Page:A handbook of the Cornish language; Chiefly in its latest stages with some account of its history and literature.djvu/201

182 It is probable that this metre is intended to be five-syllabled throughout, except that a "feminine" or double rhyme is occasionally allowable (e.g. powes-mowes), and that the light first syllable of a line may be omitted. This accounts for the two six-syllabled and two four-syllabled lines respectively. In the rest of the poem there are lines of four, five, seven, eight, and even nine syllables. The whole fragment of forty-one lines, though not much earlier than the Ordinalia, is much less regular in rhythm, and is much less syllabic.

II. One of the commonest metres of the Dramas, and indeed of much mediæval verse in other languages, consists of seven-syllabled lines rhyming AABCCB, or AABAAB.

From the Passio Domini Nostri Jesu Christi, the second of the Ordinalia, fifteenth century. (Our Lord's speech to the Pueri Hebræorum.)

This is the metre of the well-known Whitsunday Sequence, Veni Sancte Spiritus (Come, thou Holy Spirit, come).

Note that gwrys (gwres in Modern Cornish) is a monosyllable, and that the ue of dhue is a single vowel = eu. This metre is varied by being made into eight-lined stanzas, rhyming AAABCCCB.