Viii. Early Middle English Period

The Romance-Six or "Rime Couée."

At an uncertain period in the thirteenth century this makes its appearance--no doubt directly imitated from the French, but probably also in part a derivative of the application of metrical tendency to the aboriginal line-couplet. Its French name is not, to our eyes, appropriate --one would rather call it "waisted" or "waisted-and-tailed rhyme"; and as it is very largely (in fact, with the plain couplet predominantly) used in the English romances, "romance-six" as opposed to "ballad-four" seems a good name for it. It sometimes, however, extends to three, four, or even six sets of two eights and a six, and is found both plain and equivalenced, as thus:

The brid|des sing|e, it is | no nay, The spar|hauk and | the pap|ejay, that joy|e it was | to here. The thrus|telcok made eek | his lay, The wo|de dowv|e upon | the spray She sang | ful loud|e and clere.

(Chaucer, Sir Thopas.)

As soon|e as the em|peroure yil|dyd the gast, A prowd|e gar|son came | in haste, Sir Syn|agote | hight he-- And broght | an hun|dred hel|mes bright Of har|dy men | that cowd|e wel fight Of felde | wolde ne|ver oon flee.

(Le Bone Florence of Rome, 778-783.)

The plain form, as Chaucer, of malice prepense, showed in the above, is particularly liable to sing-song effect.