The study of Old English metre has a long and illustrious history, yet it seems fair to say that the work of many respected scholars over the past hundred years has not produced unanimity. One reason for this is that objective and unequivocal evidence about the metre of Old English poetry is very difficult to discover. That is, before evidence is considered, or even collected, a substantial amount of interpretation and analysis has usually taken place. In the following pages, however, I shall present some previously unnoticed and quite unequivocal evidence about Old English metre that does not depend upon any particular metrical theory or upon unsupported assumptions, but rather upon the uncontroversial and universally accepted fact that Old English poetry requires a minimum of two alliterating stresses, one in each verse (or half-line), and allows two alliterations on the same sound only in the a verse.