There is a lot of information available about pronunciation of Old English and the meter of the Beowulf poem. The information (from Howell D. Chickering, A. G. Rigg, Bruce Mitchell and Fred Robinson, Helmut Gneuss, Alan J. Bliss, and Stephen Pollington) below is only the beginning of what you will be able to find.

The following books have information on meter and pronunciation in Beowulf:

• The 1958 book by A.J. Bliss, "The Metre of Beowulf," and his shorter 1962 book, "An Introduction to Old English Metre," (which is entirely reproduced below) are entirely dedicated to this topic
• Bjork and Niles, section entitled "Diction," pages 89-98
• Brodeur, section I, "The Diction of Beowulf," pages 1-38 and section II, "Variation," pages 39-70
• Cable, chapter 1, entitled "Old English Meter," pages 6-40
• Chickering, section entitled "Guide to Reading Aloud," pages 29-38
• Jack, section entitled "Style and Diction," pages 15-20
• Klaeber section VI, "Tone, Style, Meter," page lviii-lxxi and section VII, "Language," pages lxxi-xcv
• Mitchell and Robinson (A Guide to Old English), is entirely dedicated to learning how to read and speak Old English
• Mitchell and Robinson (Beowulf, An Edition), Section E, "Style, Tone and Metre," pages 24-31
• Pollington, "First Steps in Old English," is a very good introduction to reading Old English, and in part 2, pages 135-150, is a section entitled "The Pronunciation of Old English" (selected pages from this book are reproduced below)
• Porter, section entitled "Metre" page 8, and "Pronunciation" pages 9-10
• Sedgefield, Appendix II, sub-titled "The O.E. Alliterating Metre," pages 266-269 of the second edition of the book
• Wrenn, Section 6, "Verse Technique," pages 54-62

• Ben Slade's Old English glossary is at: http://www.heorot.dk/glossary.html
• http://acunix.wheatonma.edu/mdrout/GrammarBook/Pronunciation.html
• http://www.btranslations.com/resources/oldenglish/index.asp
• http://www.engl.virginia.edu/OE/Sound.howto.html
• http://www.hf.ntnu.no/engelsk/staff/johannesson/!oe/texts/lect/oecons.htm
• http://www.kami.demon.co.uk/gesithas/OEsteps/pronounc.html
• http://www.ucalgary.ca/UofC/eduweb/engl401/lessons/pronunc1.htm
• http://www.wmich.edu/medieval/research/rawl/IOE/pronunciation.html

The Verse Form

[Often Scyld Scefing       seized mead-benches from enemy troops,       from many a clan; he terrified warriors,       even though first he was found a waif, helpless.       For that came a remedy]

     The markings , , and indicate heavy stress, half stress, and weak stress. The alliterating sounds are capitalized in bold face. It should be noted that any initial vowel can alliterate with any other.

     The letters in the margins above identify the metrical type of each half-line. While there are variations within each type, basically there are only six stress patterns used throughout Old English poetry. This classification was made by the German scholar Eduard Sievers in the late nineteenth century. There are more than six thousand half-lines in Beowulf, and they all fall into one of the following types of stress patterns:

     If we substitute these Modern English examples (devised by J.R.R. Tolkien) in the OE. quotation above, we can see that the half-line patterns make up whole lines of roughly equal weight, no matter what types are used in any given line:

     The conventions of the verse form in Beowulf do not permit long runs of the same stress patterns, and the last two lines here are close to the limit of metrical repetition. Nor are there usually two half-lines of the same type within a single line. Instead, different types are joined together in each line, to meet the needs of meaning and syntax and to create a harmonious variety from half-lines of similar length. Roughly 40 per cent of the half-lines are Type A.

     A great deal of unnecessary technical fuss can be made over Sievers' types. It helps to notice the similarity between Types A and D and what we normally call trochaic feet; between Type B and our traditional iambics; and the fact that Type C is the inside-out version of Type E . The metrical types are best understood as selections from the wide variety of normal stress patterns found within any given two-beat utterance of spoken English prose. The stress patterns of Old English verse differ from the patterns in Old English prose chiefly in two respects: their stresses are clearer, and they have fewer unstressed syllables. The stresses are clearer because they are louder and higher. In normal speech, when a speaker emphasizes a word or syllable, he raises its stress by raising his voice in pitch and volume. In Old English verse, it is the artifice of alliteration -- coming on top of the natural heavy stress -- that produces the "overstressed" effect. This gives a formal rhythm to that line, so that it sounds rather like chanting to a 4/8 musical tempo.

     This regularity of timing was not taken into account by Sievers, whose method of scansion, if practiced scrupulously, leads to an ungainly drawling or hurrying up of some half-lines. The rhythm and tempo of Old English verse during recitation have been explained by another theory worked out mainly by Andreas Heusler and John Pope. This system takes the musical concept of the measure as its basis and states that four isochronous (equally timed) measures are found in all lines. When a normal enunciation of the syllables in the half-line does not fill the measure, Pope has suggested that the harp would be struck to fill in the "rest" in the verbal music. From the description of the scop's performance at the hall-feast in lines 89-90 and elsewhere, it is clear that the harp, or more exactly, the Germanic round lyre, was used in the recitation of Old English verse. Whether it was used only to fill rests or used continuously and whether chords or single notes were struck are still matters for conjecture.

     The isochronous theory is especially attractive as an explanation for the "hypermetric" verses found occasionally in Old English verse. Examples of such "long lines" occur in lines 1163-68, 1705-7, and 2995-96 of Beowulf. They are like Sievers' usual half-line types, but with extra unaccented syllables and roughly twice the length of ordinary verses. They are explained in Pope's theory as a doubling of the regular 4/8 measure, filling out the same time interval but in 4/4 tempo.

