We know that the final two feet have to be - u u | - x, so that takes away five syllables, leaving us with ten syllables to divide between four feet. The first thing to do is count the syllables in the line. I sing of arms and the man, who first, from the shores of Troy. If we take the opening line of the Aeneid as an example:Īrma virumque cano, Troiae qui primus ab ori So, let's think about this in terms of some actual Latin. u u | - u u | - u u | - u u | - u u | - x The final two feet of hexameter will always be a dactyl followed by a spondee, so the lines will be like this: When this happens, it is not counted for the purpose of scansion. It is marked //Įlision is when the vowel or sometimes a dipthong is not pronounced at the end of a word. It must come at the end of a word, and commonly is found in the third foot, sometimes in the fourth and occasionally elsewhere in the line. It consists of two long syllables and is marked up like this - and sounds dum dumĪ caesura is a break in the line.
It consists of one long and two short syllables, and is shown like this - u u and sounds like dum di diĪ spondee is a long foot. It is one sound, that often has consonants on either side of it.Ī foot is made up of several syllables, and in hexameter there will be six of these in a line.Ī dactyl is the basic form of a foot. When scanning, there are a couple of important terms you need to know:Ī syllable is a vowel or a dipthong.
Epic, such as Ovid's metamorphoses or Virgil's Aeneid, are written in hexameter. Establish the rhythm you need with your hands acting as a metronome and then start reading.Latin poems are written in a number of forms. Does the rhythm hold? Are there any pauses, hesitations or rushed parts? Is the rhythm clear? Can you clap along to it? You can try the clapping bit without anyone else to help. The difference is that you create the framework yourself, but you then need to stick to it throughout.Ī good way to test your text is to get someone else to read it through aloud without reading it beforehand. It either fits or it doesn’t – rather like doing a word puzzle. The words have to fit the rhythm to create the correct scansion so you need to pick your words carefully you can’t force them in or change the way they are stressed because it just won’t work. Here’s the verse again with the stressed syllables shown in bold: If we tried to use ‘alert mouse’ instead of ‘lonely mouse’, it doesn’t work because the stress on this word needs to be on the first syllable in order to fall on DUM in the rhythm, as in lone ly, not the second syllable, as in a lert. ‘A hippopotamus one day…’ would work, but then the next line would have to be changed as well to make sense. In fact to make it fit I would have to change it more substantially. What about a longer word? If I wrote ‘A hippopotamus came out one day’ I have gone well over the amount of syllables I have for that line. Your aim is to make your text ‘first read proof’ so even if the reader has no idea what the rhythm is it will still be there. If the first line was ‘A tortoise came out one day’ it wouldn’t work as there’s a missing syllable after tortoise so we have to leave a pause when we read it aloud to get it to fit.
The reason this fits is that (a) every syllable fits on to a de or a DUM and (b) every stressed syllable is on a DUM and every unstressed syllable is on a de. Let’s say your chosen rhythm is De DUM de DUM de DUM de DUM.Ĭatchy, isn’t it? Now imagine putting the words to that, eg off the top of my head: In the same why, when writing you are trying to fit words into the same sort of tight pattern. If you were given a popular song and asked to rewrite the lyrics, you would have to make sure that every syllable matched a note. It’s worth remembering that Julia Donaldson was a lyricist before she was an author – no wonder her picture book texts are so rhythmic. Basically if you regard your rhyming picture book text as lyrics for a song, or more specifically one verse that repeats over and over, you have the gist of it. Scanning, or scansion, is for some people an instinctive skill, while others need to give it more thought. I’ve been asked a number of times to explain scanning in rhyming picture books, so I’d thought I’d share this recent emailed explanation in the hope that it helps.
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