Englyn

: Dear Price, pure in his diligent service Wide in his knowledge; A man acerbic, fearless and fluent, And thorough in doctrine. ( ; plural ) is a traditional Welsh short poem form, consisting of a stanza of either three or four lines. The metre involves the counting of syllables, and rigid patterns of rhyme and half rhyme. Many lines contain a repeating pattern of consonants and accent known as . An can be used as a poem in its own right, for example as an epitaph, or used in a series as part of a longer poem. Sometimes different types of are mixed in the same poem. The three-line was common in early Welsh poetry, but about the 12th century it went out of fashion, to be replaced completely by four-line varieties. The most common type of is the four-line , which is usually referred to simply as an .

: Dear Price, pure in his diligent service       Wide in his knowledge;    A man acerbic, fearless and fluent,    And thorough in doctrine. ( ; plural ) is a traditional Welsh short poem form, consisting of a stanza of either three or four lines. The metre involves the counting of syllables, and rigid patterns of rhyme and half rhyme. Many lines contain a repeating pattern of consonants and accent known as . An can be used as a poem in its own right, for example as an epitaph, or used in a series as part of a longer poem. Sometimes different types of are mixed in the same poem. The three-line was common in early Welsh poetry, but about the 12th century it went out of fashion, to be replaced completely by four-line varieties. The most common type of is the four-line , which is usually referred to simply as an .

Early history

The is found in the work of the earliest attested Welsh poets (the ), where the main types are the three-line and . It is the only set stanzaic metre found in the early Welsh poetic corpus, and explanations for its origins have tended to focus on stanzaic Latin poetry and hymns; however, it is as likely to be a development within the Brittonic poetic tradition. Whereas the metrical rules of later are clear (and are based on counting syllables), the precise metre of the early is debated and could have involved stress-counting. The earliest are found as marginalia written in a tenth-century hand in the Juvencus Manuscript. Many early seem to represent moments of characters' emotional reflection in stories now lost: , , . Others survey heroic tradition, for example the or Geraint son of Erbin, and other poems written using are lyric, religious meditations and laments such as the famous and . In the 14th century the various metres used in Welsh poetry were classified into 24 different types; the classification is thought to be due to Einion Offeiriad and Dafydd Ddu o Hiraddug. In Einion's grammar, the metres are divided into three groups: and . The first group contained eight types of : and . In the 15th century Dafydd ab Edmwnd revised the list, excluding the three-lined and , which had become obsolete. These three-line are sometimes referred to as ("englyns of the old poetry").

The three-line of the poem are similar, but in a slightly different metre, in that the first line of each stanza has eight (sometimes nine) syllables, and the 2nd and 3rd usually have seven (but sometimes six or eight) syllables. For example (in modern spelling): In this poem, as well as the irregular line-lengths, the caesura is also sometimes irregularly placed, as in the third line above. Each line is decorated with traditional , including linking the at the end of line one with the phrase at the beginning of line 2. (C) = , (Cy) = , (T) = . The in the third line is complex, since it combines two types. The dash after the rhyme in line 1 does not necessarily represent a break in syntax, but is simply a metrical mark which is customarily used before a . In the great majority of examples of , the is linked to a word in line 2 by consonantal rather than rhyme. For example, in his poem of ten listing ten virtues of his patron Ifor ap Llewelyn, only two have rhyme, including the tenth: (S) = , (C) = , (T) = . The following is by the 12th-century Welsh poet . It describes the mighty sound of the war-horn of Llewelyn the Great. In this early example there is no consonance or rhyme between the end of line 1 and the beginning of line 2: The following is grace in the form of an in a poem by W. D. Williams. Line 1 (from to ) has (T), line 3 (S), and line 4 (C). The ( ) is linked to the beginning of line 2 ( ) by (Cy):

The term , feminine , (literally "round ended") is used of simple vowels as opposed to long diphthongs. (Einion took the word to be feminine, hence the feminine adjective.) In an , there are four seven-syllable lines that half-rhyme with each other, each line using a different simple vowel. The example below by Gruffudd ap Maredudd ap Dafydd (14th century) has in each line: (S) = , combining internal rhyme and alliteration, and (T) = , with alliteration only. The four vowels used in the can also be long ones, but not a mixture of long and short. The following is by the poet Sefnyn (c. 1380), Elegy for :cy:Iorwerth ab y Cyriog. (S) = , (C) = :

English imitations

The poet Robert Graves wrote an in English, included in the Juvinalia (1910–1914) of his Complete Poems Here is an English-language by novelist Robertson Davies. These lack the full but in terms of syllable-count and rhyme conform to the pattern of .

Breton

Breton poet also writes Breton-language ; in 2020, he has published a collection of them called . (http://brezhoneg.org/en/node/11057)

Bibliography

Morris-Jones, John (1925). . Oxford. (In Welsh) Rowland, Jenny (1990). Early Welsh Saga Poetry: A Study and Edition of the Englynion. (Cambridge: Brewer) Rowland, Jenny (ed.) (2014). A Selection of Early Welsh Saga Poems. (London: Modern Humanities Research Association)

References

Text derived from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=1374845413 under CC BY-SA 4.0; modifications have been made.