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This article focuses on the significance of alliteration used in literature with an example from "Ívens Saga," a condensed prose version of its French source. Alliteration is one of the characteristics of the "courtly style" used in literature. A study of the function of alliteration in a translated saga is necessary in order to determine the redactor's understanding of his source, his control over his material, and his ability to impart to it, an appropriate linguistic form. It is not always easy or even possible to decide whether alliteration occurs more or less by chance or whether the redactor used this poetic figure intentionally in order to produce a desired effect. Scattered throughout "Ívens Saga," are numerous simple formulaic alliterative pairs which are common to the translated sagas. Because of overuse many of these, alliterating expressions have lost their effectiveness. Alliteration usually occurs in those scenes which are dramatically significant. Invariably one finds clusters of alliterative groups in scenes depicting combat. Alliteration, like rhyme, is a source of auditory pleasure, but unlike rhyme, alliteration is not evenly distributed throughout "Ívens Saga."