Page:A handbook of the Cornish language; Chiefly in its latest stages with some account of its history and literature.djvu/200

Rh of Alverton, also in rhyming triplets. The curious little song, which is all that remains of Jenkins's poetry, seems to show indications of a feeling for internal rhymes and something like a rudimentary Cynghanedd, but there is not enough of it to reduce to any definite rules. Even in Boson's verses and in those of Gwavas and Tonkin of St. Just (not the historian), in the Gwavas MS., the old system of counting syllables and taking very little account of the stress accents of words, is occasionally found, but generally in the later verse the extra unaccented syllables freely introduced show that a sense of accent and beats of rhythm had come in.

I. Five- (or four) syllabled lines, with occasional six-syllabled, rhyming A A B C C B. From the fragment on the back of Additional Charter 19,491 in the British Museum, late fourteenth century.