
my children are crying, chilled and feverish.
Help us, heal us, hold us together
so fit and fierce, we will face the day.

I'll agree that it flows very nicely and is really beautiful as well.