Anglo-Saxon poetry depended for its pleasantness to the ear, not
on rhyme as does ours, but on accent and alliteration.
Alliteration means the repeating of a letter. Accent means that
you rest longer on some syllables, and say them louder than
others. For instance, if you take the line "the way was long,
the wind was cold," way, long, wind, and cold are accented. So
there are four accents in that line.

Now, in Anglo-Saxon poetry the lines were divided into two half-
lines. And in each half there had to be two or more accented
syllables. But there might also be as many unaccented syllables
as the poet liked. So in this way the lines were often very
unequal, some being quite short and others long. Three of the
accented syllables, generally two in the first half and one in
the second half of the line, were alliterative. That is, they
began with the same letter. In translating, of course, the
alliteration is very often lost. But sometimes the Semi-Saxon
words and the English words are very like each other, and the
alliteration can be kept. So that even in translation we can get
a little idea of what the poetry sounded like. For instance, the
line "wat heo ihoten weoren: and wonene heo comen," the
alliteration is on w, and may be translated "what they called
were, and whence they came," still keeping the alliteration.

Upon these rules of accent and alliteration the strict form of
Anglo-Saxon verse was based. But when the Normans came they
brought a new form of poetry, and gradually rhymes began to take
the place of alliteration. Layamon wrote his Brut more than a
hundred years after the coming of the Normans, and although his
poem is in the main alliterative, sometimes he has rhyming lines