Scansion afterthought

In Reply to: Scanning posted by R. Berg on December 27, 2002

The full Scottish proverb:
"If wishes were horses, beggars would ride
If turnips were swords, i'd wear one by my side
If ifs and ands were pots and pans,
there'd be no need for tinkers' hands"

Is it just me? I can't make this scan:
If turnips were swords, i'd wear one by my side
Either there's another way to read it, or word it ... or the Scots can't scan.

It does scan. There are twelve beats per line. The word "swords" lasts for just one beat not two.

The part that gives me trouble is "wear one by my side": its length and pattern of accents. It doesn't divide into DA-da-da like the rest. And the first line has only ten syllables. Are you counting more than one beat for some syllables? "If wi-shes were ho-or-ses, beg-gars would ri-ide"?

Sorry, I wasn't too clear. The verse is some sort of amphibrachic tetrameter, I think, which is short-long-short four times per line. The uppercase syllables below are stressed:

"If WISHes were HORSes, BEGgars would RIDE.
If TURnips were SWORDS, I'd wear ONE by my SIDE.
If IFS and ANDS were POTS and PANS,
There'd BE no NEED for TINkers' HANDS."

When you say the second line, do not pause at all. Ignore the comma. It scans. Really.

I ain't buyiin' it. I don't think there are 12 syllables in any of those lines. (Of course, I kept my shoes on, so counting to 12 is a challenge for me.)

Bob, let's lose that counting method anyway. It's confusing. I never know whether to include in the total the finger I'm counting the other fingers with.

Mr. or Ms. Fullstop, it didn't occur to me to stress ONE. I stressed WEAR, as in speech:
If TURnips were SWORDS, I'd WEAR one BY my SIDE
and got a line consisting of two and a fraction dactyls followed by three minus a fraction trochees. If that's an amphibrachic something, no wonder they went extinct and turned into petroleum deposits while our ancestors had the size and posture of rats.

Rats without internal cumbustion engines. And it served them right.

What wonderful technical terms - and I thought medicine was complex!!

I was going to post on this one earlier, but couldn't dredge up all the necessary technical terms from my memory. The anonymous Dot is exactly right with his/her display of where the stresses fall, and nearly right with his/her terminology.

The first two lines are strictly speaking each three amphibrachs (ta-TUM-tum) followed by a single iamb (ta-TUM). The last two lines are much easier to spot, each clearly consisting of four simple iambs (ta-TUM).

There's potential difficulty in seeing this in both lines one and two. Line one has a mute beat in it as follows:-

"if WI-shes / were HOR-ses,/ * BEG-gars / would RIDE"

Reading it clearly requires a pause after the comma by the reader, and then it scans perfectly.

Contrarily, the second line requires no pause and indeed an elision across two words, thus:-

"if TUR-nips / were SWORDS-i'd / wear ONE by / my SIDE"

It's the "swordsid" that's presenting the problems.

Of course, the problem's entirely solved if the first line has over the years lost a word, thus

"if WI-shes / were HOR-ses, / (then) BEG-gars / would RIDE"

It's not an essential, but it may help clarify the metric beat and where to pause if you silently add it.