Word Play (Alliteration & Alphabet poem ver.3)

Back in the days before English had a written form, minstrals needed a way to remember the many stories they told. The trick they used most often is known as ALLITERATION, literally meaning 'letters next to each other'. Alliteration is the repetition of stressed, initial sounds of words - usually made by consonants. Without this little trick, stories such as Beowulf would have been totally lost to us.

Alliteration is still used in modern literature. The following example is Ogden Nash's "The Pushover":

My granddaughter, who when walking, wobbles,
Calls doggies "bow-wows" and turkeys "gobbles".
Yesterday I called a cow a "moo-moo",
See she's got me talking that way too!

The third type of alphabet poem commonly done has each letter used in a line of alliteration. For example:

Alligators amble in alleys
Bumping into burly bears
While cougars catch colds
And dingos dig deep
Egrets fly through the east egress
As great grackles grab
Hamburger from hungry hyenas
.........

For practice: write something using alliteration. (You can finish the above poem if you wish.)

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