In composing a Christian heroic poem in the traditional alliterative metre, the Heliand poet encountered a serious challenge that was scarcely known to his Anglo-Saxon colleagues: he had to work in a significantly different prosodic environment, namely a weakening of stress in Old Saxon. The reduced force of stress in Old Saxon may be demonstrated by the following three phonological processes: (i) restoration of syncopated vowels (section 1.3.1); (ii) development of svarabhakti vowels (section 1.3.2); (iii) retention of /j/ that induced West Germanic Gemination (section 1.3.3). Syncopated vowels were restored in Old Saxon primarily by reintroduction of feet in word-final position: unstressed vowels were accordingly precluded from loss by virtue of their resultant incorporation into foot organisation. This reintroduction of feet came into effect by removing Defooting, the phonological rule that had been largely responsible for syncopation, and the removal at issue may in turn be ascribed to the weakened dominating power of preceding stressed syllables. Svarabhakti vowels developed in Old Saxon as a primary strategy for dealing with liquid reduction in prefinal position in the coda of stressed syllables. An alternative solution by diphthongisation (breaking) such as was implemented in Old English was hardly viable in Old Saxon given the lowered attracting power of stress: the complex coda consequent on breaking could not have been subsumed under stressed syllables in Old Saxon.