Manuscript Evidence and Metrical Authenticity: A Response to Seiichi Suzuki

Abstract

This article offers a critical response to Seiichi Suzuki’s recent defence of three-position (catalectic) verses in Beowulf and Genesis A as authentic features of Old English metre. While Suzuki attributes their scarcity to poets’ resistance to an inherent tendency toward drop deletion, this study re-examines the manuscript evidence in detail. Through close metrical, linguistic, and textual analysis, it demonstrates that the majority of the alleged catalectic verses are better explained as products of scribal corruption, editorial misinterpretation, dialectal substitution, omission, or transposition. Once problematic examples are excluded, the remaining instances are too few and too textually insecure to justify positing catalexis as a genuine metrical option. Comparative evidence from poems preserved in multiple witnesses further supports the traditional view that exceptionally short verses typically arise from accidental loss in transmission rather than from authorial practice. The article therefore reaffirms the four-position principle as the governing structural norm of Old English verse and argues that appeals to catalexis lack sufficient empirical foundation.