Page:A handbook of the Cornish language; Chiefly in its latest stages with some account of its history and literature.djvu/202

Rh III. Another very common metre in the Dramas consists of stanzas of eight lines of seven syllables, rhyming alternately. Usually the stanza only contains two rhymes, but sometimes, especially if four lines of the eight are given to one character and four to another, the rhymes of the two quatrains are independent of one another.

From the Ordinale de Origine Mundi, fifteenth century. (Eve's speech to Adam after gathering the apple.)

Note the apparent "feminine" rhymes, torren-sorren, which are really rimes riches in the French style.

The whole Poem of the Passion is in this metre, but is written in lines of fourteen syllables.

IV. Four-syllabled lines, often written as eight-syllabled, rhyming alternately. Thus (Passio D. N. J. C. in the Ordinalia, 1. 35):—