     Attempts to combine the two systems of scansion have often been made, and new analyses of Old English meter have recently been offered from other points of view as well. But the endeavor to find a comprehensive theory of Old English meter is rather like trying to account for all the variations upon iambic pentameter throughout the history of later English poetry. Paull F. Baum, a scholar of great good sense, was well nigh irrefutable when he said the Beowulf is roughly isochronous and roughly trochaic (Types A and D). If the reader remembers these two points and lets his voice follow the natural flow of the sense, he can scan the poem easily and can gain a clear sense of how the alliterative meter reinforces poetic meaning.

Aids to Scansion and Recitation

     Alliteration. To find the alliteration of a given line, look at the first large word in the second half-line. Very likely (but not always) it will be the third stress and the key to the alliteration. Check to see if its initial consonant is matched by a stressed word or words in the first half-line. If its initial letter is a vowel, look for any other initial vowels in the first half-line.

     Stress. All Old English words normally have the heavy stress on the first syllable of the root. Thus root syllables receive the alliterating stresses. To find the root of a word, the following rules are helpful. (1) Compounds: the first element of a compound receives the heavy stress, and the second element receives a half stress. Examples: . (2) Prefixes: since they come before the root, prefixes need to be recognized and given weak stress. The following are the most frequent: á-, æt-, an-, be-, bí-, for-, ge-, ofer-, on-, tó,un-, wið-. [Chickering's diacritics in the preceeding list are all straight lines over the letters. Syd.] The noun and verb prefix ge- is especially common and is never stressed. Sometimes a prefix that changes the meaning of a word (e.g., un-) will receive a strong stress. (3) Finally, if there is no prefix, the first syllable of a word will be the root. Division into syllables follows the same rules as Modern English.

     Parts of Speech. The alliterating stresses fall most often on nouns, then on adjectives, then verbs. Once the student of Old English begins to recognize these parts of speech -- and the general reader can see the ancenstors of many Modern English words, even without learning Old English -- the task of getting the stress right is greatly simplified. Verbs frequently come at the end of the second half-line, receiving the non-alliterating fourth stress. When they come earlier in a clause they do not take a heavy stress even if they could alliterate. For example:

'the troop was in joy' (2014)

Here wæs might even take only a light stress, depending on how fast the reader is reciting. The other parts of speech -- adverbs, pronouns, conjunctions -- all take light stress, with the exception that if they are out of their natural word order in the sentence, they may be given heavy stress:

'I know [this about]       my noble Hrothulf'

     Rhetorical emphasis can also elevate pronouns and adverbs to heavy stress:

     But as a general rule, expect nouns and adjectives to receive the alliteration and the heavy stresses.

     Grammatical Formulas. Some half-line types are naturally filled by certain grammatical units. For instance, Type Da will exactly accomodate the genitive plural of a compound present participle used as a noun:

     Type A fits a number of especially common grammatical patterns in the plural:

adjective + noun: 'hateful strangers'
subject + verb: 'the warriors fell'
object + verb: 'spears they bore'
infinitive + verb: 'to wield they were able'
noun + adjective: 'for war eager'

(Exampled adapted from Bruce Mitchell.) Once the reader recognizes such grammatical combinations, he will also know how to stress the words.'

     Recitation. Tastes will differ according to the prosodical persuasion of one's teacher. It is possible to read Beowulf aloud as a sort of quick and lively rhythmical prose, without pausing noticeably between half-lines. At the other extreme, some readers prefer a heavy bardic chant, like Vachel Lindsay's The Congo at half speed. I think an intermediate pace is best, somewhat slower than ordinary conversation but not so slow as Presidential oratory. The alliterating stresses should come out clearly, strongly, and regularly, with pauses between half-lines as the punctuation indicates.

     The stress and intonation of the Modern English sense make the best guide to the recitation of the original. The reader should feel free to introduce tonal nuances, changes of speed, pronlongations for emphasis, and rhetorical pauses. A poem that was meant to be said aloud invites dramatic interpretation. The beginner should not be shy about experimenting, so long as he sees clearly where the alliterating stresses fall and how they mold the meaning of the sentence.

Old English Pronunciation

Diphthongs

Consonants

Consonants that are pronounced differently:

1. sc is like sh in Mod. Eng. ship: OE, scip 'ship'
2. cg is like dg in Mod. Eng. edge: OE. ecg 'edge'
3. h at the beginning of the word is aspirated as in Mod. Eng. house. Thus OE. hús 'house.' Otherwise h is pronounced like Ger. ch in ach or ich. Thus OE. niht 'night' sounds like Ger. nicht.
4. c usually has the sound of k, and g is usually the hard g of God. (This means that -ing sounds like "ingk.") However, it is crucial to pay attention to the following rule:

   Before or after i or e, and after æ, c has the sound of ch as in child, and g has the sound of y as in yet.

   These palatalized pronunciations occur just as frequently as do the hard g and k sounds. Examples:

   dæg 'day,' pronounced roughly "dæy"
   cild 'child,' pronounced "chilled"
   micel 'great,' pronounced "mitchel"
   ic 'I,' pronounced "itch"
   spræc [with a line over the æ] 'speech,' pronounced "sprætch"
   ge- the prefix, always pronounced "yuh" or "yeh"
   hefig 'heavy,' pronounced roughly "heavy"
   giefu 'gift,' pronounced roughly "yivoo"

   Exceptions to this rule can be recognized by the pronunciation of their Mod. Eng. descendants: OE, bæc 'back,' céne 'keen.'

5. Two letters peculiar to OE, are þ (thorn) and ð (eth) which interchangeably represent the th sound. Both letters can have either the voiceless sound of Mod. Eng. thin or the voiced sound of Mod. Eng. other.