An example of the latter is “Down he fell with a thud and his armor clattered around him”. Phase devices like this accomplish two purposes: the give the speaker time to formulate his next phrase, which may vary, and they also repeat words that the listener has heard before, creating familiarity during a portion of the story new to him.
Homer took oral tradition and made it into great poetry. How much of the technique (and the story) he inherited from his predecessors is unknown.