Alliteration (also
known as 'head rhyme' or 'initial rhyme') is the repetition of the same
sounds—usually initial consonants of words or of stressed syllables—in any
sequence of neighbouring words: 'Landscapelover, lord of language' (Tennyson).
Now an optional and incidental decorative effect in verse or prose, it was once
a required element in the poetry of Germanic languages (including Old English
and Old Norse) and in Celtic verse (where alliterated sounds could regularly be
placed in positions other than the beginning of a word or syllable). Such poetry,
in which alliteration rather than rhyme is the chief principle of repetition,
is known as alliterative verse; its rules also allow a vowel sound to
alliterate with any other vowel.